The Doomsday clock has remained at 100 seconds to midnight for the second year running, in part due to the ineffectual response to Covid-19 by world governments.
This is the closest the clock has been to midnight in its 73-year history, with climate change, increased nuclear tensions and the global pandemic bringing us closer to the apocalypse than ever before , according to the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists.
The clock was founded by US scientists involved in the Manhattan Project that led to the first nuclear weapons during WW2 and is a symbolic countdown to represent how close humanity is to complete global catastrophe.
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Closer cooperation needed as global COVID-19 cases top 100 mln
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NEW YORK, Jan. 27 (Xinhua) Global COVID-19 cases surpassed 100 million on Tuesday, according to the Center for Systems Science and Engineering (CSSE) at Johns Hopkins University.
The global case count reached 100,032,461, with a total of 2,149,818 deaths worldwide, as of 2:22 p.m. local time (1922 GMT), the CSSE data showed.
Members of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists Science and Security Board, Robert Rosner and Suzet McKinney, reveal the 2021 setting of the Doomsday Clock: It is still 100 seconds to midnight.
Photo: Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists/Thomas Gaulkin
Ineffectual Response to Pandemic Seen As Evidence of Government, Institutions and Public Lack of Readiness to Deal with Threats of Nuclear Weapons and Climate Change.
WASHINGTON, D.C. – January 27, 2021
– The COVID-19 pandemic will end up killing well over two million people around the globe. The mishandling of this grave global health crisis is a “wake-up call” that governments, institutions, and a misled public remain unprepared to handle the even greater threats posed by nuclear war and climate change. Given this and the lack of progress in 2020 in dealing with nuclear and climate perils, the Doomsday Clock remains as close to midnight as it has ever been – just 100 seconds to midnight.