Doomsday 2012? Doomsday Clock now at 12 minutes before midnight
The Doomsday Clock which is a symbolic clock measuring global dangers which includes climate and nuclear hazards had been officially moved to 5 minutes before midnight. In 2007, the same clock was moved backwards to six minutes, however The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists (BAS) announced the move on Tuesday.
BAS said that the cause of the move was the failure of multiple nations to control the spread of nuclear weapons and address climate change. The group created the Dommsday Clock in 1947.
"In many cases, that trend has not continued or been reversed," it said in a statement to explain the change.
While Russia and US nuclear relations were improving, the United States together with nuclear countries like China, Iran, India, Pakistan, Egypt and Israel had failed to act on the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty while North Korea failed to act on a treaty to cut off production of nuclear weapons material.
"These developments continues to leave the world at risk from continued development of nuclear weapons," said Jayantha Dhanapala, a member of the BAS Board of Sponsors and a former UN undersecretary-general for disarmament affairs.
The recent development in the Doomsday Clock is also creating considerable alarm since there was a prediction that the world ends in 2012 as predicted by all most calendars like the Aztec and Mayan calendars. It was further aggravated by a depiction in cinema recently through the movie 2012.
The decision to change the time was made after a symposium in Washington DC.
