A 4-second change in the Doomsday Clock by scientists has moved the world as close to midnight as the figurative timepiece has ever been, now just 85 seconds from the possible destruction of humanity.
“This is an alert to the enormous existential threats that are not being attended to,” said Dr. Ira Helfand of Northampton, a member of the steering committee for Back from the Brink Western Massachusetts, an organization committed to eliminating nuclear weapons.
“It’s very significant and we need to listen to [the scientists],” Helfand said in a phone interview. “We can’t afford to ignore that reality any longer.”
The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists made the announcement about the Doomsday Clock during a press conference Tuesday morning, illustrating that the threat of nuclear war continues to grow, the climate crisis continues to worsen and the world is not yet addressing impacts from disruptive technologies, such as artificial intelligence.
The presentation had members of the organization explain that the Doomsday Clock, first unveiled in 1945, was moving forward because of the various concerns and the lack of response from leaders across the globe.
“Overall, 2025 has been a pretty bleak picture in terms of advancing existential risks,” said Alexandra Bell, president and CEO of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists. “Every second counts and we’re running out of time.”
“It is a hard truth, but this is our reality,” Bell said. “It is 85 seconds to midnight. This is the closest the world has ever been to midnight.”
But Bell said a silver lining is that people can engage with policymakers and elected leaders to apply public pressure to change course.
Bruce Stedman of Amherst, a member of the local Back from the Brink hub, called the presentation “a pretty sobering message” that is more challenging to deal with amid an authoritarian government.
“The message I took is there are a lot of things that need to be done, and no one can do them all,” Stedman said.
Back from the Brink, he said, is encouraging people to talk to their legislators and find ways to support efforts of nuclear disarmament. Stedman said one thing the current administration could do would be to extend the New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (New START), the last remaining treaty limiting the size of U.S. and Russian strategic nuclear arsenals. That expires Feb. 5.
Stedman said this could then lead to getting serious about renegotiating the treaty.
Helfand, who is also a member of the International Steering Group of the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons, said that in addition to President Donald Trump dismantling progress made under President Joe Biden toward the climate crisis, he worries that the current administration is also increasing the risks of causing a nuclear war.
On top of that, five of the nine countries that have nuclear capabilities — the United States, Israel, Russia, India and Pakistan — were in some form of conflict in 2025, and China is making explicit its intent to use military force in Taiwan, he said.
“It’s really unprecedented the level of military activities by countries that possess nuclear weapons,” Helfand said.
Back from the Brink has details of its actions at preventnuclearwar.org. There, it is advocating for the federal resolution filed by U.S. Rep. Jim McGovern, “Urging the United States to lead the world back from the brink of nuclear war and halt and reverse the nuclear arms race,” which would lead to negotiations of an enforceable agreement to draw down nuclear weapons and would also prevent the president from having the sole authority to launch weapons.
Back from the Brink is making headway, Helfand said, with resolutions starting in Northampton and spreading to more than 70 cities and towns across the United States. There is also a resolution in the state Legislature, sponsored by Sen. Jo Comerford, D-Northampton, in support of the federal action, and U.S. Sen. Ed Markey has filed a similar bill in the Senate.
Endorsements for the resolution have also come from the Western Massachusetts Area Labor Federation, the Massachusetts Nurses Association and the Massachusetts Teachers Association. The teachers union has committed to having K-12 curricular resources on nuclear weapons in classrooms across the state, starting with the materials developed by WGBH.
“Substantial progress is being made, but there’s a long way to go,” Helfand said.
He pointed to the 1980s and the tail end of the Cold War, when the situation was every bit as dangerous, with the United States and the Soviet Union nearly going to war twice in 1983. The Nuclear Freeze movement successfully got leaders to the treaty for the verifiable halt to testing, production and deployment of nuclear weapons.
“People should never feel hopeless, but they should feel concern,” Helfand said.
During the Doomsday Clock presentation, Daniel Holz, chair of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists’ Science and Security Board and professor of physics at the University of Chicago, said there was little heed to the clock being put at 89 seconds from midnight last year.
In the time since, conflicts have intensified between nuclear armed states, an assault on the environment intensified and dangers continued to exist in life sciences, with artificial intelligence accelerating as a disruptive technology.
Like Bell, Holz offered some level of hope. “The main message is we should be worried, but there are many things that can be done to turn back the clock,” Holz said.
A concern for Maria Ressa, co-founder and CEO of Rappler, though, is that it is hard to get the truth out to people, as facts and science are disputed when there isn’t a shared reality.
“Without facts you can’t have truth, without truth you can’t have trust, without these three we have no shared reality. We can’t have journalism, we can’t have democracy,” Ressa said. “The radical collaboration this moment demands becomes impossible.”
Others spoke and fielded questions. Dr. Asha M. George, a member of the Science and Security Board and public health security professional, pointed to the illnesses and viruses that spread.
“We have not eliminated COVID from our world, so we don’t have a choice at the Bulletin but to include the biological risk in the calculus of our Doomsday Clock,” George said.
Inez Fung, professor emerita of atmospheric science at the University of California Berkeley, notes that climate change is a major worry, a fear that this fever is putting Earth closer to the intensive care unit as necessary monitoring devices are going away.
“The fever, the warming temperature, is damaging everything,” Fung said. “It’s influencing everything.”