Doomsday Clock will be updated tomorrow to 'determine' fate of humanity
It sometimes feels like there should be some disheveled man on every street corner, ringing a bell and wearing an A-board that warns the end is nigh.
If it's not the threat of nuclear warfare, it's artificial intelligence going rogue, alien invasions, or simply even climate change threatening to wipe mankind off the face of the Earth. Keeping track of our precarious position in the cosmos is the Doomsday Clock - and worryingly, it's about to be updated.
Created by the legends of J. Robert Oppenheimer, Albert Einstein, and Eugene Rabinowitch, the Doomsday Clock has been updated annually since 1947.
Although it only focuses on the threat of a human-made global catastrophe and tends to reveal what the world's political powers are thinking in terms of nuclear attacks, we sit on the edge of our seats to see how close to midnight (total destruction) we've brought ourselves over the past 365 days.
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On January 28, the Doomsday Clock will reveal its new position in a much-hyped livestream from the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists at 10:00 a.m. EST.
Although the Doomsday Clock has sat at 90 seconds to midnight since 2023, scientists theorize it's going to tick forward in 2025.
In terms of why we might be closer to midnight, the ongoing Russia-Ukraine war, the conflict between Israel and Palestine in the Middle East, and the return of Donald Trump as President of the United States are all thought to be contributing factors.
The official site explains: "On January 28th, the Bulletin's Science and Security Board (SASB) will reveal the 2025 Doomsday Clock time in Washington, DC.
"For 2025, the SASB will consider multiple global threats in the Clock setting, including the proliferation of nuclear weapons, disruptive technologies like artificial intelligence, the Russia-Ukraine war, Israel-Hamas war, Israel-Hezbollah conflict, bio-threats and the continued climate crisis."
Every year, experts ask whether the human race is at a greater risk or safer than the previous year, as well as whether humanity is at a greater risk or safer when compared to the previous 78 years.
The general idea of the Doomsday Clock started in 1945 on the anniversary of the Pearl Harbor bombing, with those who'd worked on the Manhattan Project, publishing "The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists" newsletter.
Martyl Langsdorf was an artist and the wife of the Manhattan Project's Alexander Langsdorf Jr., conjuring up the idea of a clock to reveal how close to annihilation we are.
As reported by USA Today, the Doomsday Clock used to largely focus on the threat of nuclear war from the 1950s through to the 1980s.
Robert Socolow, an environmental scientist, theoretical physicist, and professor emeritus of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering at Princeton University, explained how attitudes have changed in 2025:
"The nuclear threat is one that young people can’t believe their grandparents and parents lived with but now their working assumption is 'I don’t need to worry about it.' But they do."
Terrorists and the likes of North Korea are more modern threats, as well as access to pathogens, with Socolow adding: "We have hair trigger alerts, many nuclear weapons around the globe and a nuclear doctrine that if someone attacks us, we must reciprocate."
The Doomsday Clock was first set at seven minutes to midnight in 1947, and its best, sat at 17 minutes to midnight following the USA and the Soviet Union signing the first Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty in 1991.
The Doomsday Clock is already at its worst, and if it moves closer to midnight, it's just another reason why January 2025 will be even more depressing.