Ninety seconds

Enough time for one more sweet

SCIENTISTS are feeling neglected. The lot of them. Humanity seems too preoccupied of late with trivial details that keep us afloat. Like making rent, putting food on the table, finding shelter from the cold, running for cover.

And to make sure our collective attention span remains focused where it’s required, scientists have moved something called the “Doomsday Clock” closer to the zero hour of midnight.

Or, depending on one’s preference, Armageddon/

The End/Auf Wiedersehen, good night. Take your pick. Midnight represents man’s exit, stage left.

The Doomsday Clock has existed as more than metaphor since 1947, when an international association of deep thinkers called The Bulletin of Atomic Scientists decided it was needed to remind the world about the dangers of nuclear weapons. As if anyone needed a reminder in the aftermath of Hiroshima/Nagasaki.

The group occasionally moves the clock closer to the end of the world. Take that, Mayans. Doomsday clocks seem to have been in vogue for quite a while.

Last week, in front of reporters and onlookers at the National Press Club in D.C., a satisfactorily diverse group of five scientists from across the globe officially reset the Doomsday Clock to 90 seconds ‘til midnight, the closest it’s ever been to Lights Out—closer than it ever got during the Cold War, the Korean War, the Cuban missile crisis, and any number of Tom Clancy rewrites of U.S.-USSR close calls.

“IT IS 90 SECONDS TO MIDNIGHT,” or so the Doomsday Clock operators proclaimed to onlookers, in all caps, at last week’s unveiling in Washington.

The wire services tell us the clock had been set at 100 seconds to midnight since 2020. In a press release (the end of the world no doubt will be announced via presser at 4:30 p.m. on a Friday), the Bulletin said the clock was moved forward due to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and its increased risk of nuclear escalation, because of “unabated” disinformation online, and because of the ongoing threat of infectious disease outbreaks. And, of course, because of climate change.

The Bulletin’s head scientist even urged the U.S. government, NATO and Ukraine to explore a “multitude of channels for dialogue” so that the clock might be turned back a bit.

The paper tells us the Bulletin (which is a group and a publication) has a science and security board that meets biannually to discuss current events and assess the clock.

The board includes experts in nuclear technology and climate science. At each meeting it tabulates the number of nukes in the world, the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, the level of acidity in the oceans, and the rate at which sea levels are rising.

Here we sit, then. At 11:58.30. You have to hand it to the Doomsday scientists, though. They were smart enough not to set an expiration date. Must be why they’re wearing the lab coats.

The furthest the clock has been set from midnight is 17 minutes. This happened in 1991 at the end of the Cold War. Before climate change emerged as cause celebre.

One last thing to note. A minor little detail. The Doomsday Clock originally was set arbitrarily. So reports The New York Times.

The artist asked to design the cover of the Bulletin’s 1947 edition, which would introduce the Doomsday Clock to the world, decided to set the clock at seven minutes to midnight because he said, “It looked good to my eye.”

As it did to scientists around the world.