Doomsday Clock moves 30 seconds closer to midnight, naming Trump high among world threats

Referencing the uncertainty ushered in with the election of President Donald Trump, the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists on Thursday moved its Doomsday Clock 30 seconds closer to midnight, a sign the world faces more danger than it did previously.

The Bulletin, an international nonprofit based in Chicago, has reset the clock 22 times since 1947, the dawn of the nuclear age and the Cold War. And before this week’s change has moved the time only in one-minute increments.

The group’s statement says despite Trump being in office only days, the “global security landscape darkened” in 2016. Moving the hands of the clock is decided by a board that includes 16 Nobel Prize-winning physicists. The clock had been at three minutes to midnight since 2015.

Doomsday Clock changes

2017

Two-and-a-half minutes to midnight

Newly elected President Donald Trump takes on a big part of the reasoning behind the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists moving its Doomsday Clock 30 seconds closer to midnight. “The president’s intemperate statements, lack of openness to expert advice and questionable Cabinet nominations have already made a bad international security situation worse,” the Bulletin posted in its statement Thursday. Citing Trump along with continued inaction and brinksmanship on climate change and nuclear war, it decided on moving the clock a half-minute, an increment it had never before used.

2015

Three minutes to midnight

Developments to combat climate change are too modest, and the U.S. and Russia are modernizing nuclear weapons, which undermines weapons treaties.

2012

Five minutes to midnight

Challenges facing the world in regard to nuclear weapons and climate change seem perilous. The potential for nuclear weapon use in the Middle East, Northeast and South Asia is alarming, and there is a need to design and build safer nuclear reactors. Technological solutions to address climate change are inadequate to meet large-scale disruption of climate presage.

2010

Six minutes to midnight

The U.S. and Russia talk about updating the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty and additional negotiations for reducing nuclear power are planned. There is little progress on the ever-expanding climate change front: at Copenhagen, the developing and industrialized countries agree to take responsibility for carbon emissions and limit global temperature.

2007

Five minutes to midnight

The world is on the brink of a second nuclear age. The U.S. and Russia remain at the ready. North Korea conducts a nuclear test, and many worry that Iran plans to obtain a bomb. Climate change is also a daunting challenge worldwide.

2002

Seven minutes to midnight

There is an enormous amount of unsecured, and often unaccounted for, weapons-grade nuclear materials worldwide, underscored by concerns of a nuclear terrorist attack. The U.S. wants to design new nuclear weapons, rejects several arms control treaties, and announces it will withdraw from the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty.

1998

Nine minutes to midnight

India and Pakistan test nuclear weapons three weeks apart. Russia and the U.S. still have 7,000 warheads ready to fire at each other within 15 minutes.

1995

14 minutes to midnight

In the U.S., hard-liners do not soften rhetoric or actions and claim that Russia could be as much of a threat as the Soviet Union. More than 40,000 nuclear weapons remain worldwide, and the skepticism slows the rollback in the global nuclear forces.

1991

17 minutes to midnight

After the Cold War officially ends, the U.S. and Russia significantly slash their nuclear arsenals. The Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty cuts the number of nuclear weapons deployed. Also, a series of initiatives removes most of the intercontinental ballistic missiles and bombers from high alert.

1990

10 minutes to midnight

Gorbachev refuses to intervene as Eastern European countries (Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary and Romania) free themselves from Soviet control. This ends an ideological battle for Europe and diminishes the risk for a world nuclear war. The Berlin Wall falls in late 1989, symbolically ending the Cold War.

1988

Six minutes to midnight

The U.S. and Soviet Union sign the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty, the historic first agreement to ban nuclear weapons. President Ronald Reagan and Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev sign the treaty, but it is prompted by public opposition to U.S. nuclear weapons in Western Europe, long caught in the middle of the Cold War.

1984

Three minutes to midnight

Dialogue between the U.S. and Soviet Union essentially ceases as relations sink to the lowest level in decades.

1981

Four minutes to midnight

After the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan (1979), President Jimmy Carter pulls the U.S. from the Olympic Games in Moscow (1980). When Ronald Reagan is elected president, he drops any conversation about arms control. He says that the best way to end the Cold War is for the United States to win the war.

1974

Nine minutes to midnight

Agreements to slow the arms race seem like ideas of the past once India tests its first nuclear device in South Asia and the U.S. and Soviet Union modernize their nuclear weapons instead of slowing production. Both countries can now load intercontinental ballistic missiles with more nuclear warheads after the deployment of multiple independently targetable reentry vehicles.

1972

12 minutes to midnight

The U.S. and Soviet Union sign the Strategic Arms Limitation Treaty and the Anti-Ballistic Missle Treaty. The treaties obligate some nuclear equality. SALT limits the number of ballistic missile launchers the two countries can have, and ABM helps prevent an arms race from developing.

1969

Ten minutes to midnight

Nearly every country comes together to sign the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. The pact involves nuclear weapon states helping non-nuclear weapon signatories to develop nuclear power if they promise to cease producing nuclear weapons (when political conditions allow). Israel, India and Pakistan did not sign the treaty.

1968

Seven minutes to midnight

France and China develop nuclear weapons while India and Pakistan clash and the U.S. is involved in Vietnam.

1963

12 minutes to midnight

The U.S. and Soviet Union sign the Partial Test Ban Treaty to end atmospheric nuclear testing. The agreement represents progress in efforts to slow the arms race, even though it does not ban underground testing.

1960

Seven minutes to midnight

The U.S. and Soviet Union aim to avoid direct confrontation. Scientists help initiate projects to build trust and dialogue between third parties by establishing the International Geophysical Year (1957), which is a series of worldwide scientific events intended to raise public awareness. In addition, scientists create the Pugwash Conferences (1957), where American and Soviet scientists can interact.

1953

Two minutes to midnight

The U.S. pursues the hydrogen bomb, which is more powerful than any atomic bomb. The first test was in October 1952 and the blast wipes out a tiny island in the Pacific Ocean. The Soviets test their own thermonuclear device nine months later.

1949

Three minutes to midnight

During the fall, the Soviet Union explodes a nuclear device in Central Asia. President Harry Truman announces the news to the American public, though the Soviets deny the test.

1947

Seven minutes to midnight

The inception of the Doomsday Clock occurs two years after the U.S. bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki — and appears in the first magazine edition of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists. Artist Martyl Langsdorf conceptualizes and designs the “Doomsday Clock,” which symbolizes the “urgency of nuclear dangers.”

Source: The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists