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    Will the Doomsday Clock move closer to midnight when it is next updated?

    Created by Jgalt on {{qctrl.question.created_time | dateStr}}.

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    Question

    The Doomsday Clock is a symbol which represents the likelihood of a man-made global catastrophe. Maintained since 1947 by the members of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists' Science and Security Board, the clock represents an analogy for the threat of global nuclear war. Since 2007, it has also reflected climate change and new developments in the life sciences and technology that could inflict irrevocable harm to humanity.

    The clock represents the hypothetical global catastrophe as "midnight" and the Bulletin's opinion on how close the world is to a global catastrophe as a number of "minutes" to midnight.

    Its original setting in 1947 was seven minutes to midnight. It has been set backward and forward 23 times since then, the smallest-ever number of minutes to midnight being two (in 1953 and 2018) and the largest seventeen (in 1991). You can view a graphical representation of these time changes here.

    Since January 2018, the clock is set at two minutes to midnight, due to "the looming threats of nuclear war and climate change.”

    This question asks: when the clock is next updated, will the time be any later than two minutes to midnight?

    The clock need not advance by a full minute; any advance will suffice for a positive resolution. If the clock is left unchanged at two minutes to midnight, or if it is moved back, this question resolves negatively.

    If the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists announces that the Doomsday Clock is to be discontinued before any relevant time changes (or decisions to leave it unchanged) are made, this question resolves ambiguously.

    Categories:
    Geopolitics
    Series – Ragnarok

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