CHICAGO—Tick…tick…tick. The Doomsday Clock, which top scientists use to show how close the globe is to worldwide Armageddon, is now down to 89 seconds to midnight. That’s the closest the world’s ever been to the prospect of total destruction.
More than ever a strong peace movement is needed in response and those who oppose talks between the U.S. and Russia, the world’s two biggest nuclear powers, should instead be celebrating such talks and demanding they be expanded to take up the issue of nuclear disarmament. Specifically the two powers must extend the about-to-expire START treaty limiting testing and use of these weapons of total obliteration of the planet.
The clock reached its most dangerous moment ever even before Republican and imperialist President Donald Trump floated his plan for an “Iron Dome” anti-missile defense over the whole continental U.S., which, of course, wouldn’t work.
It was also before Trump’s puppeteer, Elon Musk, and his Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) 22-year-olds slashed through the ranks of U.S. specialists in keeping the nation’s 9,320 nuclear warheads from accidental detonations or from their missiles accidentally lifting off.
The Chicago-based Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists founded the Doomsday Clock in 1947, at the start and height of the Cold War. That conflict pitted the U.S. and NATO versus the Soviet Union and its Warsaw Pact allies. The People’s Republic of China had an on-and-off relationship with the U.S.S.R.
The clock started in 1947 at seven minutes before midnight—midnight signals global destruction—dropped to three minutes till midnight during the 1950s, and returned to seven minutes in 1960 and remained there during the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962 between the U.S. and the Soviet Union.
Starting in 1963, with the signing of various arms control and nuclear weapons cuts treaties, the clock retreated to 17 minutes to midnight in 1991, but it’s been moving closer to midnight ever since. The 89 seconds figure last year is one second closer to midnight than in 2023. An international board of scientists, including nine Nobel Prize winners, periodically resets the clock.
The nuclear threat is the main threat the scientists use to set the clock. They point out the U.S. nuclear arsenal is four times the size of those of China and Russia combined. Those two nations have 2,345 warheads. But there are other threats, too, in order of importance: Global warming, biological threats, disinformation and “a variety of emerging technologies” all threaten continued existence of life on earth.
This year, coincidentally, the scientists reset the clock the day after the 80th anniversary of Soviet forces liberation of the worst Nazi mass extermination camp during World War II, Auschwitz.
“Despite unmistakable signs of danger, national leaders and their societies failed to do what is needed to change course,” wrote John Macklin, editor of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, reporting on the warning ceremony.
“Consequently, we now move the Doomsday Clock from 90 seconds to 89 seconds to midnight—the closest it has ever been to catastrophe. Our fervent hope is leaders will recognize the world’s existential predicament and take bold action to reduce the threats.
“In setting the clock one second closer to midnight, we send a stark signal: Because the world is already perilously close to the precipice, a move of even a single second should be taken as an indication of extreme danger and an unmistakable warning that every second of delay in reversing course increases the probability of global disaster.”
Nuclear weapons and their proliferation are still the top danger. The likelihood of their use is increasing, especially in the continuing conflict in Ukraine and in an arms race in the Middle East, the panel said.
Nuclear nations which had reduced their arsenals—principally the U.S. and Russia—are reversing course. China, India and Pakistan are adding nuclear warheads. And the last major nuclear arms control treaty, New Start, expires at the end of 2025. There are no negotiations to renew or extend it.
Combatting climate change is going backward, too, and not just in the U.S., the scientific board warned.
Continued to rise
“Global greenhouse gas emissions…continued to rise. Extreme weather and other climate change-influenced events—floods, tropical cyclones, heat waves, drought, and wildfires—affected every continent. The long-term prognosis for the world’s attempts to deal with climate change remains poor, as most governments fail to enact the financing and policy initiatives necessary to halt global warming.
“Judging from recent electoral campaigns, climate change is viewed as a low priority in the United States and many other countries.”
The avian flu outbreaks are just the most obvious signs of the biological threat to the globe, the board said. The board released its report before the Trump regime halted grant funding and fired hundreds of researchers, including researchers of biological disease threats, from the National Institutes of Health.
And in another biological disease threat, the scientists warned that more nations are building biological disease testing labs—but without the oversight to prevent disease outbreaks from them.
All of this doesn’t count Trump’s Iron Dome scheme and the Musk-Trump firings at the National Nuclear Security Agency. Musk’s minions are now trying to claw some of those workers back, but—if they can be found—they’re skeptical of the government’s reliability as an employer.
The Union of Concerned Scientists is more concerned about Trump’s Iron Dome idea. The Iron Dome works against missiles launched in parabolic (up-and-down) orbits from relatively short distances, which is how Israel has used it to ward off attacks from Hezbollah in southern Lebanon and from Iran.
But it doesn’t work, UCS points out, against missile-like drones that hug closer to the ground. It also, like Ronald Reagan’s abortive Star Wars scheme, would be horrendously expensive. One estimate, in Defense One magazine, put the cost of covering the entire continental U.S. at $2.47 trillion.
That publication’s missile defense analyst said a U.S. Iron Dome “would be useful against a missile from Mexico launched against El Paso, Texas,” but not much else.
“It will cost too much, won’t work and will endanger us all,” the Union of Concerned Scientists told Dan Vergano of the Scientific American.
Vergano explained the sole relic of Reagan’s Star Wars is 44 ground-based interceptor missiles on the West Coast, aimed against ballistic missile attacks from North Korea. “They have worked 12 times out of 21 tests, a paltry success rate achieved only after $250 billion spent since their 1985 beginning. This illustrates the intrinsic, expensive difficulty of intercepting even dummy intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs).
“It’s just hard to hit them.
“What’s driving Trump’s Iron Dome? Fear of nuclear-tipped” Russian and Chinese hypersonic missiles “flying much faster—about a mile per second—and lower than ICBMs. Most terrestrial-based radars cannot detect hypersonic weapons until late in the weapon’s flight due to line-of-sight limitations of radar detection,” Vergano said, citing a recent report by the non-partisan Congressional Research Service.
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