DOOMSDAY CLOCK

Tiffany Torres Williams - Scientists help us understand the fallout of everything from volcano eruptions to hurricanes to flash floods to nuclear war. Which brings me to the Doomsday Clock, which was created by the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists in 1947 to determine how close humanity is to destroying itself through nuclear escalation, climate change, and other man-made catastrophes. At midnight, it’s game over. The Earth, or at least the humans who occupy it, are toast.

As of its last update in January, the Doomsday Clock is at ninety-seconds to midnight, the closest its ever been. Escalations like Russia’s attack on Ukraine and conflict between Israel and Gaza caused the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists to declare a possible global catastrophe. Record high temperatures, another crisis based on human behavior, added to the existential threat. Scientists are also concerned about advancing Artificial Intelligence, and doubt the benefits of the new technology outweigh its potential threats to civilization.

 Rachel Bronson, head of The Bulletin, said scientists arrived in Chicago last week to begin “setting the clock” for 2025.The point of the clock isn’t to be definitive but to inspire conversation about the ways in which humans flirt with their own extinction. Its creators would know. Many of them were among the group of scientists who worked on the Manhattan Project, the code name for the development of the atomic bomb.