Nuclear Age Peace Foundation

Tag: doomsday clock

  • 3 Minutes to Midnight

    This article was originally published by Common Dreams.

    Three Minutes to Midnight
    Image: Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists (www.thebulletin.org)

    The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists has just announced its latest nuclear Doomsday Clock moving ahead the minute hand to three minutes till midnight. The clock represents the count down to zero in minutes to nuclear apocalypse – midnight. This significant move of TWO minutes is the 22nd time since its inception in 1947 that the time has been changed.

    In moving the hand to 3 minutes to midnight, Kennette Benedict the Executive Director of the Bulletin, identified in her comments: “the probability of global catastrophe is very high”… “the choice is ours and the clock is ticking”…”we feel the need to warn the world” …”the decision was based on a very strong feeling of urgency”. She spoke to the dangers of both nuclear weapons and climate change saying, “they are both very difficult and we are ignoring them” and emphasized “this is about doomsday, this is about the end of civilization as we know it”. The Clock has ranged from 2 minutes to midnight at the height of the Cold War to 17 minutes till midnight with the hopes that followed the end of the Cold War. The decision to move the minute hand is made by the Bulletin’s Board of Directors in consultation with its Board of Sponsors, which includes 18 Nobel Laureates.

    What is clear is that the time to ban nuclear weapons is now. Today’s announcement by the Bulletin further corroborates the dangers confirmed by recent climate science. These studies identify the much greater dangers posed by even a small regional nuclear war using just 100 Hiroshima size bombs out of the 16,300 weapons in today’s global stockpiles. The ensuing dramatic climate changes and famine that would follow threaten the lives of up to 2 billion on the planet with effects that would last beyond 10 years. There is no escaping the global impact of such a small regional nuclear war.

    Medical science has weighed in on the impacts and devastation of even the smallest nuclear explosion in one of our cities and the reality is there is no adequate medical or public health response to such an attack. We kid ourselves into a false sense that we can prepare and plan for the outcome of a bomb detonation. Every aspect and facet of our society would be overwhelmed by a nuclear attack. Ultimately the resultant dead at ground zero would be the lucky ones.

    Probability theorists have long calculated the dismal odds that the chance for nuclear event either by plan or accident are not in our favor. Recent documents obtained through the Freedom of Information Act detail over 1000 mishaps that have happened in our nuclear arsenals. Time is not on our side and the fact that we have not experienced a nuclear catastrophe is more a result of luck than mastery and control over these immoral weapons of terror.

    The time to act is now. There is so much that can and must be done. Congress will soon begin budget debates that include proposals to increase nuclear weapons spending for stockpile modernization by $355 Billion over the next decade and up to a Trillion in the next 30 years. Expenditures for weapons that can never be used and at a time when the economic needs for our country and world are so great.

    Around the world, there is a growing awareness of the humanitarian impact of nuclear weapons, and a corresponding desire to rid the world of these weapons.The Vienna Humanitarian Impacts of Nuclear Weapons conference last month saw 4/5 of the nations of the world participating. In Oct., 2014, at the UN, 155 nations called for the elimination of nuclear weapons. At Vienna, 44 nations plus the pope advocated for a treaty banning nuclear weapons.

    The people are making their voices heard and demanding a change of course from the status quo.

    In this week’s State of the Union address, President Obama emphasized that we are one people with a common destiny. He said this both in reference to our nation and our world. The threat of nuclear weapons unites us even as it threatens our very existence. This reality can also be remembered in the words of Martin Luther King when he said,

    “We must all learn to live together as brothers or we will all perish together as fools. We are tied together in the single garment of destiny, caught in an inescapable network of mutuality. And whatever affects one directly affects all indirectly.”

    The time for action is now, before it is too late. It’s 3 minutes till midnight.

    This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 License

    Robert Dodge is a family physician practicing full time in Ventura, California. He serves on the board of Physicians for Social Responsibility Los Angeles serving as a Peace and Security Ambassador and at the national level where he sits on the security committee. He also serves on the board of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation and Citizens for Peaceful Resolutions. He writes for PeaceVoice.

  • Nuclear Disarmament’s Midnight Hour

    This article was published by Project Syndicate.


