Tomorrow, humanity will find out if we’re closer to total self-destruction when the Doomsday Clock is updated.
The symbolic clock, which edges closer to midnight to reflect human-made global catastrophes, will be revealed during a livestream on Tuesday (January 28).
Since 2023, it has been set at 90 seconds to midnight, but this year scientists say it could move forward to reflect the troubling global outlook.
The Russia-Ukraine war, Israel’s ongoing conflicts in the Middle East, and the threat of nuclear war and climate change all mean the clock could tick forwards for the first time in two years.
The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, which decides where the hands are set, will unveil the updated clock in a livestream at 10am EST (3pm GMT).
It says on its website: ‘For 2025, the Bulletin’s Science and Security Board will consider multiple global threats in the clock setting.
‘[These include] the proliferation of nuclear weapons, disruptive technologies like artificial intelligence, the Russia-Ukraine war, Israel-Hamas war, Israel-Hezbollah conflict, bio-threats and the continued climate crisis.’
MailOnline will also be covering the announcement tomorrow, but until then here’s everything you need to know about the Doomsday Clock.
Since 2023, the Doomsday Clock has been set at 90 seconds to midnight. Although symbolic and not an actual clock, the organization does unveil a physical ‘quarter clock’ model at an event when revealing if and how the hands have moved (pictured)
Is humanity doomed? We will finally find out, as the Doomsday Clock – a symbolic clock, which edges closer to midnight to reflect human-made global catastrophes – is updated for 2024
What is the Doomsday Clock?
The Doomsday Clock is a symbolic timepiece showing how close the world is to a human-made global catastrophe, as deemed by experts.
Every year, the clock is updated based on how close we are to the total annihilation of humanity (‘midnight’).
If the clock goes forward and gets closer to midnight (compared with where it was set the previous year), it suggests humanity has got closer to self destruction.
But if it moves back, further away from midnight, it suggests humanity has reduced the risks of global catastrophe in the past 12 months.
On some years, such as 2024, the hands of the clock haven’t moved at all – which suggests the global situation has not changed.
The clock is set by the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, a nonprofit organization based in Chicago that publishes an academic journal.
Although symbolic and not an actual clock, the organization does unveil a physical ‘quarter clock’ model at an event when revealing if and how the hands have moved.
In 2024, the hands did not move to reflect an unchanging global situation, but some experts say it will move tomorrow (January 28)
Vladimir Putin’s war in Ukraine is why humankind is the ‘closest it has ever been to annihilation’ – 90 seconds to midnight
The the Russia-Ukraine war rages on after nearly three years. Pictured, a ballistic missile is launched during a test from the Plesetsk cosmodrome in Northern Arkhangelsk region, Russia last year
After the unveiling, the model can be found located at the Bulletin offices in the Keller Center, home to the University of Chicago Harris School of Public Policy.
When will the Doomsday Clock be updated?
Every January, the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists reveals its annual update to the Doomsday Clock – even if the hands are not moved.
This year, the organisation will reveal the clock hands at 10am EST (3pm GMT) on Tuesday (January 28) during a livestreamed event.
Speakers at the event will include Nobel Peace Prize laureate Juan Manuel Santos and Daniel Holz, board member and physicist at the University of Chicago.
It will be livestreamed on the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists YouTube channel and website and MailOnline will also be covering the announcement.
Will the Doomsday Clock tick move in 2025?
Alicia Sanders-Zakre, policy and research coordinator at the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons, thinks the clock will be put forward tomorrow.
Experts at the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists remove a cloth covering the Doomsday Clock in Washington on January 24, 2023
Residents and bomb squad members stand in front of a house destroyed by yesterday’s Russian missile strike, amid Russia’s attack on Ukraine, in Chernihiv, Ukraine January 4, 2025
She points to the growing threat of nuclear war, as well as the intertwined growing threats of climate change and AI.
‘Threat of nuclear war has grown due to the wars in Middle East and Ukraine where nuclear-armed states have made implicit and explicit threats to use nuclear weapons,’ Sanders-Zakre told MailOnline.
Daniel Post, professor of strategy and policy at the US Naval War College, said the clock should move slightly closer to midnight, adding: ‘There is absolutely no reason to move it any further away from midnight’.
‘I’d be shocked if that is the direction they went,’ he told MailOnline.
‘Most of the issues and risks driving the decision to place the clock where it is are still existent or getting worse.’
