Hands of the Doomsday Clock remain at 90 seconds to midnight

By Linda Pentz Gunter

Recently an American colleague in the nuclear disarmament movement wrote in an email that “I’m sorry to say that Marianne Williamson is unlikely to be elected President of the United States, but if she were to be elected, she promised today that she would sign the TPNW.”

The UN Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW), is a comprehensive nuclear ban that includes undertakings not to develop, test, produce, acquire, possess, stockpile, use or threaten to use nuclear weapons. It entered into force on January 22, 2021. It has been ratified by 70 countries to date.

Williamson is a Left Democrat making her second bid for the US presidency (she also ran in 2020). “Unlikely” was a considerable underestimate of her prospects in a system stacked against non-establishment candidates. Williamson has as much chance of becoming US president as I do, and I’m not even running.

Signing the US onto the TPNW, as Williamson pledged, would mean a commitment to unilateral disarmament. In reality, the opposite is happening, and this was one of the chief concerns that influenced the position of the hands on the Doomsday Clock, which was re-set on January 23.

The Doomsday Clock, established in 1947 by The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, assesses how close humanity stands to the brink of annihilation, largely due to the threat of nuclear war. It is set each year by the Bulletin’s Science and Security Board in consultation with its Board of Sponsors, which includes 11 Nobel laureates. 

In 1947 the Clock was at seven minutes to midnight. By 1949 it was at three minutes. In 1991, as the Cold War ended, it went as far back as 17 minutes to midnight. But in 2023, the hands moved ominously to 90 seconds to midnight, the closest we have ever come to doomsday. 

The Doomsday Clock may remained unchanged, still at 90 seconds to midnight, but the risks assessed now include not only nuclear-armed Russia’s war in Ukraine, which largely prompted last year’s move forward, but also nuclear-armed Israel’s war in Gaza and the risk this could escalate into a wider regional conflict involving other nuclear weapon states.

With 2023 the hottest year on record, including dramatically violent weather events, the dangers represented by the climate crisis, as well as the disruptive capacity of biotechnology and Artificial Intelligence, were also factored in.

These significantly increased threats since last year’s Clock re-set rather begged the question as to why the hands were not, therefore, moved even closer to midnight? This was not addressed directly during the Clock’s 2024 unveiling.

Our continued peril, as represented by the Clock, is largely driven by the failure of nuclear-armed countries to eliminate their arsenals, as required by the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, to which the major nuclear powers — the US, Russia and China — are a signatory. (None of the nuclear weapons powers have signed the TPNW.) Instead, these countries are increasing or “modernizing” their nuclear arsenals.

“Arms control has come to an end,” observed Alex Glaser, co-director of the Program on Science and Global Security at Princeton University, during the 2024 Doomsday Clock announcement. He pointed out that Russia has suspended its participation in the New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (New START) and withdrawn its ratification of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, which the US has never ratified.

China’s increased nuclear arsenal now stands at 500 weapons, Glaser said, while there is talk in Washington of increasing the US nuclear weapons arsenal “to match China and Russia combined.” This would set up an unprecedented three-way nuclear arms race.

What’s needed, Glaser added, is “a change in posture.” Nuclear weapons can be launched all too easily, on the say-so of the US president, for example. Who that is matters deeply, but regardless, said Glaser, “it is a very dangerous arrangement.” Launch on warning and first use need to end or we risk “blundering into a nuclear war given we can launch [nuclear weapons] so easily,” Glaser said

Any hope for moving the hands further away from Armageddon, the Bulletin experts said, meant the US, with its sweeping global influence, must take the lead on climate mitigation and nuclear disarmament, while assuming its rightful and considerable share of the responsibility for the dangers we continue to face.

The Doomsday Clock presentation concluded with an interview with Bill Nye, a celebrity scientist also known as “the Science Guy.” We were almost spared his appearance when technical difficulties threatened to pre-empt him but alas, we were forced to listen to his jovial ramblings about football while he challenged the audience, rather bafflingly,  to hate him, his age and his background. “Knock yourselves out” he told us. Nye then proceeded to proclaim that we should keep existing nuclear power plants operating while suggesting that the advent of new ones was “nominally a good idea”, hindered mainly by politics and NIMBYism rather than technical challenges.

Finally, Nye put in a last ditch plug for fusion, a fantasy that even his interviewer, physicist Dan Holz, had to correct before quickly terminating the conversation.

Nye’s performance — for that is certainly what it felt like — never mind his misguided opinions, rather detracted from the gravity of the occasion and seemed inappropriate at best.

Linda Pentz Gunter is the international specialist at Beyond Nuclear and writes for and curates Beyond Nuclear International. A shorter version of this article was first published in the Morning Star.

Headline photo shows, left to right, Asha M. George, Herb Lin, Bill Nye, Rachel Bronson, Alex Glaser and Dan Holz during the 2024 unveiling of the Doomsday Clock. (Photo: The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists press release.)