Scientists Reveal the World Closer to Doomsday
- U-Report
VIVA – The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists said on Tuesday, January 24, 2023, that the world is closer than ever to doomsday than it has ever been since the first nuclear bombs were released at the close of World War II. The time on the Doomsday Clock moved forward from 100 seconds to midnight to 90 seconds to midnight.
It’s a reset of what has come to be known as the Doomsday Clock, a decades-long project of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists featuring a clock face where midnight represents Armageddon.
Between Russia's nuclear brinkmanship in its war on Ukraine, the real threats of climate change becoming increasingly dire, and ongoing concerns about more possible pandemics caused by humans encroaching on formerly wild areas, the Bulletin chose to set the clock the closest to midnight yet.
“The world is facing a gathering storm of extinction-level consequences, exacerbated by the illegal invasion of Ukraine by Russia. This explains the latest advance of the clock,” a former president of Ireland and former United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, Mary Robinson stated.
Ilustrasi Kiamat
- U-Report
"The threats are even more acute, and the failures of leadership even more damning. We live today in a world of interlocking crises, each illustrating the unwillingness of leaders to act in the true long-term interests of their people," she added.
The Bulletin was founded in 1945 by Albert Einstein and the University of Chicago scientists who helped develop the first atomic weapons at the Manhattan Project.
Two years later they launched the clock as a way to warn humanity just how close to nuclear apocalypse the world was.
"It's a way to remind people of issues that are so big they post a threat to civilization as a whole," said Steve Fetter, a professor of public policy at the University of Maryland and member of the Bulletin's Science and Security Board, which sets the clock each year.
The clock has ticked minutes or seconds toward or away from catastrophe over the years. Wars bring it closer, and treaties and cooperation further away.
For the past two years, it has been at 100 seconds to midnight. In recent years, the threat of human-caused disasters such as climate change has also been factored into the clock's setting.
