A “Doomsday Clock” which measures how close humanity is to its end has warned that the world is “sleepwalking into nuclear war” amid Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. The symbolic clock estimates how close humanity is to destroying itself with problems like nuclear war and climate change.
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The clock which was established in 1945 by the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, a non-profit organisation, is “a metaphor, a reminder of the perils we must address if we are to survive on the planet”, according to the organisation.
François Diaz-Maurin, the bulletin’s associate editor for nuclear affairs told Newsweek, “Clearly, with the war in Ukraine, we were—and still are—concerned that the world could be sleepwalking into nuclear war.”
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The clock was first set up in 1947 and has since been reset 24 times since then. The clock was set at seven minutes to midnight in 1947, two years before the nuclear arms race between the United States and the Soviet Union began. The clock has moved 24 times in the last 75 years and was the farthest from midnight in January 1991, following the end of Cold War. It was then at 7 minutes to midnight.
At 100 seconds to midnight, the clock is closest to a prospective global catastrophe at this moment and was brought to this point in January 2020 as climate change, threat of a renewed nuclear race, information warfare, militarisation of space and the development of hypersonic weapons continue to cause worldwide concern.
