The Most Dangerous Situation That Humanity Has Ever Faced: The Fortieth Newsletter (2022)

Since 1947, the Doomsday Clock has measured the likelihood of a human-made catastrophe, namely to warn the world against the possibility of a nuclear holocaust. The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, who attend to this clock, originally set the device at seven minutes to midnight, with midnight being, essentially, the end of the world. The farthest that the clock has been from midnight was in 1991, when it was set at 17 minutes from midnight. The closest to midnight that the clock has been is now. Since 2020, the clock has sat at ‘doom’s doorstep’ – 100 seconds from midnight. The motivation for this alarming setting was the unilateral withdrawal by the United States from the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty in 2019. This is the ‘most dangerous situation that humanity has faced’, said former President of Ireland and former United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights Mary Robinson.
— Read on thetricontinental.org/newsletterissue/doomsday-nuclear-war/