“Doomsday Clock” has been translated again: how much time is left before the apocalypse
Kyiv • UNN
Scientists have set the Doomsday Clock to 89 seconds before midnight, the closest it has come to a catastrophe in the 78 years of the project's existence. The reason was the tense international situation.
Scientists have reset the Armageddon clock for the first time in two years. Now humanity "has only 89 seconds left to exist". The end of this is a nuclear war, reports UNN.
Details
After a long break, the Doomsday Clock has started again, Time reports. The clock was reset by one second. Now it shows 89 seconds to midnight. The clock has not been reset since 2023. Back then, scientists moved the hands 10 seconds closer to the "abyss". The main reasons: Russian nuclear threats and the coronavirus.
This time, in 2025, the reason is the same, but complex and no less dangerous: the tense international situation. In theory, if the clock strikes midnight, it will mean a nuclear war. Given this news, the editorial board of UNN decided to dive into the history of the emergence and translation of the "death clock".
Doomsday Clock, what is it?
The "terrible" clock is almost 78 years old, and it is not material, but theoretical. The American journal Bulletin of the Atomic Scientist has been running a similar project since 1947. The entire board of directors of this publication decides whether to move the hands.
The clock has been reset 26 times. Its starting point was 23:53:00, meaning that humanity was given only 7 minutes to exist, a direct reference to the biblical seven, because in seven days God created the whole world.
The most important time changes
The first time the clocks were reset was in 1949. They did so by 4 minutes to the 24th hour, almost halfway through the allotted time. The reason: the Soviet Union's testing of an atomic bomb.
Humanity came one minute closer to disaster four years later. In 1953, the Soviet Union tested a bomb again, this time a hydrogen bomb. So in the mid-50s of the 20th century, there were 2 minutes left on the clock before "X time".
But the early 60s made the hands of the mechanism work in the opposite direction, now they went back 12 minutes and showed 23:48:00. The point is that the US and the USSR avoided a confrontation and signed a treaty banning nuclear tests in the atmosphere in 1963.
The next time it was closer to midnight. In 1968, the clocks were reset to 23:53:00. Nuclear weapons appeared in France and China.
In the 70s, the design "showed" 23:51:00 for quite some time. A Soviet-American treaty was signed on the reduction of missile arsenals and missile defense.
In the first half of the 1980s, time began to move toward the "apocalypse" again. First, the USSR and America continued the nuclear race, and then Soviet troops entered Afghanistan. So, in 1984, the Soviet Union's negotiations with the United States also stopped. There were 3 minutes left before the disaster - 23:57:00.
Everything changed in 1988. The two imperial powers signed another treaty banning the use of intermediate-range nuclear missiles. So, the conditional dial showed 23:54:00.
The collapse of the USSR saved humanity for another 4 minutes - 23:50:00 in 1990. And the large-scale reduction of nuclear weapons in 1991 made the hands show a "light" 23:43:00. That is, there were a record 17 minutes before the Third World War.
However, less than seven years later, India and Pakistan violated the "peace" again. They tested bombs and the clock struck 23:51:00.
In 2001, a terrorist attack in the United States forced the figures to be reduced by another 2 minutes. The end of the first 10 years of the 21st century did not bring a catastrophe, so "time" remained at 23:54:00.
The mid-20s marked the beginning of a real crisis. Global climate change and the proliferation of nuclear weapons left humanity with only 3 minutes to live in 2015. The exacerbation of these problems added another minute to midnight in 2018, i.e. 23:58:00.
Then the clock started moving by the second. On January 23, 2020, it was moved forward by 20 seconds (23:58:20) due to the suspension of the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty and the growing confrontation between the United States and Iran.
As we have already mentioned, another 10 seconds were added in 2023. And now 2025 is 23:58:31. This clock has never been so close to the "day of judgment". However, whether Armageddon will happen depends only on humanity, because the hands can quickly return to a safe distance, let's say to 23:50:00.