We Tell the World What Time It Is

On January 18, 2007, The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists issued the following statement:

We stand at the brink of a second nuclear age. Not since the first atomic bombs were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki has the world faced such perilous choices. North Korea’s recent test of a nuclear weapon, Iran’s nuclear ambitions, a renewed U.S. emphasis on the military utility of nuclear weapons, the failure to adequately secure nuclear materials, and the continued presence of some 26,000 nuclear weapons in the United States and Russia are symptomatic of a larger failure to solve the problems posed by the most destructive technology on Earth.

In light of the current global climate, the Bulletin set its iconic "Doomsday Clock" two minutes closer to midnight:


To read the Bulletin's complete analysis, click here.

A BRIEF HISTORY OF THE "DOOMSDAY CLOCK"

On December 10, 1945, The Atomic Scientists of Chicago--an organization founded in September of the same year--published the first volume of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists of Chicago (later shortened to the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists). The organization’s primary objectives were:

1.To explore, clarify and formulate the opinion and responsibilities of scientists in regard to the problems brought about by the release of nuclear energy, and

2.To educate the public to a full understanding of the scientific, technological and social problems arising from the release of nuclear energy.

The Bulletin gained almost instantaneous notoriety; circulation rose from six hundred fifty copies in 1945 to ten thousand copies the following year. Appealing to scientists and laymen alike, the Bulletin established itself as the pre-eminent nuclear authority. In fact, in a series of 1947 advertisements, the Bulletin proclaimed to be “...the only publication which gives the informed citizen such complete, extensive and authoritative information on the greatest problem the human race has faced since the discovery of fire.” As such, the Bulletin played a consequential role in development of America’s atomic lexicon. (In fact, the Bulletin defined the phrase “fall out” some four and a half years before it appeared on the pages of the New York Times.) But the Bulletin’s most significant contribution to America’s nuclear cognizance--and subsequent anxiety--was the “Doomsday Clock,” an image that has dominated the cover of the Bulletin since its creation in June of 1947. In a matter of years, this clock became one of America’s most recognizable nuclear icons.

A note appeared on the last page of the April/May, 1947 Bulletin, which read:

TO OUR READERS
Within its next issue, the BULLETIN will adopt a new, expanded format designed for easier reading and more attractive appearance. The June issue will also bring another innovation – a cover designed to protect your copy in the mail and to preserve your BULLETIN for permanent filing.

Bulletin co-founder Hyman Goldsmith asked artist Martyl Langsdorf, the wife of a Manhattan Project physicist, to design the cover for the June 1947 issue. Langsdorf developed “the idea of using a clock to symbolize urgency.” She planned to repeat the image monthly, with different background colors. Although Langsdorf’s intention was to represent impending danger, her decision to place the minute hand seven ticks before midnight was a simply a matter of “good design.” Strange, no, that a (relatively arbitrary) artistic rendering has become such a prominent barometer of impending doom?


On September 23, 1949, President Truman announced: “We have evidence that within recent weeks an atomic explosion occurred in the U.S.S.R.” Anxiety erupted: the United States was no longer the world’s only atomic superpower! The following month, the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists altered their cover image for the first time since the image’s creation two years earlier. The Bulletin repositioned the minute hand just three minutes before midnight, indicating a rapidly approaching apocalypse.


Note: Nowhere in the October 1949 issue of the Bulletin, do the editors address the clock’s time change. In fact, out of eighteen time changes, this is the only one that goes unmentioned. It did not, however, go unnoticed.

On August 12, 1953 the Russians exploded their first thermonuclear weapon (hydrogen bomb), closely following America’s detonation of thermonuclear devices. This nuclear evolution prompted a second "Doomsday" time change. The Bulletin advanced the clock to 11:58, just two minutes before midnight.


This issue featured an essay entitled "The Narrowing Way," in which Bulletin co-founder Eugene Rabinowitch wrote:

The hands of the clock of doom have moved again. Only a few more swings of the pendulum, and, from Moscow to Chicago, atomic explosions will strike midnight for Western civilization.

January, 1960 brought about a favorable change. After six and a half years of sitting two minutes away from the end of the world, mankind was granted a reprieve. The editors of the Bulletin reset the clock to its original time: seven minutes before midnight.

Rabinowitch explained the nature of this change in an essay entitled “The Dawn of a New Decade”:

In recognition of these new hopeful elements in the world picture, we are moving the ‘clock of doom’ on the Bulletin’s cover a few minutes back from midnight. In doing so we are not succumbing to a facile optimism, engendered by a change in the climate of our diplomatic relationships with the Soviet Union... We want to express in this move our belief that a new cohesive force has entered the interplay of forces shaping the fate of mankind, and is making the future of man a little less foreboding...

Between 1960 and 2007 the Doomsday Clock changed an additional fifteen times. (For a comprehesive timeline, see below.) In 1991, the world saw its most favorable hour in 44 years: the big hand was set a comfortable seventeen minutes before midnight. But the honeymoon was shortlived, and in 1995 our sense of global security was, once again, on the decline. Since that time, the Doomsday Clock has only moved closer and closer to the witching hour...

As the Bulletin's January 18 analysis reminds us:

The Clock is Ticking.

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Doomsday Clock Timeline