    Gareth EvansLast month, the Doomsday Clock’s hands were moved a minute closer to midnight by the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, the respected global organization that for decades has tracked the risk of a nuclear-weapons catastrophe, whether caused by accident or design, state or terrorist, fission bomb or dirty radiological bomb.


    Few around the world seemed to be listening. The story – as others like it since the end of the Cold War ­– came and went within a half-day’s news cycle. But the Scientists’ argument was sobering, and demands attention. Progress since 2007 – when the Clock’s hands were last set at five minutes to midnight – has stalled, and political leadership has gone missing on all of the critical issues: disarmament, non-proliferation, and key building blocks needed for both.


    On disarmament, the balloon has well and truly deflated. The New START treaty, signed by the United States and Russia in 2010, reduced the number of deployed strategic weapons, but left both sides’ actual stockpiles intact, their high-alert status undisturbed,  weapons-modernization programs in place, disagreements about missile defense and conventional-arms imbalances unresolved – and talks on further draw-downs going nowhere.


    With no further movement by the US and Russia, which together hold 95% of the world’s total of more than 20,000 nuclear weapons, no other nuclear-armed state has felt pressure to reduce its own stocks significantly, and some – China, India, and Pakistan – have been increasing them.


    The 2010 Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) Review Conference was a modest success, mainly because it did not collapse in disarray, as had the previous one in 2005. But it could not agree on measures to strengthen the regime; its push for talks on a nuclear-weapons-free zone in the Middle East has so far gathered no momentum; North Korea is no closer to being put back in its NPT box; and Iran is closer than ever to jumping out of it, with consequences that would ricochet around the region – and the global economy – if it makes that decision.


    Despite President Barack Obama’s good intentions, the US Senate is no closer to ratifying the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty, while China, India, and Pakistan, among others, take shelter behind that inaction, with a fragile voluntary moratorium the only obstacle to resumed testing. And negotiations on another crucial building block for both disarmament and non-proliferation – a treaty to ban further production of weapons-grade fissile material – remain at an impasse.


    The only half-way good news is that progress continues on a third building block: ensuring that weapons-usable materials, and weapons themselves, currently stored in multiple locations in 32 countries, do not fall into the hands of rogue states or terrorists. At the end of March, South Korean President Lee Myung-bak will host a follow-up meeting to Obama’s successful Nuclear Security Summit in 2010, which brought together 47 government leaders to agree on a comprehensive program aimed at securing all such materials within four years. High on the agenda will be the security implications of nuclear safety: the Fukushima catastrophe showed that nuclear-power plants may be vulnerable not only to natural disaster, but also to terrorist sabotage.


    But nuclear security is only one small part of what must be done to eliminate nuclear threats once and for all, and summit fatigue will make it difficult to sustain key world leaders’ commitment to meeting for so narrow a purpose. New thinking is urgently needed on how to recover the momentum of just two years ago.


    To achieve that requires meeting three conditions. First, political leaders and civil-society leaders must restate, ad nauseam if necessary, the case for “global zero” – a world without nuclear weapons – and map a credible step-by-step path for getting there.


    Second, new mechanisms are needed to energize policymakers and publics. One is to develop and promote a draft Nuclear Weapons Convention as a framework for action. Another is a “State of Play” report card that pulls no punches in assessing which states are meeting their disarmament and non-proliferation commitments, and which are not (the Nuclear Materials Security Index, just published by Senator Sam Nunn’s Nuclear Threat Initiative, is one example). Advocacy-focused leadership networks, such as those now operating in Europe and the Asia-Pacific region, comprising well-known former leaders and other senior figures, could also help.


    Third, sustaining high-level policy attention to the entire nuclear agenda requires an institutional setting. The Nuclear Security Summit’s focus is too narrow for this role; the International Atomic Energy Agency’s formal mandate is too restricted; the NPT Review Conference meets too irregularly; and the United Nations Security Council’s membership is too limited. The best forum for norm-building may prove to be the G-20, whose members embrace both North and South, account for most of the world’s population, GDP, and all but a handful of its nuclear weapons, and whose heads of government meet regularly.


    With its foreign ministers meeting in Mexico this month to discuss broader global governance issues, the G-20 is beginning to move beyond a narrow economic focus. That is to be welcomed. Economic destruction causes immense and intolerable human misery. But there are only two global threats that, if mishandled, can destroy life on this planet as we know it. And nuclear weapons can kill us a lot faster than CO2 can.

