Doomsday Clock nears midnight ...

My god, human beings can be so ridiculously sensationalist sometimes ...

"The keepers of the so-called Doomsday Clock - which counts down to nuclear Armageddon - will on Wednesday move its hands forward for the first time in four years.
The Bulletin Of The Atomic Scientists magazine said it was now the "most perilous period" since the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

Since 1947 the clock, with midnight representing nuclear apocalypse, has appeared on the cover of the magazine, which was founded by University of Chicago physicists alarmed about the dangers of the nuclear age.

The minute hand was last moved in February 2002, when it was pushed forward by two minutes, to seven minutes to midnight.

Theoretical physicist Stephen Hawking will be among scientists who speak when the Bulletin announces how far the hands will be moved this time. The magazine said the "major step" reflected growing concerns about a "second nuclear age" marked by grave threats including nuclear ambitions in Iran and North Korea and unsecured nuclear materials in Russia and elsewhere.

The continuing "launch-ready" status of 2,000 of the 25,000 nuclear weapons held by the US and Russia, was also a problem, as was escalating terrorism.

The magazine said new pressure from climate change for expanded civilian nuclear power could increase proliferation risks.

The closest the clock has come to midnight is just two minutes away. That was in 1953, when the US and the Soviet Union tested thermonuclear devices within nine months of each other.
In 1991, in a wave of optimism at the end of the Cold War, it was set the furthest away, at 17 minutes to midnight."