23 January 2024 , 15:17
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The Doomsday Clock has been updated for 2024 - and it's not good news for the fate of humanity.
Last year's unveiling saw the symbolic clock tick closer to midnight after remaining unchanged for the previous three years. The hands were reset to just 90 seconds to 12 "largely (though not exclusively) because of the mounting dangers of the war in Ukraine".
Before then the world had consistently been 100 seconds away from "midnight” — the hour of apocalypse — since 2020, the first year of the Covid-19 pandemic. Further destabilising events have rocked the world since then, from Russia's invasion of Ukraine to the ongoing war in Gaza.
Now the clock has been updated in a Tuesday morning ceremony at the Keller Centre at the University of Chicago. It now reads 90 SECONDS to midnight.
The Doomsday Clock for 2023 being revealed a year ago (Getty Images)The clock was first unveiled by the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists (BAS) in 1947 as a means to represent the imminent threat of man-made global catastrophe. The nonprofit media organisation, made up of world leaders and Nobel laureates, use the clock as a metaphor and a reminder "of the perils we must address if we are to survive on the planet" as it ticks forwards and backwards according to the global threat level.
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It was set at the two-minute mark in 2018 due to concerns over fake news and information warfare. It was previously set at the two-minute point in 1953 when the U.S. and Soviet Union both tested thermonuclear weapons. The farthest it has ever been from midnight was 17 minutes at the end of the Cold War.
In order for the clock to be turned back, BAS say the Russian and US presidents should identify "more ambitious and comprehensive limits on nuclear weapons." They have also called for greater global action on climate change - and a global effort to help avoid future pandemics through research.