, Columnist
Dismiss the Doomsday Clock at Your Own Peril
It was 89 seconds in 2025. As for 2026 ...
Photographer: Saul Loeb/AFP via Getty Images
We’re once again approaching the annual resetting of the Doomsday Clock. Last January, the Science and Security Board of the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists, a group of very smart people, moved the hands of their metaphorical clock to 89 seconds to midnight, where midnight represents doomsday, apocalypse, Armageddon, extinction, or whatever you want to call it.
89 seconds! That’s the closest to midnight the clock has ever stood. What will the board, looking back at 2025, say on Jan. 27, 2026?