Martyl set the original Clock at seven minutes to midnight because, she said, “it looked good to my eye.” In the early days, Bulletin Editor Eugene Rabinowitch decided whether the hand should be moved.
In response to the urgency she felt from the meetings, she designed a minimalist, but memorable clock—its hands set at seven minutes to midnight, in part because it “looked good to [her] eye.” Ever since, the Bulletin has used the clock to depict the existential threats facing humanity.
The scientists felt that they “could not remain aloof to the consequences of their work” and worked to inform the public and policymakers about man-made threats to human existence. The Doomsday Clock was created in 1947 by the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists to convey how close humanity is to destroying itself.
The clock began at seven minutes to midnight in 1947 and wasn't moved until 1949 to three minutes when the Soviet Union tested its first atomic bomb. In 1991, the clock had its furthest time from catastrophe when it was set to 17 minutes to midnight as the Cold War cooled down.
The Doomsday Clock is a symbolic timepiece showing how close the world is to ending. Midnight marks the theoretical point of annihilation. Apocalyptic threats could arise from political tensions, weapons, technology, climate change or pandemic illness.
The Bulletin has reset the minute hand on the Doomsday Clock 25 times since its debut in 1947, most recently in 2023 when we moved it from 100 seconds to midnight to 90 seconds to midnight.
The "100 seconds to midnight" setting remained unchanged in 2021 and 2022. On January 24, 2023, the Clock was moved to 90 seconds (1 minute, 30 seconds) before midnight, meaning that the Clock's current setting is the closest it has ever been to midnight since its inception in 1947.
But it may be helpful to remember, Wellerstein adds, that the Doomsday Clock is not a scientific instrument or even an institution. It's a metaphor and a communication tool. One reasonable measure of success might simply be whether people talk about it when the time changes, and the issues behind that change.
The Doomsday Clock is set once a year by the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists. For the first several decades, Manhattan Project scientist and Bulletin editor Eugene Rabinowitch decided when, and how much, to move the Clock.
What is the Doomsday Clock set at now? The Doomsday Clock is currently set at 90 seconds to midnight. It had been at 100 seconds to midnight since 2020, and didn't change in either 2021 or 2022.
It is 90 seconds to midnight.
“The clock isn't really meant to say how risky a nuclear war is this year,” says Pierrehumbert. It's meant to be an assessment of the fundamental state of risks that could take decades to play out.
The Doomsday Clock is a design that warns the public about how close we are to destroying our world with dangerous technologies of our own making. It is a metaphor, a reminder of the perils we must address if we are to survive on the planet.
2 minutes to midnight. 1953. The Bulletin moved the clock the closest to midnight it had ever been—and the closest it would ever be in the 20th Century—after the U.S. and the Soviet Union detonated their first thermonuclear weapons. 2.5 minutes to midnight.
The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists set the clock at 90 seconds to midnight on Tuesday, citing the war in Ukraine as well as climate change, online disinformation and other threats.
During the COVID lockdowns in 2020, the world felt so dystopian, that the Doomsday Clock was set to 100 seconds to midnight—the closest to a global apocalypse since the metaphoric clock came into existence more than seven decades ago.
This new concern has led experts to make predictions as to the likelihood of a nuclear war, with the estimates ranging from 10-20 percent, 16.8 percent or even 20-25 percent, according to The Brookings Institution, a non-profit public policy organization based in Washington, D.C.
“That symbolic clock was created 76 years ago by atomic scientists, including Albert Einstein. “Year after year, experts have measured humanity's proximity to midnight — in other words, to self-destruction.
The clock created a stir when it was set to 100 seconds to midnight in 2020, the first time the famous clock had gone down to seconds rather than minutes. At the time, the Bulletin's scientists said we were "at doom's doorstep." It remained at 100 seconds to midnight in 2021 and 2022.
Scientists revealed on Tuesday that the "Doomsday Clock" has been moved up to 90 seconds before midnight -- the closest humanity has ever been to armageddon.
The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists set its Doomsday Clock at 90 seconds to midnight, the closest to midnight the clock has been since it was established in 1947 to illustrate global existential threats at the dawn of the nuclear weapons age.
1984: Three minutes from midnight
In 1984, the Bulletin warned that because of stalled communication between the U.S. and the Soviet Union, the world was a mere 180 seconds away from the proverbial end of days.
The last day of February is always a doomsday. For January, January 3 is a doomsday during common years and January 4 a doomsday during leap years, which can be remembered as "the 3rd during 3 years in 4, and the 4th in the 4th year".
Doomsday Clock is a twelve-issue comic book series written by Geoff Johns and illustrated by Gary Frank. It began on November 21, 2017, at three minutes to midnight.
The truth is, there is actually a story that follows up on the events of Doomsday Clock. It's called Dark Nights: Death Metal, and it involves the villainous Batman Who Laughs using the powers of Doctor Manhattan to become a godlike figure.