The Doomsday Clock has warned humanity could be on the brink of collapse as we head into 2024, with its hands ticking ever closer to "midnight."
The device symbolically measures how close we are to the point when Earth becomes uninhabitable. It is updated annually by the non-profit organisation the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists in Chicago, US, reports The Mirror.
Rachel Bronson, the CEO of the Bulletin, said: "When the clock is at midnight, that means there's been some sort of nuclear exchange or catastrophic climate change that's wiped out humanity. We never really want to get there and we won't know it when we do."
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The clock was created in 1947 by boffins who helped on the infamous Manhattan Project after the US' first nuclear bombs were built.
The last time it was updated on 24 January, 2023, its hands were edged to just 90 seconds from midnight – closer than they've ever been. This is thanks to a number of concerning international events such as Russia's invasion of Ukraine and the threats of climate change and weapons of mass destruction.
The Bulletin also cited biological threats as a contributing factor for the harrowing adjustment to the clock. "Devastating events like the Covid-19 pandemic can no longer be considered rare, once-a-century occurrences," the Bulletin said on its website. "Disruptive technologies" spreading disinformation and "cyber conflict" were also blamed.
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It could bad news for the new year, with just 25 days to go before we celebrate the start of 2024. With humanity already on the brink of catastrophe, it might not take much to push us to the point of no return. The Science and Security Board of the Bulletin has already stressed we're in a time of "a time of unprecedented danger" with conflicts in Russia and Ukraine and Palestine and Israel both stirring up international turmoil.
When the clock was created in 1947 its hands were set at seven minutes to midnight. But as tensions between east and west escalated during the Cold War and the US and USSR began testing nuclear missiles, the blades edged to just two minutes from doomsday.
As the two global superpowers' rivalry evolved throughout the latter half of the 20th century the hands went back and forth, resting at various points closer or further from Armageddon over the years. The furthest the clock has been from End Times was in 1991, when the Cold War officially came to an end with the signing of the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty.
At the time its hands were at 17 minutes to midnight. The Bulletin stated: "The illusion that tens of thousands of nuclear weapons are a guarantor of national security has been stripped away."
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