Professor Post said the risk of nuclear war, though still very low, has ‘probably shifted very, very slightly higher’ in the past 12 months.
‘The primary driving factor is the desperate and horrific situation in Ukraine and anticipated changes to US policy with the incoming [Trump] administration,’ he said.
Meanwhile, SJ Beard, researcher at the Centre for the Study of Existential Risk at the University of Cambridge, thinks the clock will stay the same in 2025.
If the clock ever reached midnight, it would suggest humans have finally reached a catastrophic level of existential threat, involving widespread destruction and death
‘I’m not convinced that there has been anything outside of the bounds of what we would have expected last year,’ Beard told MailOnline.
‘I think we remain at 90 seconds to midnight but with increasingly dark clouds on the horizon.’
Meanwhile, Dimitris Drikakis, professor of engineering and applied physics at University of Nicosia, Cyprus, claims the clock should move backwards.
‘I believe there will be substantial efforts to mitigate threats due to diplomatic agreements and technological breakthroughs that are occurring,’ he told MailOnline.
When was the Doomsday Clock created?
The Doomsday Clock goes back to June 1947, when US artist Martyl Langsdorf was hired to design a new cover for the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists journal.
With a striking image on the cover, the organisation hoped to ‘frighten men into rationality’, according to Eugene Rabinowitch, the first editor of the journal.
It came amid a backdrop of public fear surrounding atomic warfare and weaponry, just two years after the Second World War ended.
The Doomsday Clock goes back to June 1947, when US artist Martyl Langsdorf was hired to design a new cover for the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists journal
Dr Leonard Rieser, Chairman of the Board of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, moves the hand of the Doomsday Clock back to 17 minutes before midnight at offices near the University of Chicago on November 26, 1991
Langsdorf initially considered drawing the symbol for uranium before sketching a clock to convey a sense of urgency.
She set it at seven minutes to midnight because ‘it looked good to my eye’, Langsdorf later said.
On the cover of later issues in subsequent years, the hands of the clock were adjusted based on how close we are to catastrophe.
After the Soviet Union successfully tested its first atomic bomb in 1949, Rabinowitch reset the clock from seven minutes to midnight to three minutes to midnight.
Since then, it has continued to move forwards and backwards.
In 2009, the Bulletin ceased its print edition, but the clock is still updated once a year on its website and is now a much-anticipated highlight of the scientific calendar.
Who decides what time to set the Doomsday Clock at?
Shortly after it was first created, Bulletin Editor Eugene Rabinowitch decided whether or not the hands should be moved.
Harrowing fires in California this month were related to climate change, according to scientists. Pictured, a home is engulfed in flames, Los Angeles, January 8, 2025
An Israeli attack on al-Hudari family house reduces the building into rubble in Gaza City, Gaza on January 05, 2025
Rabinowitch was a scientist, fluent in Russian, and a leader in the conversations about nuclear disarmament, meaning he was in frequent discussions with scientists and experts all over the world.
After considering the discussions, he would decide whether the clock should be moved forward or backward, at least in the first few decades of the clock’s existence.
When he died in 1973, the Bulletin’s Science and Security Board took over, made up of experts on nuclear technology and climate science, and has included 13 Nobel Laureates over the years.
The panel meets twice a year to discuss ongoing world events, such as the war in Ukraine, and whether a clock change is necessary.
When were the hands set closest to midnight?
In 2023, the hands were set at the closest they’ve ever been to midnight – 90 seconds – as humanity entered a ‘time of unprecedented danger’.
The change was largely due to the war in Ukraine and Russia’s threat of using nuclear weapons against Ukraine’s allies.
Prior to 2023, the hands were set the closest they’d ever been to midnight in 2020 (100 seconds to midnight). It was because governments around the world were faced with ‘two simultaneous existential dangers’ – nuclear war and climate change.
In 2023, the Science and Security Board set the time to 90 seconds to midnight, largely (though not exclusively) because of the dangers of the war in Ukraine. Before 2023, the closest the hand was set to midnight was 100 seconds to midnight in 2020
When were the hands furthest away from midnight?
In 1991, following the end of the Cold War, the Bulletin set the clock hands to 17 minutes to midnight.
The end of the war saw the US and the Soviet Union sign the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty.
This meant the countries would cut down their nuclear weapons arsenal, reducing the threat of nuclear war.
Unfortunately, the hands have not been as far away from midnight since then – and they do not look like moving back to this position any time soon.
