It’s 100 Seconds to Midnight

In January, the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists turned its famed Doomsday Clock to 100 seconds to midnight. Midnight, in effect, denotes an apocalypse for the human species and the irrecoverable destruction of the planet. Adducing the growing existential peril of thermonuclear and environmental catastrophe and the drift of the United States under the Trump administration even farther away from what already amounts to a grossly inadequate international consensus on climate change and nuclear weapons, the bulletin has set the Doomsday Clock to its nearest time to midnight since the clock’s introduction in 1947.