Three Minutes

Scientists move up doomsday

The "doomsday clock" was created by a group of nuclear scientists to show graphically how close they believe the world is to a nuclear holocaust. Last week the monthly Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, on the advice of 47 scientists (including 18 Nobel prizewinners), set the clock forward one minute, at three minutes before midnight. That is the closest in 30 years.

The Bulletin's doomsday clock was first set at seven minutes before midnight in 1947. The clock has moved as close as two minutes before midnight (in 1953, when the Soviets detonated their first hydrogen bomb) and as far away as twelve minutes (most recently in 1972, when the U.S. and U.S.S.R. signed SALT I, the arms-limitation agreement).

The latest uptick comes because arms-control talks have broken down and the arms race is intensifying. "It is not only a question of the numbers of nuclear weapons," wrote the Bulletin's editor in chief, Bernard Feld. "More ominous is the inclination of the leaders of the nuclear powers to talk and act as though they were prepared to use these weapons."