Don’t panic or anything, but top scientists have predicted that we only have three minutes until doomsday…well, metaphorically speaking.
The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists recently decided not to move their “Doomsday Clock” back from 3 minutes to midnight, which is their way of saying that if we don’t act soon, we’re all going to die. It’s the closest the figurative clock has been to the end of times since 1983, when the Cold War was at its most contentious.
On January 22, due to the lack of action by world leaders on climate change, these scientists pushed the minute hand of the Doomsday Clock to 11:57 p.m., which means that we only have 3 minutes before end times arrive.
It’s the first time that the hands have been moved since 2012.
The Bulletin formed in 1945 after the terrible Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings killed over 100,000 people. Several physicists got together to make sure that things like this would never happen again.
They quickly came up with the concept of the Doomsday Clock to metaphorically show us how close humanity is to destroying itself. When it made its debut in 1947, it was 7 minutes to midnight.
Despite the recent Paris Climate Change Agreement, the Bulletin has kept the hands where they are, citing tensions between India and Pakistan, the U.S. and Russia, and the U.S. and North Korea.
And even though the Paris Agreement was a significant battle that was fought for environmental protection, scientists say that we still have a long way to go before it will truly impact the climate. Until then, it seems like the planet will continue teetering on the edge, just 180 seconds away from doom.