The Doomsday Clock
The Doomsday Clock is exactly what it sounds like, it’s a clock that counts down to doomsday: but how can it possibly know? Well, let’s look at its story.
The Doomsday clock was made by the same clever people at the atomic institute that came up with the UTC standard time zones idea. Way back in 1945, right after the Second World War ended with the first and second time ever that nukes were dropped in anger on another country, a bunch of academics got together and devised a way to measure how much time we (theoretically) have left.
The latest update to the Doomsday clock, unveiled back in March.
The picture they painted was grim, by their estimates it was 30 minutes to Midnight, Midnight representing ‘doomsday’ on the doomsday clock. In case you’re curious, as of writing this, we are 100 seconds from midnight on the Doomsday clock after the Russian invasion of Ukraine and the threats of nuclear attack.
But how can it be? More than 100 seconds have passed since the invasion of Ukraine and the world hasn’t ended yet! That’s simple to answer, the doomsday clock doesn’t work like any other clock, it’s not counting down actual time to doomsday; it’s just a way of showing relatively how close we are as a species to ending it all.
You can find online sites that track and report changes to the doomsday clock, but my advice? Don’t worry too much about it, counting the seconds to doomsday can get very stressful, but it can be fascinating to see where we are at after big events happen in the world.