  • Doomsday Clock Reset for an Alarming World

    Be afraid. Be more afraid.

    For the first time in five years, the elite board of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists is moving the minute hand on their Doomsday Clock closer to the fatal hour of midnight.

    The clock – a symbol of the perils facing the human race – is expected to shift two minutes, from the current seven minutes to midnight to five, a figure the Bulletin would not confirm before its news conference today.

    “This is a sober and highly alarming judgment by a group of people who are knowledgeable and experienced,” said Nobel laureate John Polanyi, a faculty member in the University of Toronto’s chemistry department.

    “The most immediate hazard we face is also the most easily addressed, namely the thousands of nuclear-armed weapons aimed at Russia and the United States, and left pointlessly in a state of high alert. The fact that they are is an appalling failure to step back from the brink.”

    The clock, which hangs in the University of Chicago, was first set 60 years ago to focus on the danger of nuclear weapons. But for the first time it will take into account the perils posed by global warming, which has sparked renewed interest in building nuclear power plants.

    The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists was founded by former Manhattan Project scientists who turned against nuclear weapons after developing the first atomic bomb.

    “The major new step reflects growing concerns about a ‘Second Nuclear Age’ marked by grave threats, including: nuclear ambitions in Iran and North Korea, unsecured nuclear materials in Russia and elsewhere, the continuing launch-ready status of 2,000 of the 25,000 nuclear weapons held by the U.S. and Russia, escalating terrorism and new pressure from climate change for expanded civilian nuclear power that could increase proliferation risks,” said a statement released before a news conference today.

    The clock was first set in 1947 at seven minutes to midnight, and plunged to an all-time low of two minutes in 1953, when the United States and Soviet Union both tested hydrogen bombs. Since then India, Pakistan, North Korea and, it is believed, Israel have developed nuclear weapons and Iran is enriching uranium that could potentially be used to fuel an atomic bomb.

    The clock was set furthest from midnight – 17 minutes – in 1991, when Washington and Moscow signed the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty.

    But it has crept steadily nearer since then as global military spending increased, India and Pakistan tested nuclear weapons, the U.S. withdrew from the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty to pave the way for its missile defence program, and reports spread of terrorists seeking nuclear weapons.

    American non-proliferation expert Joseph Cirincione said today’s movement of the Doomsday Clock’s hand was a “measurable indicator of how bad things are. If some of the world’s smartest scientists are saying we are now closer to doomsday, it should focus attention on both the problems, and the urgency of finding solutions.”

    And, he said, U.S. President George W. Bush’s administration has made the dangers faced by the planet worse.

    “They came in determined to make a radical change and they made it. It was a complete disaster. Every member of what they call the ‘axis of evil’ is a greater threat now than it was before they came to power. They thought they could use the blunt instrument of military might to overthrow evil regimes. But instead of intimidating countries, they made things worse.”

    And global warming is also worse, said Cirincione, a senior vice-president at the Washington-based Center for American Progress.

    “We lost six years when we could have been taking steps to fix the problem.”

    Last week, the once-hawkish former U.S. secretary of state Henry Kissinger, and three other American former officials, declared that reliance on nuclear arms was “becoming increasingly hazardous and decreasingly effective,” and called for Washington to lead in creating “a world without nuclear weapons.”

    The group, which included former defence secretary William Perry, said “North Korea’s recent nuclear test and Iran’s refusal to stop its program to enrich uranium – potentially to weapons grade – highlight the fact that the world is now on the precipice of a new and dangerous nuclear era.”

    Ernie Regehr, a policy adviser for Waterloo-based Project Ploughshares, agreed that the trends “are all in a dangerous direction, and the notion of a nuclear renaissance, the spread of nuclear power, is making (them) more so.”

    Even a modest movement to revive nuclear power, he added, was perilous.

    At the same time, Regehr said, not only the United States but Britain and France are helping to stoke the fires of nuclear proliferation by refusing to give up their deadly arsenals, or even signalling that they will update them.

    “Britain could have pointed the world in the direction it needs to go, because it is a secure country that doesn’t need nuclear weapons. …

    “Yet, in defiance of all that, it has indicated an interest in modernizing the arsenal, which is a heavy blow to non-proliferation.

    Published on Wednesday, January 17, 2007 by the Toronto Star