The latest setting is a chilling warning to humankind that they are as close to annihilation as in 1954 — the most dangerous year ever — from nuclear weapons and climate breakdown
THE Doomsday Clock has been kept on its perilous setting of two minutes to midnight — signalling how human civilisation is teetering on the brink of annihilation.
Fears about the possibility of a nuclear war in what was described as the "perfect storm" have meant the symbolic time piece remains terrifyingly close to the hour heralding the end of human civilisation, the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists said today.
The announcement today means the clock remains the closest to midnight it has ever been, with the last time it was set to this time in 1953 — the year in which the US brought the world to the brink with its testing of the hydrogen bomb.
Explaining the reasons behind the decision to keep the setting the same, Rachel Bronson, president and chief executive of the The Bulletin Of The Atomic Scientists, said the world had entered the "period of the new abnormal".
She added: "This is unsustainable and unsettling.
"We appear to be normalising a very dangerous world in terms of the risks of nuclear war and climate change.
"This new abnormal is simply too volatile and too dangerous to accept.
"Recognising this grim reality we would like to announce it is still two minutes to midnight, remaining the closest to midnight the clock has ever been set."
Speaking after the setting, former US Defence Secretary William Perry, who is chairman of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists Board, said: “The danger is that we will blunder into a nuclear war.
“That was the danger during the cold War but certainly the danger now.”
We appear to be normalising a very dangerous world in terms of the risks of nuclear war and climate change
Rachel Bronson, The Bulletin Of The Atomic Scientist president
Devised in 1947 by the respected journal the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists, the symbolic clock face signifies the likelihood of the apocalypse.
The closer the time to midnight, the closer the world is considered to be to catastrophe.
Last year it was moved so the time read two minutes to midnight.
One of the events that made the world dangerous happened last October, when US President Donald Trump pulled out of the 30-year-old Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty because he said his opposite, Vladimir Putin of Russia, was no longer compiling with it.
Now it is widely feared the collapse of the INF would set the stage for a repeat of a Cold War showdown in the 1980s, when the US and the Soviet Union both deployed intermediate-range missiles on the continent.
Such missiles were seen as particularly destabilising as they only take a few minutes to reach their targets.
The danger is that we will blunder into a nuclear war
William Perry, chairman of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists Board
This leaves no time for decision-makers and raising the likelihood of a global nuclear conflict over a false launch warning.
Putin has warned that if the US deploys such weapons in Europe after abandoning the treaty, Russia will respond by targeting nations that would host them.
And while Trump may believe there is “no longer a nuclear threat from North Korea” after his summit with Kim Jong-un last summer, there is no evidence to suggest this is true.
Tensions between the Western world and Russia and China have also soured over the past year.
Experts believe the Baltic States, Ukraine and Syria are danger zones in a world more unpredictable than during the Cold War.
This is because of Russian meddling as President Vladimir Putin attempts to recreate a superpower sphere of influence it lost after the fall of the Soviet Union in the early 1990s.
Meanwhile in Asia, China has unveiled its largest rise in defence spending in three years as it bids to dominate the world with a vast superpower military.
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