Alarm: how long until the end of the world according to the clock of the Apocalypse

According to the call “Clock of the end of the world “ O “Apocalypse Clock “, humanity has only 100 seconds before reaching midnight of time. It is, symbolically, the moment when the world will end.

This watch, whose original name is End of the world clock, This is not, as one might assume, another diffuse end-time prophecy. It is a tool created in the year 1947 for him Atomic Scientists Bulletin to alert and disseminate in the society the threats which threaten the planet and which could lead to the end point for humanity.

At the time of the creation of this alarming tool, the greatest risk to humans was the possibility of extermination due to a nuclear war. It was necessary to take into account the context of the time, with the growing dispute that existed between the two powers at the time, United States and Soviet Union, and the commitment of the two in develop an arms race It could end in the worst way

Later, and more precisely from 2007, the End of the world clock began to consider other threatening factors for the human future. So the dangers of climate change, the appearance of disruptive technologies and also the irruption of epidemics, like that of Flu one, at 2009, or the coronavirus pandemic.

When this clock started, the planet was at 7 minutes to go to midnight, the moment symbolically defined as that of the end. But the imaginary hands have moved on and now both in 2020 and this year, the calculated time to complete is 100 seconds, that is to say just one a little over a minute and a half.

The group of specialists in Committee of Atomic Scientists who designed the watch and the annual reports are made up of scientists and academics from all over the world, including a few 13 Nobel Prize winners.

The entity was founded in [1945[1945 nothing less than Albert Einstein and a group of researchers from the University of Chicago, who paradoxically took the first steps in the development of atomic weapons, with the Manhatan Project.

This committee’s latest report, like last year’s, puts the clock at a chronological distance from the end that is the shortest since its inception: 100 seconds. “Existential threats from nuclear weapons and climate change have intensified in recent years due to a risk multiplier: the continued corruption of the information ecosphere, on which democracy and public decision-making depend, ”states the aforementioned report.

Regarding the influence of the coronavirus pandemic Ahead of this clock, Bulletin President Rachel Bronson expressed, as Spanish newspaper El País said: “The deadly and inspiring pandemic of covid-19 serves as a historical reminder, a vivid illustration that national governments and international organizations are unprepared to deal with threats that truly end civilization as nuclear weapons and climate change“.

“In this time of real crisis, governments have too often renounced their responsibility, they ignored scientific advice, did not cooperate or communicate effectively and therefore, failed to protect the health and well-being of their citizens“, Underlines in this regard the report, which highlights the important – negative – role that” false and misleading information disseminated on the Internet played in period of pandemic.

Besides the lack of crisis responses for humanity which revealed the coronavirus, the Bulletin pointed out that there were “negative events” in the “Nuclear fields and climate change“Who, added to the misinformation,”could justify the clock approaching midnight“.