85 seconds to midnight
Eighty-five seconds to midnight is a warning, not a verdict. What happens next depends on what we do.
On 27 January, the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists moved the Doomsday Clock to 85 seconds to midnight. It is the closest the Clock has ever been to global catastrophe. Following the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962, widely regarded as the closest the world has come to nuclear war, the Clock stood at seven minutes to midnight in 1963. That comparison alone gives pause for thought.
The Doomsday Clock was created in 1947 by the scientists behind the Manhattan Project, who had helped develop the first atomic weapons and were acutely aware of their consequences. From the outset, it used the imagery of apocalypse and countdown to convey threats to humanity, rooted in scientific judgement rather than speculation.
The Clock is often misunderstood. It is not a prediction. It is a signal. A synthesis of expert judgement across nuclear risk, climate change, disruptive technologies such as Artificial Intelligence, and biological threats. When the hands move closer to midnight, it reflects a judgement that humanity is failing, collectively, to manage the risks it already understands.
What is striking is not just how close we are to midnight, but the direction of travel. Since 2012, the Clock has either moved closer to catastrophe or stood still. It has not moved back once in over a decade. That matters.
At first glance, this can feel distant from everyday concerns. But the Doomsday Clock is not really about apocalypse. It is about system stress. For economists, it acts as a blunt indicator of a global system that is becoming less stable, less predictable, and more exposed to shocks that interact rather than offset each other. When risks cluster and cascade in this way, the costs appear not abstractly, but through volatility, disrupted planning, and weaker long-term growth.
At Davos this year, a recurring theme was uncertainty. Not cyclical uncertainty, but something more structural. Economic policy is increasingly being used as a tool of strategy and security. Trade rules that once seemed settled are fraying. Geopolitical rivalry is reshaping supply chains, investment decisions, and technology policy. Long-standing assumptions about cooperation, coordination, and restraint are weakening.
The Bulletin’s statement reads like an intensified version of the same story. A renewed nuclear arms race. Escalating regional conflicts involving nuclear-armed states, including the war in Ukraine and wider tensions in the Middle East. Climate change accelerating faster than political responses. Artificial Intelligence diffusing more quickly than governance frameworks. Public health capacity and international institutions under sustained strain.
This is what the Bulletin’s scientists and security experts describe as rupture rather than transition.
For governments and economies, this matters because risk is no longer confined to discrete domains. Geopolitical tension spills into energy markets. Energy insecurity feeds inflation and fiscal pressure. Climate shocks disrupt supply chains and labour markets. Technological change delivers productivity gains but also destabilises information systems and trust.
In this environment, planning becomes harder for both governments and businesses. Long-term investment decisions must be made in a world where the range of plausible futures has widened significantly.
So what does all this mean for Wales?
Wales does not control nuclear arsenals or global climate negotiations. But it does influence how global risks translate into economic outcomes at home. For smaller economies, exposure to shock is higher, which makes decisions about energy systems, skills, and institutions central to economic resilience.
Resilience is not about retreating from the world. It is about reducing vulnerability. That means diversified energy systems rather than dependence on a narrow set of fuels or suppliers. It means skills systems that allow workers to adapt as technologies and industries change. It means institutions capable of taking a long-term view rather than lurching from crisis to crisis.
It also means recognising that economic policy can no longer be neatly separated from questions of security, technology, and climate. Decisions about energy infrastructure, digital capability, innovation funding, and education are now part of how societies manage existential risk.
There is a danger, when confronted with something like the Doomsday Clock, of slipping into fatalism. But the Clock has moved backwards before. Eight times, in fact, since its creation in 1947. Those reversals came when political leadership, public pressure, and institutional capacity aligned in the same direction.
That is the final, and perhaps most important, lesson. The Clock is ultimately a measure of human choice. The Bulletin is explicit: national leaders must take the lead, but citizens must insist they do so.
For Wales, insisting does not mean pretending we are larger than we are. It means being clear-eyed about the world we are operating in, and deliberate about the kind of economy we are building within it. An economy that is more resilient, more adaptable, and better able to absorb shocks is not just good economics. Increasingly, it is a form of risk management.
Eighty-five seconds to midnight is a warning, not a verdict. What happens next depends on whether we treat it as background noise, or as a prompt to think more seriously about the long-term choices we are making now.