ĬListed as 0 in the GBD 2016 but hand search of the literature reveals the disease is endemic In addition, while Iran cannot be considered yet to be a nuclear weapons nation, according to the Nuclear Threat Initiative (NTI), it has an advanced nuclear program, including substantial uranium enrichment capabilities.
Together, these countries account for almost 15,000 nuclear warheads. Today, the Arms Control Association identifies nine nations-United States, United Kingdom, France, Israel, Pakistan, India, Russia, China, and North Korea-hosting nuclear warhead inventories ( Fig 1). As of 2018, we have reached two minutes until midnight, the closest we have ever gotten since 1953 when the United States detonated its first hydrogen bomb. In the aftermath of World War II and the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the Science and Security Board of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists established the Doomsday Clock, meant to symbolize the time we have left until global nuclear annihilation strikes at midnight. “Each year that human activities continue to dump carbon dioxide into the atmosphere nearly irreversibly ratchets up the total of human suffering and ecosystem destruction arising from global climate disruption,” said Raymond Pierrehumbert, a professor of physics at the University of Oxford.New information reveals that the 10 nations currently producing nuclear weapons also suffer with approximately one-half of the world’s disease burden from several neglected diseases, including intestinal helminth infections, dengue, and measles. World leaders pledged to curb planet-warming emissions at the UN climate summit in Glasgow last year, but experts and scientists at the Bulletin event on Thursday stressed the need for urgent action, rather than verbal promises. And in the sphere of biosecurity, trends point toward less, rather than more cooperation to identify and manage or mitigate threats.” In climate change, rhetorical progress is not yet matched with swift actions. “And with China, efforts to craft a strategic stability are in their infancy. “In the current environment, where we have neither arms race stability nor crisis stability, tensions over Ukraine loom ominously,” Squassoni said.
Still, Sharon Squassoni, co-chair of the Bulletin Science and Security Board, said the agreement is “a small down payment on strategic stability so desperately needed” between Washington and Moscow. The United States and Russia agreed to extend the treaty last year. That was in 1991 when US President George HW Bush and his Soviet counterpart Mikhail Gorbachev signed the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START) to reduce the number of nuclear weapons and ballistic missiles. The farthest the clock has been from midnight was 17 minutes. The organisation had been founded two years earlier by Albert Einstein, J Robert Oppenheimer, Eugene Rabinowitch and University of Chicago scientists. The Doomsday Clock was created by the Bulletin in 1947. “We must continue to push the hands of the clock away from midnight,” she said. Speaking at a virtual event unveiling this year’s clock, Bronson called for action to “ensure a safer and healthier planet”.
Before that, the closest the clock had been to midnight – a metaphor for an enormous worldwide catastrophe – was at the height of the Cold War in 1953. The clock had edged to two minutes to midnight in 2018 and then to 100 seconds in 2020. In fact, it reflects the judgement of the board that we are stuck in a perilous moment, one that brings neither stability nor security.” “The Doomsday Clock is holding steady at 100 seconds to midnight,” said Bulletin president Rachel Bronson. The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, an organisation whose aim is to disseminate information to “reduce man-made threats”, announced the unchanged doomsday warning on Thursday, saying that while 2021 brought some good developments, it also ushered in new challenges. The metaphorical Doomsday Clock, which symbolises how close humans are to extinction, has remained alarmingly close to midnight – at 100 seconds – for the third year, with scientists warning against the threats of nuclear war, climate change and deadly diseases.