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Doomsday Clock 2025 ticks forward to 89 seconds to midnight
WASHINGTON ‒ Humanity is at its closest yet to destroying itself, according to Tuesday’s reset of the ominous “Doomsday Clock.” The symbolic clock now reads 89 seconds to midnight, advancing one second since last year’s reset.
It now reads the closest to midnight the world has been since the introduction of the clock in 1947.
The clock is meant as a metaphor for how close humanity is to self-annihilation, according to the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists. The group was founded by University of Chicago scientists who had helped develop the first nuclear weapons for the Manhattan Project.
The world is less safe and less stable than it was a year ago, said Dan Holz, chair of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists’ science and security board.
“Arms control treaties are in tatters, and there are active conflicts involving nuclear powers,” he said, while misinformation, disinformation and conspiracies are a “threat multiplier.”
All hope is not lost but action must be taken soon, the group cautioned.
“There is a big chance that at this time next year we will be moving the hands back, not forward, but this will only happen if leaders engage in good faith dialogue,” said Juan Manuel Santos, former president of Colombia and a member of The Elders, an independent group of global leaders working for peace, justice, human rights and a sustainable planet, founded by Nelson Mandela.
“We can only succeed if we act as one,” he said.
What is the Doomsday Clock?
Originally, the ominous clock measured the danger of nuclear disaster. In the past two decades, three other areas of concern have been added: climate change, artificial Intelligence and mis- and disinformation.
Each year, the members of the Science and Security Board are asked two questions:
- Is humanity safer or at greater risk this year than last year?
- Is humanity safer or at greater risk compared to the 78 years the clock has been set?
Their answers set the clock for the coming year.
The clock is meant as a metaphor for how close humanity is to self-annihilation, according to the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, which has maintained it since 1947.
How did the Doomsday Clock start?
In 1945, on the anniversary of the bombing of Pearl Harbor, scientists who had worked on the Manhattan Project, which built the world’s first atomic bombs, began publishing a mimeographed newsletter called The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists.
Two years later, as those same scientists contemplated a world in which two atomic weapons had been used in Japan, they gathered to discuss the threat to humanity posed by nuclear war.
“They were worried the public wasn’t really aware of how close we were to the end of life as we knew it,” said Rachel Bronson, current president and CEO of the Bulletin.
Martyl Langsdorf, an artist and wife of Manhattan Project physicist Alexander Langsdorf Jr., came up with the idea of a clock showing just how close things were.
They called it the Doomsday Clock.
“It gave the sense that if we did nothing, it would tick on toward midnight and we could experience the apocalypse,” Bronson said.
What does midnight represent on the Doomsday Clock?
The clock only looks at things humanity could do to itself. A meteor hurtling towards earth wouldn’t count, while tinkering with viruses to make them more dangerous would.
From the 1950s through the 1980s the threat of nuclear war felt imminent. Though it feels less real now, the risk hasn’t gone away, said Robert Socolow, a environmental scientist, theoretical physicist, and professor emeritus of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering at Princeton University who is on the board.
“The nuclear threat is one that young people can’t believe their grandparents and parents lived with but now their working assumption is ‘I don’t need to worry about it.’ But they do,” he said.
Today’s dangers are somewhat different, than they were when the threat was mainly from the Soviet Union, because we have non-state actors such as terrorists, and countries like North Korea that are not part of the global order, who might have access to dangerous weapons and pathogens.
Where does the nuclear threat stand?
The original Doomsday Clock was all about the threat of nuclear annihilation. Little more than a week into President Donald Trump’s second term in office, the nuclear outlook is still unclear.
The world’s last remaining nuclear arms control pact – New START, which limits U.S. and Russian nuclear warhead deployments (and not stockpile size) – expires in early 2026.
The U.S. commander-in-chief told World Economic Forum attendees Thursday that he would “like to see denuclearization” and said he previously discussed the idea with the leadership of Russia and China.
Yet the president’s appointees, including new Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, are less bullish about future arms reductions. The Pentagon head, in written responses to lawmakers’ policy questions before his confirmation, said the country should only “pursue arms control when it is in its interest to do so … Both China and Russian have rebuffed US efforts to engage in meaningful risk reduction talks since 2020.”
North Korea’s nuclear arsenal, a topic of significant concern in the U.S. and abroad during Trump’s first administration, poses a security and foreign relations challenge as well.
The Doomsday Clock, a symbolic representation of how close humanity is to global catastrophe, has just been updated for 2025. The experts behind the clock have made the alarming decision to move the time forward to 89 seconds to midnight, the closest it has ever been to doomsday.
This decision comes as a result of ongoing and escalating tensions between nuclear powers, the looming threat of climate change, and the proliferation of disinformation and misinformation. The world is facing a multitude of challenges that, if left unchecked, could spell disaster for all of us.
It is more important now than ever for world leaders to come together and take decisive action to address these looming threats. The fate of humanity hangs in the balance, and it is up to us to ensure that the clock does not continue to tick closer to midnight.
As individuals, we must also do our part by staying informed, advocating for change, and taking steps in our own lives to reduce our impact on the planet. Time is running out, but together we can make a difference and push back the hands of the clock before it’s too late.
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Doomsday Clock 2025, update on Doomsday Clock, global security threats, nuclear war, climate change, existential risks, Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, 89 seconds to midnight, symbolic clock, apocalypse countdown
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