doomsday clock
Catastrophe countdown metaphor
The Doomsday Clock is a symbolic timepiece maintained by the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, representing how close humanity stands to catastrophic destruction—originally nuclear war, now including climate change and other existential threats.
Midnight represents global catastrophe.
The clock is periodically adjusted based on world events: The Doomsday Clock moved to 90 seconds to midnight.
The phrase sometimes appears lowercase and generalized to mean any countdown toward disaster.
- midnightTwelve o'clock at night
- apocalypseTotal civilizational collapse
- nuclearOf atomic energy
- nuclear warArmed conflict using fission weapons
- countdownBackward enumeration to zero
two minutes · end times · scientists · bulletin · warning · existential threat · mushroom cloud · cold war · extinction · atomic · fallout · minutes · hands · threat · catastrophe · bomb · radiation · annihilation
- countdownscountdown timer, T-minus, tick tock, ticking, seconds
- Cold WarBerlin Wall, Iron Curtain, arms race, Warsaw Pact, Cuban Missile Crisis
- Nuclear Armsnuclear arms, nukes, atom bomb, nuclear warheads, hydrogen bombs
- Superweaponsnuclear bomb, atomic bomb, hydrogen bomb, neutron bomb, thermonuclear bomb
doomsday clocknew beginning
Chance to start again
springtime · dawn · Year One · golden age
doomsday clockgreen light
Authorization to proceed
nuclear disarmament · détente · global stability · pax · sanctuary
doomsday clockutopia
Imagined perfect society
promised land · heaven on earth · paradise · Garden of Eden · New Jerusalem
doom, doomsday, dooms, doomed, dooming, clock, clocks, clocked, clocking