What is the Doomsday Clock?

In 1945, Albert Einstein, J. Robert Oppenheimer, and the scientists of the University of Chicago who contributed to developing the first atomic weapons in the Manhattan Project founded the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, an independent and non-profit organization dedicated to monitoring and studying threats to human survival and the world caused by mankind. "The Bulletin", as described in the manifesto, "was born as an emergency action, created by scientists who saw the immediate need for public awareness in the aftermath of the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki." The scientists foresaw that the atomic bomb would only be the first of many "dangerous gifts from the Pandora’s box of modern science." Indeed, within a few years, the advancement of technology and scientific progress would bring new challenges, with repercussions on the environment, public health, cybersecurity, and the risks associated with the misuse of genetic engineering and artificial intelligence. For these reasons, in 1947, the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists published for the first time the Doomsday Clock, a symbol representing the estimated probability of a global catastrophe caused by mankind, "with its hands indicating how close we are to extinction," as stated on the official website of the academic journal.

The point of no return is set at midnight, and the closer the hands are to that hour, the more imminent the catastrophe becomes, making it harder to reverse course. The responsibility for this decision lies with the governing board of the Bulletin, composed of scientists with deep knowledge of nuclear technology and climate science, as well as 9 Nobel laureates who meet twice a year to discuss ongoing global events. When it was created in 1947, the Doomsday Clock was set at 7 minutes to midnight. The two nuclear bombs had just been dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and the world had entered the long Cold War between the United States and the Soviet Union. Over nearly seventy years, the clock has been updated 26 times: in 1953, it showed 2 minutes to midnight, caused by the mass destruction tests of the hydrogen bomb by the USA and USSR; while in 1991, the year marking the end of the Cold War, the clock was set at 17 minutes to global apocalypse. Since then, the available time has steadily decreased until January 28, 2025, when the Bulletin announced that they had removed one second from the 90 remaining since 2023: 89 seconds to apocalypse, according to scientists. The reason? "In 2024 [...] we have witnessed insufficient progress in addressing major challenges, which in many cases are leading to increasingly negative and concerning effects," stated Daniel Holz, chair of the Bulletin's Science and Security Board, as reported by the Guardian.

The war in Ukraine and Russian threats of nuclear use; the Middle Eastern war between Israel and Gaza and the risk of conflict expansion with Iran and the United States; the tensions between Taiwan, China, and North Korea are the main causes of experts’ concerns, in addition to increasingly devastating climate and health threats. In short, 2024 was the hottest year in recorded history, and the recent moves by the Trump administration to withdraw the United States from the Paris Climate Agreement and the WHO have made the situation even more critical. The Doomsday Clock, however, presents a significant paradox: while nuclear technology and science have given humanity the ability to collapse the world under atomic bombs, they have also provided a tool to combat climate change caused by pollution. A McKinsey Sustainability report states that "[n]uclear energy can play a significant role in achieving energy resilience [as] nuclear has already proven capable of providing reliable and flexible energy 24/7 while consuming much less land than many renewable sources. It is a proven and safe technology that provides 10% of global electricity production and is the largest zero-carbon energy source in the United States." The IAEA (International Atomic Energy Agency) has also recently published a report on the various aspects of nuclear energy as a climate mitigation technology, stating that "[u]nlike wind and solar, nuclear and hydroelectric power plants offer dispatchable energy, meaning they can adjust their output to meet electricity demand."

In Italy, however, the situation regarding nuclear energy is complicated. In 1987, five referendum questions led Italians not to renounce nuclear energy entirely, but to halt state contributions and concessions for the four nuclear power plants on the peninsula. The Chernobyl disaster the previous year led Italians to vote overwhelmingly against nuclear energy, reaffirming their stance in the 2011 referendum. However, at the end of January 2025, a bill was proposed by the Minister for the Environment to "enable nuclear energy production in Italy through new technologies [...] to define a National Program for sustainable nuclear power." A step toward reopening the debate on nuclear energy, which, as reported by La Repubblica, is "aimed at developing nuclear energy production as part of the national strategy to achieve carbon neutrality by 2050." Nuclear energy could be the key to a more sustainable future, but the debate remains open and will not be resolved anytime soon. What is running out, however, is time on the Doomsday Clock.