The world is now 85 seconds from apocalypse

The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists has moved the Doomsday Clock to 85 seconds to midnight. This is the most alarming signal issued by the Bulletin since the Clock was created in 1947. From the very beginning, the purpose of the Clock has been to assess the world’s vulnerability to human-made threats and to raise public awareness of the risks associated with political and technological choices on a global scale.

Just one year ago, the Bulletin warned that the planet was on the brink of disaster: 89 seconds to midnight, compared with 17 minutes in 1991, at the end of the Cold War. In just over thirty years, a genuine capital of peace and security accumulated during the bipolar confrontation has been dissipated, sacrificed during the unipolar era. Since then, instead of correcting course, the great powers have accelerated toward a spiral of conflict, competition, and nationalism. The United States and Russia in particular—but also other key actors—have progressively dismantled multilateral agreements built over decades, weakening the international cooperation needed to confront existential risks such as nuclear war, the climate crisis, the misuse of biotechnology, and the uncontrolled development of artificial intelligence.

The year 2025 marked a sharp deterioration in the nuclear landscape. After an initial glimmer of hope linked to attempts to reduce tensions among Russia, Ukraine, and NATO countries, three regional conflicts involving nuclear powers continue to threaten uncontrolled escalation, pushing the international system into genuine uncharted territory. The war in Ukraine has seen the use of new military tactics and repeated Russian allusions to the use of nuclear weapons; tensions between India and Pakistan have escalated into cross-border drone and missile strikes; meanwhile, bombardments carried out by Israel and the United States against Iranian nuclear sites have opened an additional front, whose strategic effects remain difficult to assess and whose consequences could rapidly trigger a new regional conflict. At the same time, the New START treaty— the cornerstone of nuclear arms control between the United States and Russia since 2011—expired on February 5, and no one appears interested in renewing it. For the first time in decades, the two main nuclear powers risk no longer being bound by verifiable international limits, opening the door to a new arms race. China, for its part, remains outside bilateral arms-control mechanisms and refuses to become involved until substantial reductions of U.S. and Russian arsenals are agreed upon.

On the climate front, the situation is equally alarming. Atmospheric CO₂ concentrations have reached 150% of pre-industrial levels; 2024 was the hottest year ever recorded, and 2025 is on track to reach similar values. Rising sea levels, intensifying droughts, floods, and extreme weather events—such as Cyclone Harry, which struck southern Italy between January 19 and 21, 2026—are accompanied by a dramatic human toll: more than 60,000 heat-related deaths in Europe are estimated, along with millions of displaced people in Africa and Latin America. In the face of this, political responses are judged by the Bulletin not only to be insufficient, but in some cases openly destructive. Recent UN climate summits have avoided seriously addressing the phase-out of fossil fuels, while the Trump administration dismantled many climate policies, withdrew from the Paris Agreement, and obstructed the development of renewable energy.

To these risks are added new technological and biological threats. Artificial intelligence, beyond destabilizing the global information ecosystem, could also be used to design new pathogens. According to the Bulletin, all these dynamics are exacerbated by the rise of a worldview based on zero-sum competition—the idea that one actor’s gain necessarily implies another’s loss. This logic turns every global problem into a distributive conflict, blocks international cooperation, weakens political accountability, and accelerates every existing threat.

The final message is unequivocal: the current trajectory is unsustainable. There is still room to step back from the brink—from nuclear arms control to cooperation on climate, biotechnology, and artificial intelligence—but immediate political choices are required.

Leaders of the great powers must act, and citizens must demand that they do so.

Eighty-five seconds to midnight remain.

Published in Il Fatto Quotidiano