~ by Alan Dupont. Originally published in The Australian on 1st October, 2024
Worried that a nuclear war could pose an existential threat to humankind a group of American researchers, known as the Chicago Atomic Scientists, conceived the idea of a Doomsday Clock in 1947 that would metaphorically measure how close the world is to a global catastrophe.
Many of these scientists had intimate knowledge of the danger of a nuclear war having worked on the development of the Manhattan Project, the top-secret program to make the first atomic bombs during World War II, later popularised in the 2023 film ‘Oppenheimer’.
The clock’s initial setting was 7 minutes to midnight, with midnight representing the moment at which a global catastrophe would occur. In 1991, it was wound back to a reassuring 17 minutes following the signing of the pathbreaking Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty between the former Soviet Union and the United States when war seemed a distant prospect.
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