WHO DEVISED THE DOOMSDAY CLOCK?
When Martyl Langsdorf, the wife of one of the Manhattan Project physicists, was asked to design the cover for the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists in 1947, she chose a clock. It was to warn of the dangers of nuclear war and to convey a “sense of urgency”, she said. Tat clock has since become a powerful symbol of how close humankind is to global catastrophe. Originally set to seven minutes to midnight, it has changed more than 20 times, with the safest time (17 minutes to midnight) coming in 1991 after the end of the Cold War and the signing of the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty The closest it has got is two minutes to midnight, which came after nuclear tests in the 1950s – and where it is now due to the threat of climate change.
DOOMSDAY SCENARIO Nuclear testing during the 1950s put the clock closer to midnight than ever before
GETTY IMAGES X2