89 seconds to midnight: WMass group Back from the Brink reacts to resetting of ‘Doomsday Clock’

The Doomsday Clock of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, set at 89 seconds to midnight, is displayed during a news conference at the United States Institute of Peace, Tuesday,  in Washington.

The Doomsday Clock of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, set at 89 seconds to midnight, is displayed during a news conference at the United States Institute of Peace, Tuesday, in Washington. AP

Former Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos, left, and Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists member Robert Socolow reveal the Doomsday Clock, set at 89 seconds to midnight, during a news conference at the United States Institute of Peace, Tuesday, in Washington.

Former Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos, left, and Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists member Robert Socolow reveal the Doomsday Clock, set at 89 seconds to midnight, during a news conference at the United States Institute of Peace, Tuesday, in Washington. AP

Former Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos, left, and Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists member Robert Socolow reveal the Doomsday Clock, set at 89 seconds to midnight, during a news conference at the United States Institute of Peace, Tuesday,  in Washington.

Former Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos, left, and Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists member Robert Socolow reveal the Doomsday Clock, set at 89 seconds to midnight, during a news conference at the United States Institute of Peace, Tuesday, in Washington. AP

The Doomsday Clock of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, set at 89 seconds to midnight, is displayed before a news conference at the United States Institute of Peace, Tuesday,  in Washington.

The Doomsday Clock of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, set at 89 seconds to midnight, is displayed before a news conference at the United States Institute of Peace, Tuesday, in Washington. AP

By EMILEE KLEIN

Staff Writer

Published: 01-29-2025 4:22 PM

NORTHAMPTON — The “Doomsday Clock” is moving forward.

If humanity’s existence was a 24-hour clock where midnight represented the apocalypse, then the world is 89 seconds to midnight, the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists announced during a press conference in Washington, D.C. on Tuesday. This is a second forward from 2024.

“Our main message here is we’re already the closest we’ve ever been to midnight, and now the clock is moving forward,” said Daniel Holz, chair of the Science and Security Board of the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists. “When you’re at this precipice, the one thing you don’t want to do is take a step forward.”

Five members of the western Massachusetts hub of Back from the Brink, a national grassroots coalition dedicated to abolishing nuclear weapons, met over Zoom on Tuesday morning to watch the national announcement. Nobel Peace Prize recipient Ira Helfand, former executive director of Physicians for Social Responsibility Peter Wilk, Bruce Stedman, Henry Rosenberg and John Ramsburgh took Holz’s message as not just a warning, but a call to action.

“We’re going about our business every day as if these threats they don’t exist, and in fact that’s not true,” Helfand said. “People need to not just sit back and be upset, they need to get involved in this campaign and turn those feelings into action.”

Each year, the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists, a nonprofit created by the scientists who led the Manhattan Project to educate professionals and the public on the dangers of nuclear weapons, asks whether humanity is safer now than the previous year, and the how that year compares to the previous 75 years.

The nonprofit’s Science and Security Board named the advancements of nuclear weapons, climate change, biological diseases and disruptive technologies such as artificial intelligence as examples of existential threats to humanity.

The motivator to move the clock forward, however, was not the existence of these dangers, but rather the failure of the global community to mitigate and manage these threats, allowing some to get worse over the past year.

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“We are in a situation where a slew of risks — of arms racing, a loss of guardrails, possibility of further proliferation, possibility of nuclear use — are all rising at the same time,” Science and Security Board member Manpreet Sethi said. “I feel that we might be sleepwalking into nuclear disaster.”

The local Back from the Brink group does not ask the United States to unilaterally dismantle its nuclear arsenal, but it campaigns for the country to initiate these global talks. The group advocates for four other policy changes around nuclear warfare: establish a no-first-use policy to prevent the United States from using nuclear weapons preemptively in a conflict; take nuclear weapons off hair-trigger alert to prevent nuclear warfare without preparation; abandon $1.7 trillion worth of upgrades to the nuclear arsenal; and remove the president’s unchecked authority to launch nuclear war.

“When we oppose the idea that the president should have unchecked authority to use nuclear weapons, this has nothing to do with the man in the Oval Office now,” Back from the Brink member Henry Rosenberg said.

The coalition, Helfand said, began in 2017 by grassroots organizers in Northampton, and has since grown into a national campaign with 22 hubs reaching as far west as Oregon. Ramsburgh added that many leaders in the movement have come from Massachusetts, specifically the western part of the state. This includes Helfand, who accepted the Nobel Peace Prize on behalf of International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons, as well as U.S. Reps. Jim McGovern and Richard Neal, who co-sponsored a bill detailing Back from the Brink’s solutions.

“It shows the really important role that western Massachusetts plays in the national and global movement to create a peaceful future for the whole world,” Ramsburgh said.

The Science and Security Board noted that there are a plethora of ways to turn back the Doomsday Clock, whether that’s continued deployment of renewable energy or investment into public health preparation for the next pandemic. However, by far the most important way to turn back the clock is to get China, Russia and the United States to sit down and talk about possible solutions and compromises on nuclear weapons, along with the other challenges facing humanity.

Former Columbian president Juan Manuel Santos said it will take bold leadership to avert mutually assured destruction, just as President John F. Kennedy exhibited when he called Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev to initiate nuclear talks.

“The vast number of individuals and citizens around the world favor stepping back from the brink of nuclear war, and the international leaders have continued to ignored that concern,” Wilk said. “We need to work on closing this democracy gap.”

Emilee Klein can be reached at eklein@gazettenet.com.