The Doomsday Clock, the metaphorical symbol that conveys how close we are to destroying our own civilization, has been moved two minutes closer to midnight.

The clock was pushed ahead for a variety of reasons, but the board of scientists responsible for the clock specifically site unchecked global climate change and the threat of nuclear weapons as the reasons for the change.

“It is now three minutes to midnight,” said Kennette Benedict, the executive director and publisher of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, at a news conference Wednesday. “The probability of global catastrophe is very high. This is about the end of civilization as we know it.”

Every year, the board behind the Bulletin analyzes international threats and decides where the minute hand of the clock should fall. The closer the clock is to midnight, the closer the world is to dooming itself.

“Today, unchecked climate change and a nuclear arms race resulting from modernization of huge arsenals pose extraordinary and undeniable threats to the continued existence of humanity,” Benedict told reporters, according to CBS News. “And world leaders have failed to act with the speed or on the scale required to protect citizens from potential catastrophe. These failures of leadership endanger every person on Earth.”

Three minutes to midnight is the closest the clock has been to midnight since 1984, during the Cold War. The closest it has been to midnight was in 1953 during the first testing of the hydrogen bomb, according to USA Today.

The clock was most recently moved forward to 11:55 pm in 2012. This was also due to the state of nuclear armament around the globe. This also took into account the Fukushima nuclear meltdown and concerns about the H5N1 virus.

The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists was founded in 1945 by scientists at the University of Chicago that had worked on the first nuclear weapons. The clock was created in 1947 to better convey the gravity of the nuclear threat to the general public.