Every January in recent decades, the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists has set the hands of the Doomsday Clock—a graphic illustration of how close the planet is to the civilization-ending disaster symbolized by midnight.
When the hands of the Clock first moved toward midnight it was 1949, and the reason centered entirely on nuclear war. The Soviet Union had just tested its first atomic bomb, years ahead of when many US government observers had predicted. Nowadays, the Bulletin’s Science and Security Board considers not just nuclear weapons but a range of other existential risks—climate change most prominently, but also threats arising from a host of emerging disruptive technologies—when it decides how close the world is to catastrophe.
This article was written by Dan Drolette Jr. and originally published by The Bulletin Of The Atomic Scientists.
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