The Doomsday Clock was never meant as a jump scare; it was a warning label for civilization. Yet as it prepares to move again, the symbolism feels painfully literal. With more than 12,000 nuclear weapons in existence and the New START Treaty about to expire, the two largest nuclear powers are drifting into an era with no binding limits on their most destructive arsenals. At the same time, AI is being woven into military systems that were already flirting with catastrophe through miscalculation and human error.

Experts now speak of “cascading spirals”: China racing to expand its missile forces, the US and Russia responding in kind, and no serious framework to pull any of them back. Add fractured cooperation over wars in Ukraine and the Middle East, and the clock’s hands begin to look less like a metaphor and more like a diagnosis. Still, the clock is moved by people — and it can be pushed back by them too, if leaders choose restraint over brinkmanship and citizens refuse to accept permanent crisis as the new normal.