Doomsday Clock remains at 100 seconds to midnight

Jan. 21—This year's Doomsday Clock will remain frozen at 100 seconds to midnight — the closest it has been in its 75-year history to the metaphorical hour of the world's destruction.

The clock was set at the same perilous point as last year, not to suggest the various threats have stabilized, but to convey humanity is as close as ever to global catastrophe.

It's even closer than when the U.S. and Soviet Union aimed nuclear weapons at each other in all the years during the Cold War, because other dangers have since emerged.

In setting the time, the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists, which created the clock in 1947, considers nuclear threats, climate change, disruptive technologies that might be used in cyberattacks, the spread of disinformation and the coronavirus pandemic.

They decided the world is falling short on all these fronts.

In an email, a nuclear watchdog group argued the clock being set so near midnight reflects the international community's failure to quell the threat of nuclear war.

"The U.S. government and international community are more than capable of making real strides to reduce these dangers — if they are willing to divorce themselves from militarism, re-engage in hard-nosed diplomacy and exercise some common sense," wrote former U.S. Rep. John Tierney, who's now executive director of the Council for a Livable World.

The nuclear war-fighting strategies of the Cold War should be put back in "the dustbins of history," Tierney wrote.

Scientists say the clock's purpose isn't to precisely measure the global threats but to start conversations on their gravity and what might be done to reduce the dangers.

Call it constructive doomsaying.

Los Alamos National Laboratory is tied to the clock, both historically and in its planned role of making 30 plutonium pits a year to trigger nuclear warheads.

Some officials insist the new bomb cores are needed to modernize an aging nuclear stockpile, while critics decry the effort as contributing to an arms race with political adversaries such as China, Russia and Iran.

Tierney contends Russia and China are as much to blame as the U.S. for the rise in tensions.

The Bulletin was created by physicists involved in the Manhattan Project based at Los Alamos, where a team worked to develop the atomic bombs that were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan, during World War II.

The physicists, concerned about the bombs' destructive force, created the clock.

The hand moves toward or away from midnight according to the perils. It was placed at 11:58 in the early 1950s, when the U.S. and the Soviets developed hydrogen bombs.

And it was as far away from midnight as 17 minutes when the Cold War ended in 1991 and the two superpowers signed an arms treaty and began cutting their nuclear arsenals.

The clock's sole purpose for 60 years was to measure nuclear dangers, but in 2007, climate change was added as a threat. Six years later, disruptive technologies were tacked on, and this year the coronavirus was added.

Disinformation also is listed, with the scientists noting it's a growing problem that thwarts efforts to combat climate change and conquer the pandemic.

In New Mexico, acting state Health Secretary David Scrase bemoaned how rampant misinformation about vaccines has proved deadly.

"I just want to make the point that as a physician, misinformation is becoming a major risk factor for death from coronavirus," Scrase said in an August webinar.

In a statement, Rachel Bronson, the Bulletin's CEO, said the clock "hovering dangerously" is a reminder about the work that must be done to ensure a safer, healthier planet.

"We must continue to push the hands of the clock away from midnight," Bronson said.