CHICAGO — The Doomsday Clock – the symbolic apocalyptic reminder of how close we are to global catastrophe– was pushed another four seconds closer to midnight, from 89 seconds to 85 seconds.

The Science and Security Board of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists announced their prognostication Tuesday, after meeting this week in Chicago to deliberate the Doomsday Clock.

“A year ago, we warned that the world was perilously close to global disaster and that any delay in reversing course increased the probability of catastrophe. Rather than heed this warning, Russia, China, the United States, and other major countries have instead become increasingly aggressive, adversarial, and nationalistic,” the scientists said in a Doomsday Clock statement.

The scientists cited the collapse of “hard-won global understandings “accelerating a winner-takes-all great power competition,” which they said undermines the international cooperation critical to reducing the risks of nuclear war, climate change, misuse of biotechnology, as well as artificial intelligence, and other apocalyptic dangers.

“Far too many leaders have grown complacent and indifferent, in many cases adopting rhetoric and policies that accelerate rather than mitigate these existential risks,” the scientists warned. “Because of this failure of leadership, the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists Science and Security Board today sets the Doomsday Clock at 85 seconds to midnight, the closest it has ever been to catastrophe. “

At the beginning of 2025 the Science and Security board said there was a “glimmer of hope” when incoming President Donald Trump made efforts to halt the Russian-Ukraine war and even suggests that major powers pursue “denuclearization.”

Over the course of 2025, however, negative trends—old and new—intensified, involving at least three regional conflicts involving nuclear powers all threatening to escalate. Citing the Russia-Ukraine War, the conflict between India and Pakistan amid nuclear brinkmanship, and last summer’s Israel and U.S. aerial attacks on Iranian nuclear facilities.

Competition among powers has become a “full-blown arms race,” evidenced by increasing numbers of nuclear warheads and platforms in China, and the modernization of nuclear delivery systems in the United States, Russia and China, the scientists said.

“New START, is set to expire, ending nearly 60 years of efforts to constrain nuclear competition between the world’s two largest nuclear countries,” according to the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists. “In addition, the US administration may be considering the resumption of explosive nuclear testing, further accelerating a renewed nuclear arms race.”

Four areas of the life sciences have increased potentially catastrophic risks during the past year. In December 2024, scientists from nine countries announced the recognition of a potential to all life on Earth: the laboratory synthesis of “mirror life.”

“Those scientists urged that mirror bacteria and other mirror cells—composed of chemically synthesized molecules that are mirror-images of those found on Earth much as a left hand mirrors a right hand—not be created, because a self-replicating mirror cell could plausibly evade normal controls on growth, spread throughout all ecosystems, and eventually cause the widespread death of humans, other animals, and plants, potentially disrupting all life on Earth,” the scientist said. “So far, however, the international community has not arrived at a plan to address this risk.”

Up until Tuesday, the clock has been moved 27 times in its 79-year history. The Doomsday Clock was reset at 17 minutes before midnight — the furthest back it has ever been set — due largely to the signing of the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty between the United States and Soviet Union, ending the Cold War.

The closest the hands ever came was two minutes to midnight in 1953, when Russia and the United States were testing hydrogen bombs. Even during the Cuban Missile in 1962, when the world was seemingly on the brink of nuclear war, the clock remained set at seven minutes to midnight.

The Doomsday Clock was created in 1947 as a visual indicator of global apocalypse by the Bulletin, which was founded two years earlier by scientists Albert Einstein, J Robert Oppenheimer and Eugene Rabinowitch, along with other University of Chicago scholars.