![]() “But they also realized there would be others.” Powerful wake-up call The early atomic scientists “knew that nuclear weapons were the first human creation that could literally end civilization,” Mecklin says. Now, the Bulletin’s Science and Security Board considers more than just the nuclear threat when deciding where to set the clock’s hands each year. When the clock was first depicted on the June 1947 issue-set at seven minutes to midnight-the editors were concerned solely with the likelihood that atomic bombs would soon rain down on the world’s capitals. That’s a pretty grim way to celebrate your 75th birthday, but as Bulletin editor John Mecklin observes, the ingredients for a possible doomsday scenario are more numerous than ever. The clock is reset every January, and not even at the height of the Cold War, when Americans were digging fallout shelters and kids were being told to “duck and cover” under their school desks in case of atomic attack, were the clock’s hands this far into the final countdown. The iconic clock has been the symbol of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientistsever since, and on its 75th anniversary the group’s experts say we’re closer than ever to that dreadful wakeup call. In 1947, a group of scientists who had worked on the first nuclear weapons dreamed up the Doomsday Clock as a metaphor warning just how close humanity was to destroying itself. put it another way: “It's the End of the World as We Know It.” That’s the interval on the symbolic Doomsday Clock between the present moment and “planetary catastrophe.” The alternative rock band R.E.M. ![]() Regardless of what your watch tells you, it’s 100 seconds to midnight.
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