The Doomsday Clock depicts how close humanity is to the end of the world – but where did it come from, how do you read it, and what can we learn from it? SJ Beard, an existential risk researcher, explains.
The Doomsday Clock was first introduced to me at school in the mid-1990s by a teacher. She explained to my class that if everything that had happened on our planet had been compressed into a single year, life would have appeared in early March, multicellular organisms in November, dinosaurs in late December – and humans wouldn’t have appeared until 23:30 on New Year’s Eve. Then she contrasted this vast span of history with how brief our futures may be, telling us how a group of scientists in the United States believed we only had a few metaphorical minutes until midnight. It never occurred to me that one day I might be working on the same problem as a researcher at the University of Cambridge’s Centre for the Study of Existential Risk.
It’s a powerful story, and for many years I assumed the Doomsday Clock’s hands represented the amount of time left before the end. However, this is not entirely correct.
For the 75th time, the scientists behind the Doomsday Clock at the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists will publish their annual assessment of how close its hands are to midnight today. Every year, the announcement emphasises the complex web of catastrophic risks that humanity is facing, such as weapons of mass destruction, environmental breakdown, and disruptive technologies. In 2020, the Bulletin’s president, Rachel Bronson, solemnly declared that its hands had moved 100 seconds closer to Armageddon than ever before. To understand what that really means, you must first understand the Clock’s origins, how to read it, and what it tells us about humanity’s existential predicament.
Setting the Clock in motion
Even those closely involved in its development were astounded by the speed and violence with which nuclear technology evolved. In 1939, world-renowned scientists Albert Einstein and Leo Szilard wrote to the US president about a breakthrough in nuclear technology that was so powerful, and could have such tremendous battlefield consequences, that a single nuclear bomb, “carried by boat and exploded in a port, might very well destroy the whole port”. It was an opportunity too big to pass up. This letter resulted in the establishment of the Manhattan Project, a massive scientific, military, and industrial collaboration that produced a bomb much more powerful than the one imagined by Einstein and Szilard, capable of destroying an entire city and its population, just six years later. Nuclear arsenals were only a few years later capable of destroying civilisation as we know it.
The scientists involved in the first nuclear tests raised the first scientific concern that nuclear weapons had the potential to wipe out humanity. They were worried that their new weapons would ignite the Earth’s atmosphere. These concerns were quickly dismissed and, thankfully, proved to be unfounded.
Despite this, many members of the Manhattan Project remained sceptical of the power of the weapons they helped create. Following the first successful controlled nuclear chain reaction at the University of Chicago in 1942, the Manhattan Project team dispersed, with many scientists moving to Los Alamos and other government laboratories to develop nuclear weapons. Others remained in Chicago to conduct their own research. Many of them were immigrants to the United States who were acutely aware of the interplay of science and politics. They began actively organising in order to safeguard the future of nuclear technology. For example, in June 1945, they aided in the advancement of the Franck Report, which predicted a dangerous and costly nuclear arms race and argued against a surprise nuclear attack on Japan. Of course, decision-makers did not accept its recommendations at the time.
This group went on to found the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists of Chicago (the Bulletin), the first issue of which was published four months after the atomic bombs were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. They helped launch and support a global citizen-scientist movement capable of influencing global nuclear order, with the support of the University of Chicago president and collaboration with colleagues in international law, political science, and other related fields. It was remarkably successful, for example, in establishing a “nuclear taboo” – in private conversations, US Secretary of State John Kerry complained that the “stigma of immorality” prevented the US from using nuclear weapons.
By deciding to remain in Chicago, Instead of focusing on the political and military leaders who had been dismissive of their concerns thus far, the founders signalled their intention to engage with their fellow scientists and members of the public about the political and ethical challenges of nuclear technology. They contended that public pressure was essential for political responsibility, and that education was the best way to achieve it.
Two years after its inception, the Bulletin decided to transition from a printed newsletter to a magazine format in order to reach a larger audience. They commissioned landscape artist Martyl Langsdorf to create a symbol for their new cover, for which she created the first Doomsday Clock. Langsdorf, who was married to a Manhattan Project scientist, understood the urgency and desperation her husband and colleagues felt in managing nuclear technology. She designed the Clock to draw attention to the urgency of the threat they faced, as well as her belief that responsible citizens could prevent disaster by mobilising and engaging – the message of the Clock was that its hands could tick forward or backward.