The Judgment Day clock puts humanity at 89 seconds of crash

On Sunday afternoon I went to Championship match of the National Football Conference in Lincoln Financial Field in Philadelphia. At one point at the beginning of the fourth quarter, the Philadelphia eagles were on the line of 1 yard of the enemy Washington Commandersready to release their brotherly for a result. (Believe me – this has something to do with the future perfect.)

Knowing that they will almost certainly give up pressing, the exceeding commanders decided Do something a little differentS First, the commander of the commanders deliberately skipped the line early, which led to a punishment for an attack. Then they did it again – the same thing. And again – the same thing. At first glance, they had every intention of continuing to jump on the line, again and again. And each time the referees moved the ball halfway to the goal line, as happens when defense penalties appear near the end zone.

Anyone who is familiar with The principle of endless divisibility In geometry, he can see the problem here. Linear segment – such as the distance here between the line of the fight and the end zone – can be infinitely divided, over and over. Which means that theoretically commanders could continue to enter, and the eagles could continue to progress half the distance to the target without at all reaching there, by the end of time.

Fortunately for players, coaches and nearly 70,000 fans who attend, the referees found a way out of this particular paradox of Calling a little known rule of NFL This allows the crime team to be automatically awarded if the defense continues to deliberately commit penalties to stop them. This was finally enough to make the commanders cut it.

All this takes us to a topic we have written for several times here in Future Perfect: The court on the day’sS (Look, I told you we would get there.)

Created and managed by NuclearWho in itself is founded by many former physicists of the Manhattan project, who have worried about the threat of nuclear weapons, the judgment of the day is intended to be a symbolic presentation of how close humanity is to existential destruction. Every year, a group of experts in everything – from nuclear science to climate change to cybersecurity puts the hands of the clock. The closer it is until midnight, the closer humanity is until it is disappeared.

In 2023 the newsletter made Some news When it moved the hands of the clock to 10 seconds, up to 90 seconds until midnight -the closest so far has been launched in 1947, while it meant that humanity is seemingly closer to destruction than it was in so well -known dangerous times like 1964 (not long after the Cuban rocket crisis when it was set on 12 minutes until midnight) or 1984 (shortly after one of the the closest nuclear calls In the history of the Cold War when it was 3 minutes until midnight), it was the first setting after Russia invaded Ukraine and lifted nuclear fears to a height they had not reached in decadesS

Last year, referring to everything from Ukraine to Gaza to climate change to AI, the board kept the clock of 90 seconds until midnightS

And then yesterday morning the board revealed the new clock setting. Set your time to the court day of … drumroll, please: 89 seconds until midnight, one second closerS

The board listed a number of factors: continues the nuclear risk around Ukraine and The disintegration of the control of nuclear weapons; the increasing impact of climate change after what is likely The hottest year of recording; the threat of new diseases such as bird flu; AI progress and especially, potential military applications; and misinformation and cybersecurity.

If these sounds familiar, well, they are almost the same factors as the previous year and the year before that, something chairman of the board Daniel Holz recognized At the event on Tuesday, saying that these factors “were not new in 2024, but we saw insufficient progress in dealing with key challenges, and in many cases this was leading to increasing and disturbing effects.”

However, everything about the message on Tuesday emphasized a significant problem with the clock of the court day. It is exhausted with time – perhaps metaphorically, since it is intended to be in the case of the survival of humanity, but quite literally, in the sense that the clock has only so many hours, minutes and seconds.

And this problem is something that suffers from the whole field with existential risk. Just like these referees in Philadelphia, there are only so many times that you can issue a warning before it begins to feel meaningless, especially since it seems that we are approaching and closer to destruction without getting there.

In a sense, the clock of the day is a victim of its own success as an incomparable symbol of the nuclear fear of the 20th century. So fascinating was the idea of ​​the hands of a clock that entered the midnight moment when the rockets would shoot that the classic 80s of the last century 80s Guard Graphic novel used it as an unforgettable central motifS

However, like the James Bond films and the films about Rambo, the Judgment of the Day of the Day was injured after the end of the Cold War and the obvious removal of its reason to be: nuclear war. With this threat seemingly behind us, the clock branched in new threats such as climate change and infectious diseases, and later worried about the 2010 era as misinformation and democratic withdrawal.

The problem as We’ve written beforeis that not nuclear existential risks simply do not fit well into the metaphor of the clock. Nuclear war is largely binary risk – the fire rockets, and the clock hits 12 or not. And there is a whole area of ​​geopolitics and diplomacy dedicated to the measurement exactly where the world is at a nuclear risk. This is as measurable and known as the existential risks, which is why the day clock was as emblematic.

But others, the more existential risks do not work this way – assuming that they are even truly existential risks. The climate change is not binary, but a cumulative, continued risk, less sudden fatal heart attack than throughout the life of planetary diabetes. If the risk of climate was a watch, it would be difficult to understand what time it was or even if the clock would ever hit really midnight.

Other risks are even more difficult to track. Artificial intelligence has just survived one of the most common weeks in its young history, as China Deepseek has shown that advanced models can be more expensive and more difficult to suffocate than the industry thought, even when the big players of But in America, they are arranged for an unprecedented accumulation of $ 500 billion. AI is even an existential risk? Maybe – although no one can tell you for sure how much they can unfold or how close we are. And AI, unlike nuclear weapons, There are benefits to science and society that we can’t just put asideS

As for infectious diseases as disturbing as the last foci of bird flu, we have no certainty that this will really be the next pandemic – or how heavy it would be if that happened. A new virus will come for us, but we are likely to be surprised by what it is, just as we were surprised by Covid. And the chances that such a virus will actually threaten us with disappearance seems very low.

We live in a world that is currently burning with fear even if these fears are often overestimated and out of step with realityS I’m worried that since the day’s day clock leads to an initial focus on nuclear war – something that really gets worse – And it makes these minutes changes year to year, will eventually burn the audience itself, which is intended for galvanization. You can only say that the world is close to the end of so many times, just raise so many risks to the state of existential before people start adjusting you.

Postscript to this story about the Eagles Game: After the referees made their last warning, the Eagles were able to push their brother and press the defender Jalen hurts in the end zone to the touch, on the way to a dominant 55-23 win. (Go birds!) You can hold all the warnings in the world – but that doesn’t mean you can stop the inevitable to happen.