Doomsday Clock Ticks Closer Than Ever to Apocalypse

Wars, climate change, disruptive technologies and the rise of autocracy over the past year prompted scientists to set the clock at 85 seconds to midnight.The Doomsday Clock of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists was displayed during a news conference at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Washington on Friday.Credit...Pablo Martinez Monsivais/Associated PressDoomsday Clock Ticks Closer Than Ever to ApocalypseWars, climate change, disruptive technologies and the rise of autocracy over the past year prompted scientists to set the clock at 85 seconds to midnight.The Doomsday Clock of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists was displayed during a news conference at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Washington on Friday.Credit...Pablo Martinez Monsivais/Associated PressSKIP Jan. 28, 2026The Doomsday Clock, a metaphorical timepiece meant to depict how close humanity is to destruction, ticked closer than ever to midnight on Tuesday: 85 seconds to the stroke of doom.It is the grimmest outlook yet on Earth’s future from the clock’s creators, a nonprofit organization and publication called the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists that has set the clock each year since 1947.Tensions between nuclear powers, failures in climate action, disruptive technologies like artificial intelligence and the rise of autocracy are among the reasons that the Bulletin’s experts in global security, climate and nuclear science cited for advancing it four seconds from last year.“Catastrophic risks are on the rise, cooperation is on the decline, and we are running out of time,” said Alexandra Bell, president and chief executive of the Bulletin. “Change is both necessary and possible, but the global community must demand swift action from their leaders.”Antinuclear activists were paying attention to the Doomsday Clock — especially those working with survivors of the atomic bombings in Japan at the end of World War II.“This is a warning that we need to take urgent action to avoid global catastrophe,” Hideo Asano, coordinator of the Japan Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons in Tokyo, said in an interview. “We should know that the risk of nuclear war is the highest since the end of the Cold War.”The nuclear arms race between the United States and the Soviet Union was the primary concern when the clock was invented. At the time, the people involved with the Bulletin included Albert Einstein and some of the scientists who made the first nuclear weapons, such as J. Robert Oppenheimer.The clock was first set at seven minutes to midnight, and has fluctuated throughout its nearly 80-year history.Critics have dismissed the clock as a stunt based on subjective assessments. Others have said that its repeated warnings of total annihilation could be dismissed by the public — the public policy equivalent of the boy who cried wolf.When the Cold War’s tensions rose, the clock’s hand moved forward. Intermittently, it was wound back — including when the two nuclear-armed superpowers showed signs of cooperation in the 1960s and when they signed a major arms-control treaty in 1991, a few months before the Soviet Union collapsed.That year the clock showed the greatest distance to midnight, 17 minutes. It has ticked steadily closer since, aside from a brief reversal in 2010. More nuclear tests happened, including in Pakistan and North Korea. Countries failed to live up to their climate pledges.Here are some events from 2025 that the scientists said had informed this year’s Doomsday Clock setting:The Russia-Ukraine war entered its fourth year, characterized by Russian tests of nuclear-capable weapons.The conflict between India and Pakistan flared, highlighting the risks of all-out war between the two nuclear-armed countries.The United States and Israel launched attacks on Iranian nuclear sites.North Korea kept building its nuclear arsenal, tested missiles designed to carry nuclear warheads and tightened relations with Russia.China increased its stockpile of nuclear warheads.The last major nuclear arms control agreement between the United States and Russia moved closer to expiry in February this year, which would end 60 years of nuclear constraints between the two powers.The United States announced plans for a new missile defense system based on space-based interceptors, called the “Golden Dome,” raising the possibility of conflict in space.The global average temperature was the third warmest on record.Climate change drove deadly weather events, including a flood in the Democratic Republic of Congo that killed dozens of people and extreme heat that killed tens of thousands in Europe.The Trump administration dismantled climate and pollution regulations and abandoned efforts to tackle global warming.The administration stripped back the United States’ public health infrastructure, reducing its ability to respond to pandemics and other biological threats.Scientists warned that the laboratory synthesis of cells they call “mirror life” could cause a devastating pandemic, crop failures and the collapse of ecosystems.Artificial intelligence grew more sophisticated, raising concerns that it could be used to create new weapons and exacerbate disinformation campaigns.The Bulletin also cited the rise of “nationalistic autocracy” in countries around the world. It said that the leaders of the United States, Russia and China varied in their autocratic leanings but all favored competition over cooperation.“The rise of autocracies is not in itself an existential threat, but an us-versus-them, zero-sum approach increases the risk of global catastrophe,” the group said.Mr. Asano, the antinuclear activist, echoed the sentiment.“We are also concerned by the fact that nationalism and unilateralism are growing,” he said, arguing that countries were underestimating the importance of universal values and mutual benefit. “We believe that unilateralism is not the solution to the existential global risks.”John Yoon is a Times reporter based in Seoul who covers breaking and trending news.SKIP