Doomsday Clock

By Brennan Nick

 

Just yesterday, the annual movement of the Doomsday Clock occurred,… and it just moved ½ a minute closer to midnight.

 

For those who don’t know, the Doomsday Clock was created in 1947 by a group of scientists– many of whom worked on the atomic bomb–as a symbolic way to show how close we as a planet are to nuclear war. Since 2007, however, it has been expanded to also reflect how close we are to unalterable climate change, and new developments in science that could cause irreversible damage to humanity.

 

When the clock reaches midnight that means that Doomsday has occurred. The lowest the clock can go to is 9:00 PM to signify how far the world has come from a 0% chance pre-humanity. Just as a reminder, we’re at 11:58 right now, the highest it’s ever been–tying with 1958. To put this into perspective, however, the furthest from Doomsday the Doomsday Clock has been since its inception was 11:43 in 1991 right after the fall of the Soviet Union.

 

The group that manually changes the time on the Doomsday Clock moved the clock ½ a minute closer to midnight because of “the failure of President Trump and other world leaders to deal with looming threats of nuclear war and climate change.”

 

Now, hopefully we won’t be heading towards the apocalypse anytime soon… hopefully.

 

Editor: Shelby Armor