Rieser moves the Doomsday Clock forward five minutes

In this story:

• 'Failure of world diplomacy'
• Closest to Armageddon since 1988
• History of the Doomsday Clock
• Related stories and sites

CHICAGO (CNN) -- Doomsday drew closer Thursday and is now just nine minutes away, according to the keepers of the symbolic Doomsday Clock.

Worried by recent nuclear test explosions in India and Pakistan, the minute hand of the clock -- a measure of how close humankind is to destroying itself -- was advanced to 11:51 p.m., with midnight representing a worldwide nuclear holocaust.

The news conference, featuring the advancing of the clock 6 minutes VXtreme video

Since 1995, the clock had been set at 14 minutes until midnight.

The decision on what the Doomsday Clock should read is made by officials from the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, a bimonthly journal published at the University of Chicago that has been tracking the world's slide toward nuclear confrontation since 1947.

The organization also posted its Doomsday Clock update on its Web site.

Nuclear tensions flared on the Indian subcontinent May 11 when India detonated a series of nuclear devices. Pakistan responded with its own nuclear tests two weeks later.

But in announcing that "doomsday" was five minutes closer, Leonard Rieser, chairman of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, also cited:

• The "failure of world diplomacy" on the nuclear arms issue. ( 204K/17 sec. AIFF or WAV sound)
  
  
• An increased danger that international efforts to keep other nations from developing nuclear weapons might collapse.

"The consequences of a possible nuclear exchange between India and Pakistan are unforeseeable but if barriers to the use of nuclear weapons ever fail, the physical, economic and psychological security of every person on the planet will be threatened," Rieser, a physicist, said at a Chicago news conference.

Another reason for the journal's concern is the massive nuclear arsenals held by the United States and Russia, said Vice Chairman Leon Lederman. ( 179K/12 sec. AIFF or WAV sound)

Thursday's adjustment of the Doomsday Clock is the closest to Armageddon the clock has been since 1988, before the collapse of the Soviet Union.

Despite a U.S.-Soviet treaty that year to eliminate intermediate-range nuclear forces, the clock was moved ahead to six minutes before midnight.

The five-minute advance announced Thursday was not unprecedented The last time it happened was in 1968 after France and China acquired nuclear weapons and wars were being fought in the Mideast, the Indian subcontinent and in Vietnam.

Then, the clock went from 11:48 p.m. to 11:53 p.m.

History of the Doomsday Clock

When the U.S. and Soviets tested bombs in the '50s, the clock was pushed to two minutes before midnight

The Doomsday Clock was created in 1947 -- two years after the United States used nuclear weapons against Japan in World War II -- and set at seven minutes to midnight.

Since then, the clock has been moved both forward and backward, 15 times in all, reflecting international tensions and the developments of the nuclear age.

The closest it ever came to "doomsday" was in 1953, not long after both the United States and the Soviet Union both tested hydrogen bombs. In that year, the clock read two minutes until midnight.

The nuclear scientists were breathing just a little easier by 1991 when the clock was pushed back to its farthest point so far -- 17 minutes until midnight -- because the United States and the Soviet Union signed the long-stalled Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START) and announced further unilateral cuts in tactical and strategic nuclear weapons.

The 1991 signing of the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty pushed the clock back to 17 minutes before midnight

The most recent adjustment -- when the clock was moved forward three minutes in 1995 -- was due to:

• Delays in implementing START II.
• Delays in ratifying other chemical and biological weapons agreements.
• A boom in arms trading throughout the world.
• The stockpiling of more than a thousand tons of weapons-grade uranium and plutonium, much of it under inadequate security.

The Doomsday Clock first began ticking beneath a monument at the University of Chicago where nuclear energy was born in 1941 during the Manhattan Project.

The atomic scientists who founded the Bulletin -- and created the clock -- did so in hopes of ensuring that nuclear weapons were never again used in war.

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