Doomsday Clock moves 30 seconds closer to the end of the world
North Korean nuclear tests and Donald Trump’s unpredictability have pushed forward the symbolic Doomsday Clock to two minutes before midnight - the closest it has been to the apocalypse since the US and Soviet Union first tested hydrogen bombs back in 1953.
The threat assessment by the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists (BAS) also factored in the risks posed by tensions between Russia and the West; global climate change; and a new US nuclear strategy that is expected to result in “more funding to expand the role of the country's nuclear arsenal”, reports the BBC.
The BAS says the world has become “more dangerous” since last year, when it also moved the metaphorical clock forward, by 30 seconds.
“The world is not only more dangerous now than it was a year ago; it is as threatening as it has been since the Second World War,” write BAS members Lawrence Krauss and Robert Rosner in an article for The Washington Post.
Even during the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis, the clock’s hands stood at a far less worrying seven minutes to midnight. Since it was first created, in 1947, the Doomsday Clock time has ranged from between 17 minutes to two minutes to midnight - which stands for the end of civilisation.
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