The Doomsday Clock Just Got Closer to Midnight

Bulletin of Atomic Scientists members push the Doomsday Clock closer to midnight earlier today at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C. (Image: CNN video screenshot)

It’s not a real clock, simply a metaphorical one, but it still keeps time. The minutes the world has before nuclear annihilation.

Atomic scientists moved the hands 30 seconds closer to midnight today and in the process called President Trump “an undisciplined and disruptive president.” They cited conflict with both North Korea and Iran and said the United States has lost its traditional position as a world leader and peacemaker during Trump’s watch.

“The world is not only more dangerous now than it was a year ago, it is as threatening as it has been since World War II,” Lawrence Krauss and Robert Rosner wrote in a guest editorial for The Washington Post. “In fact, the Doomsday Clock is as close to midnight today as it was in 1953, when Cold War fears perhaps reached their highest levels.”

According to information from CNN, the clock was this close to midnight last in 1953, when the US and the Soviet Union were engaged in a nuclear arms race. Last year the clock went from three minutes to two and a half minutes to midnight. The furthest the clock has been from midnight was 17 minutes in 1991.