How close is the end of the world? Just 90 seconds for the Doomsday Clock

It is not Apocalypse Nowbut almost. Atomic war has never been so close, the nuclear threat that can affect all of humanity. The Clock of the Apocalypse says it, the Doomsday Clock, which, since 1947, has been calculating the distance between the present and the end of the world. It was initially set 7 minutes before the catastrophe. Currently the distance that separates the world from the apocalypse nuclear it was raised from 100 to 90 seconds from midnight.

The editors of the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists each year symbolically measure the time that is missing for the Earth to face an irreparable catastrophe which is midnight on the dial: the closer the minute hand gets to it, the greater the danger of nuclear holocaust. In 2019 it was two minutes, in 2020 it went to 100 seconds and now there are ten less, only 90, separating us from the end. The greatest source of fear is the war born with the Russian invasion of Ukraine, as explained by the press release released in English, but, for the first time, also in Russian and Ukrainian.

The measure, 90 seconds in this case, is relative. Count the threats, not the real time left in the world, with current knowledge incalculable. The clock is updated every year based on the risk that the Earth runs in that year. The riskiest years are all recent, apart from the 1953. In the 1950s it was the development of the hydrogen bomb that gave rise to fears, in more recent years it was climate change that brought the possible disaster closer and now the conflict in Ukraine.

The best year? It was 1991, after the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 and the dissolution of the USSR prosperity seemed to have returned and the end of the world was receding. At midnight then there were 17 minutes left. Since then the time available to us has been steadily decreasing.

– Afghanistan, the Taliban bans women from university

– Afghanistan, the order of the Taliban: “The heads of the mannequins are cut off or covered”