War brings Doomsday Clock to the most critical point in history

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After two years, the Doomsday Clock, a symbolic instrument that since 1947 indicates how close to extinction humanity is, moved its hands. The Ukrainian War brought the world to 90 seconds from midnight, which symbolizes the apocalypse, the most critical index in its history.

The new measurement was revealed this Tuesday (24th) by the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists, an American non-governmental entity that is one of the global references in nuclear non-proliferation and assessment of the impacts of climate change.

“We emphasized [em 2020 e 2021] that the situation in Ukraine was a potential focus of crisis. Our fears were confirmed,” said Bulletin President Rachel Bronson.

Disclosed at the beginning of the year, the position of the hands reflects the facts of the previous 12 months. In 2020 and 2021, it was balanced at 100 seconds to midnight, which was already the lowest historical level, due to the intensification of international tensions, the Covid-19 pandemic and even the policy for the Amazon of former president Jair Bolsonaro (PL).

Now courtesy of the grim warning comes from Vladimir Putin, the Russian president who stunned the world by carrying out months of threats and invading Ukraine last February 24th. He did so mounted on threats of nuclear annihilation of anyone involved in the war, repeated in different ways throughout the months of the conflict.

After citing the breakdown of world security, the text completes: “And, worst of all, Russian threats to use nuclear weapons remind the world that the escalation of the conflict, by accident, intention or miscalculation, is a terrible risk . The possibility that the conflict will get out of control remains high”.

The growing support of the West led by the United States to Kiev, reflected in the debate on sending German tanks that Berlin fears precisely because it does not want to escalate the clash with Moscow into a war between NATO (Western military alliance) and Russia, gives the measure of oil released by Putin to slide the pointer.

Not by chance, from time to time Russian authorities remind about the risk of a nuclear war: legacy of the Cold War, Russians and Americans hold more than 90% of the world’s atomic arsenals. China has grown its position, still at around 350 bombs, but this could change and expand the perceived stability, not least because Beijing does not adhere to any arms control agreement.

There are other factors linked to the war: the rearming of European forces, which suggests a more tense environment from now on, and the economic instability resulting from the impact of the conflict on energy and food prices, something still unfinished.

Even without Ukraine, it is likely that the pointer would move for bellicose reasons. The past year has seen an escalation of Cold War 2.0 between the US and China focused on Taiwan, the island that Beijing says it will take for better or for worse.

Still in Asia-Pacific, the North Korean dictatorship accelerated nuclear missile tests, alarming South Korea and Japan —Tokyo is on the verge of abandoning the pacificism it only professes out of contractual obligation with the 1945 winners. , increasingly antagonizes the Chinese.

During the long decades of the US-Soviet struggle, the closest the world had come to disaster on the Clock, 3 minutes to midnight, was in 1953 (reflecting tensions heightened by the Korean War and Soviet rhetoric). and in 1984 (after the near war that the superpowers risked in 1983).

The biggest relief in the count, predictably, was when the Cold War died out in 1991, already reflecting the Soviet dissolution of previous years. Pointers began to be updated annually from 2015. Before, it was more sporadic; there are 29 appointments in these 76 years.

A panel of 19 scientists from several countries meets twice a year to discuss the factors that affect the Clock, consulting primarily with a group of 31 sponsors of the mechanism, 13 of them Nobel laureates.

As of 2007, climate change entered into the account of the Watch. The failure of the Paris Accords, the aforementioned rise of environmentally toxic leaders like Bolsonaro and the recent need to turn to fossil fuels to compensate for the closing of the Russian gas tap in Europe, for example, are items considered. Brazil did not deserve a separate mention this year.

The text also warns of biological risks, working on top of failed anticipation and the world’s botched response to the pandemic. “The total number and diversity of infectious disease epidemics since 1980 has grown significantly, with half of them caused by zoonoses [doenças oriundas de animais].”

Likewise, the expansion of technologies considered disruptive in the field of artificial intelligence and the use of autonomous drones also demand regulation, at the risk of creating variants of science fiction scenarios in the style of “Terminator of the Future” (1984), a film in which the humanity is nearly annihilated by sentient machines.

The Bulletin is the offspring of the Chicago Atomic Scientists group, created under the inspiration of the German Albert Einstein, the father of the atomic bomb, Robert Oppenheimer, and names linked to the Manhattan Project, which created the devices that obliterated Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945.

All of the scientists, who lent their knowledge to help defeat what was perceived as a greater evil, foresaw the apocalyptic scald that the new weapons would bring. When the Clock was first unveiled, however, the 7 minutes to midnight on its dial was a whim of the artist who created it, Martyl Langsdorf: “It looked pretty to my eyes.”

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