By Julia Levy
Medill News Service, Jan. 27, 2026.
The hands of the Doomsday Clock moved humanity to 85 seconds to midnight on Tuesday, a new record for the closest metaphorical proximity to human disaster. The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists set the hands four seconds closer to catastrophe from the 89-second proximity of 2025.
For the Bulletin, every second counts.
Members of the Bulletin’s Science and Security Board annually decide whether or not to move the clock forward or backward. The clock became a Bulletin icon in 1947 to reflect nuclear threats. Today the clock also accounts for human-made threats of climate change, disruptive technology and biosecurity.
“Last year, we warned that the world was perilously close to catastrophe and that countries needed to change course towards international cooperation and action on the most critical existential risks,” said Daniel Holz a professor at the University of Chicago and chair of the SASB at the clock’s hand-setting press conference. “Unfortunately, the opposite has happened. “
The “opposite” alludes to factors including continued arms race instabilities such as the expiration of the New START treaty, set to expire on Feb. 4.
The treaty limits the amount of nuclear arms deployable by the United States and Russia. In the months leading up to the end of New START, there has been little formal discussion regarding renewing or extending these limits.
“For the first time in over half a century, there will be nothing preventing a runaway nuclear arms race,” Holz said.
The Doomsday Clock was set at its farthest point from midnight – 17 minutes – in 1991 with the end of the Cold War and the signing of the START (Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty) between the United States and the Soviet Union.
Further threats underscored by the Bulletin include the pressures of climate change, as the Earth has witnessed the warmest years on record in the last ten years and continues to break new records.
Inez Fung, Bulletin Science and Security Board member and professor emerita of atmospheric science at the University of California, Berkeley, compared the impact of changing climate on the Earth is to the role of the metabolism in herself. And currently, the metabolism of her and the planet are quite ill.
“What is happening now, and why I’m so worried, is that I feel like my fever is going to put me close to the ICU. And the monitoring devices are going away,” Fung said, referring to the recent threats and closures of climate monitoring systems around the globe.
The Bulletin SASB members said their best advice for enacting change is to ensure individuals have and agree upon the facts. Then, they can work together towards bringing the community’s thoughts to local leaders through civic engagement.
Bulletin guest speaker and Nobel Peace Prize Laureate, Maria Ressa, professor of professional practice at Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs, shared an example from her home, the Philippines where the community was brought together to bring their former president to stand trial for crimes against humanity this month. That effort, Ressa attributes, is because the Filipino citizens demanded better.
“You start with yourself and your family and friends, the shared reality you build. Then you bring your community together,” Ressa said. “We say we build communities of action.”
However, the advent of artificial intelligence proliferates disinformation throughout the world, blurring shared realities. Concerns surrounding AI listed by the Bulletin include “AI slop”, the lack of AI regulations to govern safety and the potential of an AI infrastructure arms race.
Asha M. George, Bulletin Science and Security Board member and executive director, Bipartisan Commission on Biodefense, recognized the potential of AI for good such as for advances in biology. The prospect of such hope, though, has been met with massive cuts to science, which George believes will reduce the world’s overall preparedness to react to international health emergencies.
“We’re all interdependent now in this world. If we don’t have good public health in one country, it affects the next country, the ones surrounding it, but also the countries elsewhere that were dependent on the first country for funding, for human resources, for expertise, and so forth. This is a global issue.”
Despite 2026 advancing the existential risks reflected by the Doomsday Clock, the Bulletin utilizes the clock to inform the public about global issues, encourage advocacy to mitigate threats and stir humanity away from its own destruction. The clock also can showcase progress. For instance, the clock moved backward from 5 minutes to midnight in 2007 to 6 minutes in 2010 due to increased cooperation between countries on nuclear security and climate stabilization.
Alexandra Bell, President and CEO of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, said she believes the people of the world must demand their leaders combat these risks, or find leaders that will. To do so, communities need to come together and push for change.
“The clock does not predict the future. It illuminates our current reality,” Bell said. “The clock has turned back before. And it can again.”
Manhattan Project scientists founded the Bulletin in 1945 to underscore the threat of nuclear weapons after the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Albert Einstein and Robert Oppenheimer were among the founders.
Photo at top: Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists moves the hands of the Doomsday Clock forward to the closest to midnight in the clock’s history. From left, Bulletin Science and Security Board Members Jon B. Wolfstahl (Director of global risk at the Federation of American Scientists), Asha M. George (Director, Bipartisan Commission on Biodefense), Steve Fetter (Professor of Public Policy at the University of Maryland) and Alexandra Bell (President of CEO of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientist) stand next to the Doomsday Clock set at 85 seconds to midnight on Jan. 27. (Photo courtesy of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists.)