How much closer will the Doomsday Clock tick toward midnight? That's a question the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists will address on January 23.
The Doomsday Clock was created in 1947 to warn the public about "how close we are to destroying our world with dangerous technologies of our own making," according to TheBulletin.org.
"It is a metaphor, a reminder of the perils we must address if we are to survive on the planet," the website continued.
The hands of the Doomsday Clock did not move in 2019; however, the hand was moved two minutes to midnight in 2018, "the closest it has been to apocalypse since 1953 in the early years of the Cold War," according to the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists.
It is unclear if the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists’ Science and Security Board will move the hand of the Doomsday Clock closer to midnight tomorrow.
Although the clock remained frozen two minutes to midnight in 2019, Rachel Bronson, the President and CEO of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists wrote the following regarding the clock's position:
"As the Bulletin’s Science and Security Board prepared for its first set of Doomsday Clock discussions this fall, it began referring to the current world security situation as a 'new abnormal,'" Rachel Bronson wrote. "This new abnormal is a pernicious and dangerous departure from the time when the United States sought a leadership role in designing and supporting global agreements that advanced a safer and healthier planet."
"The new abnormal describes a moment in which fact is becoming indistinguishable from fiction, undermining our very abilities to develop and apply solutions to the big problems of our time. The new abnormal risks emboldening autocrats and lulling citizens around the world into a dangerous sense of anomie and political paralysis."
You can read Bronson's full letter here.
To watch the Doomsday Clock announcement, click here.
