THE DOOMSDAY clock edging closer to midnight will show the world has reached the most dangerous moment ever, a nuclear scientist has warned.
Dr Pavel Podvig, an expert on Weapons of Mass Destruction at the UN, told The Sun that nuclear war is a "truly terrifying prospect" - and something that must be ruled out.
He warned of the dangers of "unstable personalities" being in charge of nuclear arsenals - including Russian despot Vladimir Putin and North Korea's Kim Jong-un.
The Doomsday Clock operates as a wake-up call for the world about global threats such as nuclear war, dangerous technologies and mass health concerns.
Scientists behind the clock announced on Tuesday they decided to not change the time as it remained at 90 seconds away from midnight.
The update came at 3pm UK time or 10am local time in Washington DC by the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists, which organises the clock.
The Doomsday Clock was left untouched, reflecting a “continuing and unprecedented level of risk”, according to the Bulletin.
It is the same number as last year, when it marked the closest to midnight it has ever been.
The scientists who created the clock stressed that choosing not to modify it should not lead to complacency as the world sits on the brink of nuclear Armageddon.
Pavel also said that unpredictable "accidents" in warzones could lead to uncontrolled escalation and warned of the deaths of billions of people.
He told The Sun: "The number of nuclear weapons that exist, they would have the potential to end the life as we know it, and the numbers are truly terrifying.
"It runs from the tens of millions of people dead in that in the matter of hours. And I've seen estimates that suggest that the consequences, like the nuclear winter, would could lead to the death of billions of people.
"I've seen the simulations and estimates, and the numbers, and there could be 40 to 50 million people dead in the matter of a couple of hours.
"So it is [a] truly terrifying prospect... That's something we want to rule out to make sure that this could never happen."
But Pavel did say that a nuclear war is unlikely to happen - despite Vladimir Putin's threats.
He told The Sun that it wouldn't make "any military sense" for Russia to unleash nukes on the battlefield.
"We are not there at the point when the very existence of Russia is in danger. We are not anywhere [near] there.
"If you think about it the only way that nuclear weapons could be used in this kind of war they could be used basically to shock the opponents into surrender.
"And the problem with that is, of course, that this shock would have to be shocking enough, and that would have to involve literally killing tens, and maybe hundreds of thousands of people."
Although the threshold for making a decision to unleash nuclear weapons is high, they exist and they can be used, Pavel said.
"We can talk about this threshold, and we can talk about the how difficult it would be to cross it," he said.
"Still, I think the physical reality is that those weapons are there, and [they] can be used. They are there to be used, and the danger, of course, is that there are scenarios of escalation.
"I do believe that the the concern is there, and the clock reflected that concern. We are at a dangerous point."
Pavel explained how escalation could lead to nuclear war.
"My worst case scenario would be that Russia at some point may decide to escalate the conflict and actually attack native states in one way or another," he said.
"And then we we may enter into this kind of a cycle of responses that could start.
"And I'm sure that if something like that would happen, it would start with the conventional conflict of national attacks.
"But then again, there are ways for this this kind of exchange to escalate to a nuclear level."
Other scenarios include the "unstable personalities" in charge of nuclear weapons - including Putin and North Korea's Kim.
And another is unpredictable "accidents", particularly in active warzones.
"There has been military activity near a nuclear plant in the Ukraine and there's been concern that missiles could could hit those plants and trigger some kind of fallout," he said.
"My impression is that people are concerned about accidents. The nature of accidents is exactly that nobody can predict them.
"And the sometimes events could develop in unpredictable ways, as I said. If it is possible to imagine that at some point some kind of an accident... could lead to this kind of a response that could lead us somewhere in very, very unfortunate directions."
Pavel painted a chilling picture of Vlad's access to weapons of mass destruction.
He said: "There is a button on the president's desk that he could push and everything fly.
"We don't know exactly how people would behave in these kind of circumstances.
"But it is very difficult to imagine the president summoning his generals and basically telling them, 'okay, you just go ahead and you just kill tens or hundreds of thousands of people in one go'."
Pavel Podvig is a senior researcher on weapons of mass destruction at the United Nations Institute for Disarmament Research.
His areas of expertise include nuclear disarmament, arms control, fissile materials, verification, nuclear security.
It comes as Kim Jong-un and Vladimir Putin have sent a chilling warning to the West .
North Korea said it has agreed to further strategic and tactical cooperation with Russia as both countries ramp up a united front against the United States.
Warnings of a potential new world order had already been given by Putin's warmonger foreign minister Sergei Lavrov, who told the West that their time of "global domination" is over.
And veteran Russian MP Alexander Osovtsov said World War Three has already begun for the West's enemies and "we're all participating in it".
Meanwhile, Baltic states are racing to bolster defences on their borders with Russia and Belarus as Europe braces for an all-out war.
Admiral Rob Bauer, chief of NATO's military committee, has called on the West to "prepare for an era of war" - adding that the alliance "needs a warfighting transformation".
