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Topic Last Updated on 08-07-2024
In the Beginning, There Was a Bomb
Post on topic: Doomsday Clock.
The history of humankind’s origin and development covers about 70,000 years, but only the last five centuries have been marked by the rapid and phenomenal growth of our power. One of the most serious mysteries unraveled by science over those five centuries is the energy contained in the atomic nucleus.
In 1939, German physicists Otto Hahn, Fritz Strassmann, and Austrian physicist Lise Meitner experimentally confirmed the splitting of an irradiated uranium nucleus — the heaviest element existing in nature. A year later, Soviet physicists Georgy Flyorov and Konstantin Petrzhak discovered the spontaneous fission of uranium-238. Around the same time in France, physicist Frédéric Joliot-Curie and his colleagues received five patents for the creation of a nuclear reactor. In the US, the Advisory Committee on Uranium was organized in 1939, and in 1943 the Manhattan Project began its work to create a nuclear superweapon. By July 1945, the United States was conducting the Trinity atomic bomb tests at the Alamogordo test range.
Introduction of Nuclear Warfare: Hiroshima and Nagasaki
Less than a month later, on August 6 and 9 respectively, the US bombs “Little Boy” and “Fat Man” were deployed against the civilian residents of the Japanese cities Hiroshima and Nagasaki. To date, these are the only two instances of nuclear bombing in history. Thus, the end of World War II brought not only victory over fascism but also a new set of crises. When conventional weapons were no longer sufficient to keep the enemy under control, nuclear weapons of unprecedented power found their way into the hands of people.
These catastrophes were the first step towards the creation of a disarmament movement. To draw the attention of political leaders—and, indeed, of all humankind—to the problem of nuclear weapons, as well as to dwell on the consequences of their use, a group of scientists from the University of Chicago started a column in the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists called the “Doomsday Clock.”
Doomsday Clock Design
The idea of a symbolic clock that counts down the seconds to total disaster can be credited to the American artist Martyl Langsdorf, who was asked by one of the editors of The Bulletin to design a cover for their issue. First, Langsdorf planned to use the symbol for uranium, but after seeing that scientists were deeply concerned about the rapid development of nuclear physics, she came up with the clock instead.
The hands of the clock on the cover displayed 23:53, but the position of the minute hand, according to the artist, did not carry any significant meaning. She just thought that the positioning “looked good.” The idea appealed to the editorial board because it accurately expressed the overarching idea: humankind doesn’t have much time left to get nuclear weapons under control.
1947
1958
1968
1969
1969
The scientist Eugene Rabinowitch, a Russian-born American biophysicist, especially liked the idea of clocks. Being an active supporter of disarmament, he began to slowly move the hands of the clock forward so that they reflected the imminence of a nuclear catastrophe or, conversely, our distance from one. He then explained his reasoning for the shifting time on the pages of The Bulletin.
1974
1974
1975
1975
1981
After Rabinowitch’s death in 1973, the decision to move the minute hand (or to leave it be) has been made every year at the meeting of The Bulletin’s advisory board, which at different points in time included Nobel laureates and other world-renowned scientists. Since its appearance in 1947, the clock with its shifting hand has appeared on the cover of The Bulletin 25 times.
1990
1993
2001
Not without Hesitation
Analysts decided to move the clock’s hand for the first time in 1949, when the USSR conducted their first nuclear weapons testing, ending the US monopoly on nuclear weapons. The clock read 23:57. The Bulletin put it this way: “We do not advise Americans that doomsday is near and that they can expect atomic bombs to start falling on their heads a month or a year from now; but we think they have reason to be deeply alarmed and to be prepared for grave decisions.”
Although the global situation was growing ever more perilous, and the aggravated tensions between the US and the USSR marked the beginning of the Cold War, the hands of the Doomsday Clock did not budge again until 1953. The shift by one minute to 23:58 was instigated by the appearance of a new weapon—the hydrogen bomb—on both sides of the conflict. In the West, the Soviet project was known as “Joe 4,” after the US media’s nickname for Joseph Stalin (“Uncle Joe”). “Only a few more swings of the pendulum, and, from Moscow to Chicago, atomic explosions will strike midnight for Western civilization,” wrote The Bulletin.
Steps Towards Nuclear Disarmament
Then came the “thaw” — the mortal enemies realized the danger that nuclear weapons posed to civilization, and they made the first attempts at negotiations. Additionally, the scientific community became more active, establishing the Pugwash Conferences on Science and World Affairs in 1957, which advocated for disarmament and international security. All this led to the hands of the clock being turned back for the first time in 1960, and midnight was now all of seven minutes away. The time was now 23:53.
The Cuban Missile Crisis: A Tense Standoff
The hands of the clock remained fixed even at the peak of the Cold War, during the Cuban Missile Crisis in October 1962. For two weeks, relations between the USSR and the United States were very, very tense. To put it simply, the world was on the brink of a nuclear war, the instigating act being the US deployments of nuclear weapons to Italy and Turkey and the failed Bay of Pigs operation in 1961, to which the Soviet Union responded by transferring nuclear missiles to the territory of their ally, Cuba. Analysts did not consider it necessary to change the position of the hand because the public at that time knew very little about this very short, albeit tense, stage.
The first musical reference to the Doomsday Clock was in the song “7 Minutes to Midnight,” written by Pete Wylie in September 1980.
A year later, on August 5, 1963, the United Kingdom, the United States, and the USSR signed a treaty limiting the testing of nuclear weapons. The atomic scientists greatly appreciated this step and gave humanity another five minutes — 23:48.
Expansion of the Nuclear Arena
However, these five minutes were soon lost in 1968, when new major players entered the nuclear arena: France and China. The situation was complicated by regional wars: the US deployed troops to Vietnam; Pakistan and India fought over the disputed territories of Jammu and Kashmir; in the Middle East, the Arab-Israeli conflict flared up, then faded, but never completely ended. Fearing international anarchy, for the very first time The Bulletin changed the position of the clock in response to non-nuclear threats.
The UN Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons in 1969 put the clock at an encouraging ten minutes before midnight. Only Israel, India, and Pakistan refused to ratify the agreement. Two more minutes were added in 1972 for the signing of the USSR and US treaty SALT-1, which limited strategic weapons.
Against the backdrop of the relative pacification of the globe’s main rivals, the USSR and the United States, nuclear tensions increased between China and India. China had become a nuclear power in the 1960s, and India’s confrontation with Pakistan continued. On May 18, 1974, India secretly tested its first nuclear bomb, “Smiling Buddha.” The time on the clock changed — 23:51.
In 1984, the Australian rock band Midnight Oil released their song “Minutes to Midnight.” The album cover depicted the city of Sydney after a nuclear explosion. Later, group leader Peter Garrett was elected to parliament as a representative of the Nuclear Disarmament Party before being appointed Minister for the Environment.
Doomsday Clock | The “Nucleo-holics”
In the early 1980s, the time on the Doomsday Clock again reached no less than seven minutes to midnight, but the situation was still turbulent. The process of disarmament stalled, and the first major terrorist attacks took place in the world: in Bologna, Italy, and during the Oktoberfest in Germany. After the failure of the SALT treaties between the US and USSR, The Bulletin called them “nucleo-holics—drunks who continue to insist that the drink being consumed is positively ‘the last one,’ but who can always find a good excuse for ‘just one more round.’”
