“Doomsday Clock” Moves One Minute Closer to Midnight

Here's a change of pace: a doomsday story that has nothing to do with the Mayans or 2012.

The "Doomsday Clock," which measures how close the world is to a global catastrophe, has moved a minute closer to midnight. Yesterday, the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists moved the clock from six to five minutes to midnight. The bulletin stated that the failure of several world leaders to act on a ban that cut off production of nuclear weapons, in addition to the lack of action on climate change and the disaster at the Fukushima Power Plant, all attributed to the move.

"Despite the promise of a new spirit of international cooperation, and reductions in tensions between the United States and Russia, the Science and Security Board believes that the path toward a world free of nuclear weapons is not at all clear, and leadership is failing,"

The Doomsday Clock is now back to where it was in 2007, when North Korea started testing nuclear weapons. The closest the clock has ever been to midnight was two minutes to midnight, back in 1953 when the U.S. and the Soviet Union were testing nuclear weapons within months of each other. The farthest it's been is 17 minutes, back in 1991.