The Doomsday Clock is a clock created by scientists of when they believe the world is going to end. It doesn’t say the exact day or anything, but the closer it gets to midnight means they believe we are getting closer to the world ending. The last time the doomsday clock moved was in 2015 from five minutes to three minutes, which is clearly a much bigger difference than now of half a minute. Their reasoning that time was from climate change and nuclear weapons. The Doomsday Clock originally began in 1947 during the cold war and was set seven minutes to midnight but, within the next two years was changed to three minutes to midnight with the beginning of the nuclear arms race. After the cold war ended in 1991, the clock jumped up to 17 minutes which is a big seven-minute jump. After that, it has just slowly declined, except in 2010 when it jumped up one minute to six minutes from the reduction of nuclear arsenals. Now, with Trump becoming president they have moved the time closer to minute by half a minute to two and a half minutes, the closest it’s been to midnight since 1953. When they decide to update the Doomsday Clock they use many different factors such as, climate change, nuclear threats, biosecurity, and more.

The Doomsday Clock time is decided by the Science and Security Board which consists of 13 different men and women. Lynn Eden Ph.D. in sociology, Rob Ewing Ph.D. in geology, Sivan Kartha in theoretical science (which is a very controversial science since it is not based off experiments), Herb Lin Ph.D. in physics, Suzet Mckinney Ph.D. in public health, Steven Miller Ph.D. biology, Raymond T Pierrehumbert B.S. in Physics, Ramamurti Rajaraman Ph.D. in theoretical physics (again, controversial since it’s not based on experiements), Robert Rosner Ph.D. in physics, Jennier Sims Ph.D. in advanced international studies, Susan Solomon Ph.D. in chemistry, Richard Somerville Ph.D. in meteorology, Sharon Squassoni master’s degrees in public management and national security strategy, and David Titley Ph.D. in meteorology. So out of all 13 of those people, there’s two people that actually went to school to learn about the climate, two people who are in theoretical sciences, and four people who have degrees in things that have no relation to climate change, nuclear threats, or biosecurity.

So what exactly is the point of the Doomsday Clock? According to the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists, it’s just to internationally help recognize how close we are to destroying our civilization. My problem with this is it just seems like a scare tactic. They are trying to scare us and think the world is going to end soon if we don’t clean up our act, but this time they’re just trying to scare Donald Trump. I’m sorry, but a new president is not the reason the world is going to end. Instead of trying to freak people out, they should be showing us what WE are doing to the Earth and what WE can do to help it. Trump may say a lot but do we really think he’s going to use our nuclear weapons? First of all, many people around him would be advising him not to use them. Then, the president can’t do this until a doctor comes in to make sure he’s not exhausted, or something health wise is impacting his decision. Next, the decision would have to go through a huge chain of people. And finally, the president would most likely be declared unfit to be president unless he had a very, very good reason to launch it. President Trump cannot just sit down one day and decide that he’s going to nuclear bomb someone so get that out of your heads. So it is very farfetched for the Science and Security Board to say that because of Donald Trump’s comments over nuclear weapons that we are closer to ending the world.

Finally, the only person who knows the world is going to end is God. None of us can guess how close we are or when it is going to happen, it is all in his hands. “Heaven and earth will pass away, but My words will never pass away. No one knows about that day or hour, not even the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father (Mark 24:35-36).”