Doomsday Clock set at 89 seconds to 'nuclear midnight'

The Doomsday Clock, maintained by the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, has moved closer to "nuclear midnight" than ever before. The clock serves as a metaphor for how experts assess the risks of global threats.

In 2025, the Doomsday Clock is set at 89 seconds to "nuclear midnight," marking the closest approach in history. Since 1947, the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists has been evaluating these risks, and since 2015, it has issued updates annually. Analysts base their assessments on factors such as nuclear risks, the pace of climate change, the development of advanced technologies, and biosecurity. This year's update was streamed on the journal's website.

This is closer than ever before. In 2024, the clock's hands did not move.

In the two previous years, 2022 and 2023, the Doomsday Clock was set at 90 seconds to midnight, which was already the closest in its history.

Over its 78-year existence, the clock marked several critical moments:

• in 1949, after the Soviet Union conducted its first nuclear test, the clock was set at three minutes to midnight;
• in 1953, a year after the United States tested the hydrogen bomb, it was moved to two minutes;
• in 1984, during the breakdown of communication between the US and the USSR and the development of the US Star Wars Strategic Defense Initiative, it was set at three minutes.

The farthest the clock has been from midnight was in 1963, a year after the Cuban Missile Crisis, and in 1972, following the signing of the first arms control treaties between the US and the USSR (the Strategic Arms Limitation Treaty (SALT I) and the Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) Treaty), when it was set at 12 minutes to midnight. In 1991, after the signing of the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START I) by the US and USSR, it was set at 17 minutes to midnight. Since 1991, the clock has steadily moved closer to midnight again.

The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists focuses on issues of international security and threats related to weapons of mass destruction (WMD). It was founded in 1945 by Nobel Prize-winning physicist Albert Einstein and a group of University of Chicago scientists involved in the Manhattan Project, which developed nuclear weapons. In 1947, the Bulletin created the Doomsday Clock, where midnight represents apocalypse, and the time leading up to it reflects the level of threat. The time on the clock is set annually by the Bulletin's Science and Security Board in consultation with the Board of Sponsors, which includes ten Nobel laureates.