The Doomsday Clock was set at 100 seconds to midnight in January of 2022. If the Clock
reaches midnight, it will be because of a world-wide catastrophe caused by nuclear war. As it
does every year, the resetting of the Clock generates a lot of publicity on the threats posed by
nuclear war.
The Doomsday Clock is the creation of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, which was founded
in 1945 as a publication on the dangers of nuclear war by a number of scientists who had
worked on the Manhattan Project, the wartime endeavor that created the atomic bombs used on
Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
It’s an actual clock in their headquarters in Chicago, but is a graphic used, at first on the
publication and now the online newsletter (see link below). The clock graphic was first used in
the June 1947 issue of the Bulletin. It was designed by Martyl Landgsdorf, who was married to a
physicist who had worked on the Manhattan Project, Alexander Langsdorf.
The Clock has deliberately been set at close to midnight because in the judgment of the
scientists involved, nuclear war was not far off. The furthest the Clock has been turned back
was 17 minutes to midnight in 1991, when the United States and the Soviet Union signed the
Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (known as START).
During the height of the Cuban Missile Crisis, the Clock was set at 7 minutes to midnight. That
was a highly dangerous situation that nearly led to war. The fact that in 2022 the Clock was
reset to 100 seconds to midnight shows that the organization considers that the prospect of
nuclear war remains a very serious danger. When the clock was reset in 2022, the comment
was that governments throughout the world were dysfunction in dealing with the very real threat.
Until 1973, the annual reset—sometimes close to midnight and sometimes further away—was
done by the longtime editor of the publication. Since then, the Science and Security Board has
met at least annually to discuss events and assess whether there was a need to reset the
Clock. The Board is loaded with heavyweights in the world of physics and other sciences,
including a number of Nobel Prize winners.
The monthly Bulletin publishes research related to the topics of war and peace.
