Just as Cuba's "missile crisis" was reaching its peak, in October 1962, an American nuclear chemist, Harrison Brown, began writing a column in the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists.
"At no other time in history have men and peoples come so close to death and destruction on such a widespread scale. Midnight is coming," he wrote,
"I am writing from an airplane from Los Angeles to Washington, D.C., and based on what I know, this article ... may never be published," Brown wrote at the time.
His dark warning alluded to the "Apocalypse Clock," the Bulletin's iconic symbol since its founding 75 years ago by Albert Einstein and some University of Chicago scientists involved in the Manhattan Project. Their work had contributed to the invention of the atomic bomb, but many of them were angered by the US dropping it on cities in Japan.
The image of the clock counting down to midnight was meant to symbolise the sense of urgent danger that Brown was experiencing during his flight to Washington in 1962.
Tomorrow, the Apocalypse Clock will be unveiled for the 75th time, and it is expected to be known in which direction the Bulletin's committee of scientists and security experts moved its hands. For two years, it had been stuck at 100 seconds to midnight.
The threat of Russian invasion
With the threat of Russia's invasion of Ukraine occupying the international media lately, it is likely that the clock will not move backwards, which means that humanity is still in more danger than ever.
During the Cold War, the most alarming conclusion of the indicators had humanity at two minutes to midnight after the detonation of a thermonuclear warhead, a hydrogen bomb.
Until the Cuban Missile Crisis, the indicators read seven minutes to midnight, and despite the pessimism of Brown's article, the Bulletin decided that year not to move them forward. The reason for this was that the near-total disaster had motivated the US and Russia to work anew towards risk reduction.
Instead, the longest distance recorded was 17 minutes to midnight, just after the end of the Cold War. Since then it has been moving steadily in the direction of destruction. Fragile geopolitical balances, the rapid growth of nuclear weapons and the new existential threat of climate change, which began to be officially counted in 2007, are partly responsible for this.
Source: protothema.gr
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