Doomsday Clock still says we’re ‘5 minutes’ away from apocalypse

Metaphorical Doomsday Clock says we're still perilously close to the possibility of technological catastrophe

In near mongering news, Livescience reports that the Doomsday Clock, a visual metaphor for the danger of a “civilization-threatening technological catastrophe,” remains set at 11:55 p.m., just as it was last year, according to the Science and Security Board of the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists.

The Clock, neither an actual clock nor any kind of harmful “doomsday device,” is a visual representation of the advancement of technology and its possibility for cataclysmic destruction. The closer the clock gets to midnight, the (theoretically) closer the world gets to disaster.

First illustrated in 1947 by Martyl Langsdorf (a wife of one of the Bulletin’s researchers), the Clock was initially set at 11:53 p.m. It’s been set as far back as 11:43 p.m. in 1991 in anticipation of the end of the Cold War, and as far forward as 11:58 p.m. on the heels of the first hydrogen bomb tests.

The Clock responds to more than just military activity. The Fukushima meltdown in 2011, the creation of an airborne H5N1 flu strain in 2012, and president Obama’s decision to cancel a summit with Vladimir Putin after granting Edward Snowden asylum all weighed on the Bulletin’s decision for where to set the Clock.

“As always, new technologies hold the promise of doing great good, supplying new sources of clean energy, curing disease, and otherwise enhancing our lives. From experience, however, we also know that new technologies can be used to diminish humanity and destroy societies,” the board wrote. “We can manage our technology, or become victims of it. The choice is ours, and the Clock is ticking.”

For a neat visual representation of how the Doomsday Clock has changed over the years, Livescience has an infographic here.