Doomsday Clock moves closest ever to midnight, just 89 seconds left until humanity's annihilation

In setting the clock one second closer to midnight, we send a stark signal,

said the BAS in a statement on Tuesday

A lot of the rhetoric is very disturbing,

Holz said

Right from the time that Russia first undertook the invasion in Ukraine, it was with a fair bit of nuclear sabre-rattling.”

Dr Manpreet Sethi, a fellow at India’s Centre for Air Power Studies, said

Collectively, leaders must establish knowledgeable authorities to provide trustworthy information, increase reporting of changing disease patterns as the climate changes, decrease the number of high-containment laboratories, and curtail active biological weapons programs.”

Dr McKinney added

The war in Ukraine continues to loom as a large source of nuclear risk,

Holz cautioned

It is the determination of the science and security board of the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists that the world has not made sufficient progress on existential risks threatening all of humanity. We thus move the clock forward,

Daniel Holz, chair of the organisation’s science and security board, said during a livestreamed event on Tuesday

The Bulletin is a bit like a doctor making a diagnosis,

the BAS website says

We look at data, as physicians look at lab tests and x-rays, and also take harder-to-quantify factors into account, as physicians do when talking with patients and family members. We consider as many symptoms, measurements, and circumstances as we can. Then we come to a judgment that sums up what could happen if leaders and citizens don’t take action to treat the conditions,

it adds

Conflict in the Middle East threatens to spiral out of control into a wider war without warning,

the statement said

This is a bleak picture, but it is not yet irreversible."

At a news conference announcing the decision, Nobel Peace Prize laureate Juan Manuel Santos, Colombia's former president, said

Midnight represents the end of civilization as we know it."

In the words of the Bulletin

The design is a metaphor that warns the public about how close we are to destroying our world with dangerous technologies of our own making, and the discussion points the public to the underlying issues driving that threat and the solutions to combat them,

Bronson told Newsweek

The Doomsday Clock is about urgency, not fear,

Rachel Bronson, president of the Bulletin, previously told Newsweek

The United States, China, and Russia have the prime responsibility to pull the world back from the brink,

the release said

Russian aggression in Ukraine, including repeated use of nuclear threats since the war began, has been disturbing. In addition, Russia's recent backtracking from important arms control treaties is an alarming sign of increasing nuclear risk,

Holz said

Advances in AI are beginning to show up on the battlefield in tentative but worrisome ways, and of particular concern is the future possibility of AI applications to nuclear weapons. In addition, AI is increasingly disrupting the world's information ecosystem. AI-fueled disinformation and misinformation will only add to this dysfunction

Quote from Holz

Setting the Doomsday Clock at 89 seconds to midnight is a warning to all world leaders,

Holz added

While there has been impressive growth in wind and solar energy, the world is still falling short of what is necessary to prevent the worse aspects of climate change,

Holz said

The factors shaping this year’s decision – nuclear risk, climate change, the potential misuse of advances in biological science and a variety of other emerging technologies such as artificial intelligence – were not new in 2024. But we have seen insufficient progress in addressing the key challenges, and in many cases this is leading to increasingly negative and worrisome effects,

said Daniel Holz, chair of the Bulletin’s Science and Security Board

We are watching closely and hope that the ceasefire in Gaza will hold. Tensions in the Middle East including with Iran are still dangerously unstable,

Holz said