Doomsday clock: 'Billions' would die if nuclear war broke out - expert

Record ID: 1707729

  • Title: Doomsday clock: 'Billions' would die if nuclear war broke out - expert
  • Date: 23rd January 2023
  • Summary: LONDON, ENGLAND, UNITED KINGDOM (JANUARY 23, 2023) (ORIGINALLY 4:3) (REUTERS) (SOUNDBITE) (English) EXPERT ON EXISTENTIAL THREAT, CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY, PAUL INGRAM, SAYING: "The Doomsday Clock has been around for a number of decades. It emerged at the beginning of the Cold War to give a sense of the urgency to achieve nuclear disarmament and to climb out of the abyss that
  • Embargoed: 6th February 2023 12:00
  • Keywords: AI China Taiwan Doomsday clock Paul Ingram Russia Ukraine war climate change nuclear war
  • Location: VARIOUS LOCATIONS
  • City: VARIOUS LOCATIONS
  • Country: UK
  • Topics: Conflicts/War/Peace,Europe
  • Reuters ID: LVA002443723012023RP1
  • Aspect Ratio: 16:9
  • Story Text: The Doomsday Clock, created by the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists as an indicator of the world’s susceptibility to apocalypse, should be taken closer to midnight this year, an expert on existential threat told Reuters.
    Paul Ingram, senior research associate at the Centre for the Study of Existential Risk at the University of Cambridge, said on Monday (January 23) the threat of nuclear war and climate change were among factors likely to push the arms of the symbolic clock closer to "doom".
    Ingram, who is not among the scientists to decide the position the clock, said if nuclear war were to break out, billions of people would die due to the follow on effects on the climate, that could cause mass starvation and other disasters.
    "It's not just a risk of the detonations, the blasts, the radiation, which everybody is aware of, but it's the global climatic effects that are likely to kill the most people from a nuclear war, probably in the billions," he told Reuters.
    There was, however, hope amidst the looming concern of disaster, Ingram said.
    "I think as the threats get larger and that we become more aware and we understand them better, there is hope," he said. "I think there is a growing awareness, I detect, that business as usual is just not an option."
    Atomic scientists will announce whether the time of the so-called doomsday clock will change at 10:00 am (1500 GMT) on Tuesday (January 24).
    The bulletin was founded by scientists who helped develop the United States’ first atomic weapons.
    Its Science and Security Board decides on the clock’s hands in consultation with its Board of Sponsors, which includes Nobel laureates.
    When the clock was created in 1947, it was set at seven minutes to midnight.
    The clock moved to 100 seconds to midnight in 2020 and remained there in the 2021 announcement.
    (Production: Aiden Nulty, Lucy Marks)
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