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“Doomsday Clock” Kept at 90 Seconds to Midnight for 2024

The Sentinel By Karl Grossman., Jan 25, 2024 

The “Doomsday Clock” of The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists was kept at 90 seconds to midnight this week—the closest to midnight that the clock has been set since it was created in 1947. Midnight is defined by The Bulletin as “nuclear annihilation.”

The hands of the clock were initially moved forward to 90 seconds to midnight last year. In moving the clock forward in 2023, The Bulletin, founded by Albert Einstein and scientists who helped develop the first atomic weapons in the Manhattan Project, issued a statement declaring it was: “A time of unprecedented danger.”

“Largely” but “not exclusively,” said The Bulletin in 2023, the clock was moved “to 90 seconds to midnight—the closest to global catastrophe it has ever been”—because of the war in Ukraine. It went on: “Russia’s thinly veiled threats to use nuclear weapons remind the world that escalation of the conflict—by accident, intention, or miscalculation—is a terrible risk,” said the statement. “The possibility that the conflict could spin out of anyone’s control remains high.”

On this Tuesday, January 23, The Bulletin, in keeping the clock at 90 seconds to midnight issued a statement that said: “Ominous trends continue to point the world toward global catastrophe.”

Said Dr. Rachel Bronson, president and CEO of The Bulletin, “Make no mistake: resetting the clock at 90 seconds to midnight is not an indication that the world is stable. Quite the opposite. It’s urgent for governments and communities around the world to act.”

The hands of the Doomsday Clock are set every year by The Bulletin’s Science and Security Board which includes 10 Nobel laureates.

Last year, The Bulletin’s statement quoted Antonio Guterres, secretary-general of the United Nations, as saying it had become “a time of nuclear danger not seen since the height of the Cold War.”

Since, there have been additions to that nuclear danger.

Take North Korea……………………………………………………………………………..

Consider Iran…………………………………………………………………….

Consider China and Taiwan. ………………………………………………….

As to Russia and Ukraine,……………………………………………..

Meanwhile, the organization Beyond Nuclear (I’m on its board) ran an article on its Beyond Nuclear International website this month headlined: “’Steadfast Noon’ spells doom.” Its subhead: “US prepared for nuclear war at foreign bases.” The article was written by John LaForge, co-director of the organization Nukewatch.

It told of how in October 2023, “the alliance” supporting Ukraine in its war with Russia “began its annual nuclear attack rehearsal dubbed ‘Steadfast Noon.’ This practice involves air forces from 13 countries, the ‘exercising’ of fighter jets and U.S. B-52s [which] roared over Italy, Croatia and the eastern Mediterranean.” It quoted NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg saying: “Our exercise will help to ensure the credibility, effectiveness and security of our nuclear deterrent.”

Meanwhile, the U.S. is in the midst of a nuclear weapons “modernization” program. Notes the Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation: “The United States plans to spend up to $1.5 trillion over 30 years to its nuclear arsenal by rebuilding each leg of the nuclear triad and its accompanying infrastructure. 

The good news: the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons has been enacted, taken force and is moving forward. This month an additional two nations ratified it. The treaty, providing a legally binding agreement to prohibit nuclear weapons, leading to their total elimination, was adopted by the UN General Assembly—with 122 nations in favor—in 2017. The treaty bans the development, testing, production, stockpiling, stationing, transfer, use and threat of use of nuclear weapons.

“Let’s eliminate these weapons before they eliminate us,” Secretary-General Guterres has said of the treaty, an initiative “toward our shared goal of a world free of nuclear weapons.”

Leading in the drive for the treaty has been the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN). As it declares on its website: “Nuclear weapons are the most inhumane and indiscriminate weapons ever created. They violate international law, cause severe environmental damage, undermine national and global security, and divert vast public resources away from meeting human needs. They must be eliminated urgently.”

A big problem: the so-called “nuclear weapons states” including the U.S., Russia, China, France and Great Britain have not signed on to the treaty.

This is where pressure must be focused—through grassroots actions and through politics, and by media—directed at the “nuclear weapons states.”

People should join in with ICAN, become members. Its website is: https://www.icanw.org/………………… ” — https://www.thesentinel.com/communities/doomsday-clock-kept-at-90-seconds-to-midnight-for-2024/article_baacc924-bbef-11ee-a494-23c8a77b6613.html

January 28, 2024 Posted by Christina Macpherson | weapons and war | Leave a comment

The Doomsday Clock is still at 90 seconds to midnight. But what does that mean?2 B1

THE CONVERSATION,  Rumtin Sepasspour, January 25, 2024

Once every year, a select group of nuclear, climate and technology experts assemble to determine where to place the hands of the Doomsday Clock.

Presented by the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, the Doomsday Clock is a visual metaphor for humanity’s proximity to catastrophe. It measures our collective peril in minutes and seconds to midnight, and we don’t want to strike 12.

In 2023, the expert group brought the clock the closest it has ever been to midnight: 90 seconds. On January 23 2024, the Doomsday Clock was unveiled again, revealing that the hands remain in the same precarious position.

No change might bring a sigh of relief. But it also points to the continued risk of catastrophe. The question is, how close are we to catastrophe? And if so, why?

Destroyer of worlds

The invention of the atomic bomb in 1945 ushered in a new era: the first time humanity had the capability to kill itself.

Later that year, Albert Einstein, along with J. Robert Oppenheimer and other Manhattan Project scientists, established the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, in the hope of communicating to the public about the new nuclear age and the threat it posed.

Two years on, the Bulletin, as it came to be known, published its first magazine. And on the cover: a clock, with the minute hand suspended eerily only seven minutes from midnight.

The artist Martyl Langsdorf sought to communicate the sense of urgency she had felt from scientists who had worked on the bomb, including her physicist husband, Alexander. The placement was, to her, an aesthetic choice: “It seemed the right time on the page … it suited my eye.”

Thereafter, Bulletin editor Eugene Rabinowitch was the gears behind the clock’s hands until his passing in 1973, when the board of experts took over.

The clock ha

The clock has been moved 25 times since, particularly in response to the ebb and flow of military buildups, technological advancement and geopolitical dynamics during the Cold War.

Nuclear risk did not abate after the collapse of the Soviet Union, even as the total number of nuclear weapons shrank. And new threats have emerged that pose catastrophic risk to humanity. The latest setting of the clock attempts to gauge this level of risk.

A precarious world

In the words of Bulletin president and chief executive Rachel Bronson:

Make no mistake: resetting the Clock at 90 seconds to midnight is not an indication that the world is stable. Quite the opposite……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………… more https://theconversation.com/the-doomsday-clock-is-still-at-90-seconds-to-midnight-but-what-does-that-mean-221871?utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=The%20Weekend%20Conversation%20-%202858829013&utm_content=The%20Weekend%20Conversation%20-%202858829013+CID_8a44781376868ca758fe734ea2dc1adc&utm_source=campaign_monitor&utm_term=The%20Doomsday%20Clock%20is%20still%20at%2090%20seconds%20to%20midnight%20But%20what%20does%20that%20mean

January 28, 2024 Posted by Christina Macpherson | weapons and war | Leave a comment