The Doomsday Clock has moved closer to midnight than ever before, but its latest warning still leaves out many of the forces pushing civilisation towards collapse.

The apocalypse of civilisation is now closer than it has ever been in in the whole of human history.

That’s the latest assessment of the Science and Security Board of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists. You know, the chaps who devised the Doomsday Clock, back in 1947, after inventing the atomic bomb and then realising, oops, we may just have signed humanity’s death warrant.

They have just reset the clock at 85 seconds to midnight – the closest to absolute catastrophe it has ever been, even compared with the fearful depths of the Cold War and its mad nuclear arsenals.

This time the reasoning is based on not only on an out-of-control nuclear arms race – but also on the mad behaviour of some of the world’s most powerful countries, galloping global heating, the emerging threat of crazy scientists creating deadly new plagues and the ungoverned use of disruptive technologies like artificial intelligence, especially in the military sphere.

“Russia, China, the United States, and other major countries have instead become increasingly aggressive, adversarial, and nationalistic," says Doomsday editor John Mecklin.

“Hard-won global understandings are collapsing, accelerating a winner-takes-all great power competition and undermining the international cooperation critical to reducing the risks of nuclear war, climate........

© Pearls and Irritations