The Doomsday Clock forewarns of impending doom – Why is it at ninety seconds to midnight?

The Doomsday Clock, with its hands hovering close to midnight (“doomsday”), is a symbolic device that is designed to warn the world how close it is to catastrophe. Midnight is said to represent the point at which the Earth becomes uninhabitable by humanity.

The clock dates back to the early days of the cold war. It was set up as an integral feature of a journal called the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists. This was established in 1947 by those Manhattan Project scientists and engineers who were closely linked to the development of the atomic bomb. They were concerned about “the destroyers of worlds” they had created. Articles in the bulletin were largely devoted – as they still are today – to highlighting the perils of nuclear weapons.

At the beginning of 2023, the hands of the Doomsday Clock were set at a mere 90 seconds to the hour, the closest it has ever been to midnight. There is no one overall reason for this move. Of course, with climate change now a major factor in the threat to humanity, the clock has to reflect this, and does. But it is, however, other more immediate factors that have largely caused the hands to be pushed forward.

The most significant influence has been the war in Ukraine and particularly the Russian threat of “escalating to de-escalate”. This notion has been widely discussed in Russia, including by those with close ties to President Vladimir Putin.

The idea here is that if Russian forces were about to suffer a major defeat in Ukraine, they would use tactical (low-yield) nuclear weapons on the battlefield (that is, to “escalate” the war). This would then create serious pause among those western powers who were supporting Kyiv.

They would, the logic runs, be persuaded into withdrawing that support because they would not want to risk a wider war with Russia that might include the use of strategic nuclear weapons. Moscow would then “win” the war against a Ukraine now lacking western help. The war would be over – hence the “de-escalation”.

Beyond what might happen on actual battlefields in Ukraine, rising background tensions between Washington and Moscow have also contributed to the current position of the clock’s hands.

The bilateral treaties that once held in check developments in the field of nuclear weapons have now largely gone. The US itself withdrew from the Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) Treaty treaty in 2001 and the Intermediate-range Nuclear Forces (INF) treaty in 2019. And while the end of these agreements would have played their part in the setting of the clock’s hands at 90 seconds at the start of 2023, there have been yet further concerning moves actually during 2023.

In February 2023, Russia withdrew from the New Start Treaty and early in November it was announced that it would also withdraw from the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty. So all of the agreements related to limiting nuclear weapons that, in the past, had moved the hands away from midnight, have now gone.