Doomsday Clock 100 seconds to midnight – college students think the world is much closer to annihilation

Shortly before the Bulletin moved its Doomsday Clock from two minutes to midnight to 100 seconds to midnight, Professor Jean du Preez polled his winter-term class at Middlebury College to find out where students thought the Clock should be set; most of the students recommended a setting between 60 and 90 seconds to midnight. Du Preez also asked the students to come up with slogans for the Clock, and then the students voted for their favorites. Below are a few of the slogans the students wrote. Choose your favorite, and we’ll tell you which one the class picked, along with the latest poll results. We also invite you to submit your own slogan in the comments section below.

Two years after moving the metaphorical minute hand of its Doomsday Clock to within two minutes of midnight — a figurative two-minute warning for all humanity — the science and security board of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists revealed Thursday that it has moved that minute hand another 20 seconds closer to the midnight hour. Never since the clock’s 1947 Cold War debut has it come so close to the putative doomsday annihilation represented by the 12 a.m. hour.

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“It is 100 seconds to midnight,” declared the Bulletin’s president and CEO, Rachel Bronson, at a Washington, D.C., news conference as a black cloth was lifted to reveal the clock. “The Doomsday Clock is a globally recognized indicator of the vulnerability of our existence,” said former Irish President Mary Robinson at the annual clock-unveiling ceremony. “It’s a striking metaphor for the precarious state of the world, but most frighteningly, it’s a metaphor backed by rigorous scientific scrutiny.”  –Bulletin  – NPR