MOSCOW, Jan 20 The symbolic hands of the so-called doomsday clock remained at 100 seconds until of nuclear midnight, which means the death of mankind in a global catastrophe, Rachel Bronson, head of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, said at an online ceremony.
"The world has not become safer this year compared to how it was this year same time in 2021, so we decided to leave the hands at 100 seconds to midnight", she noted.
In a statement, the participants of the ceremony noted that despite the efforts of the United States and Russia to extend the START, the global security situation has not improved enough to move the arrows further from nuclear midnight. The decision of the organization was not affected by the joint statement of the so-called «nuclear five» (Russia, USA, China, France, Great Britain) on the prevention of nuclear war, adopted in early January 2022. The Doomsday Clock first appeared on the cover of the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists (The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists) in 1947. The time remaining until midnight symbolizes the tension of the international situation, midnight means the moment of a nuclear cataclysm. In recent years, the arrows have only moved forward. by 20 seconds, they began to show 100 seconds before nuclear midnight — the clock has never been so close to it. The arrows remained in the same position in 2021. In 2018 and 2019, the Doomsday Clock was at two minutes to midnight. The same time was on them in 1953 after the testing of hydrogen bombs in the USA and the USSR. The quietest time was 1991, when the arrows moved away from the nuclear cataclysm for 17 minutes. Then the USSR and the USA signed the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START-I), designed to reduce the number of reserve and deployed nuclear warheads, as well as to reduce the number of their carriers — ballistic missiles, missile-carrying bombers and submarines.
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