Is midnight upon us? Doomsday Clock panel to set risk of global catastrophe

In January 2021, the panel left the Doomsday clock at 100 seconds. Photograph: Thomas Gaulkin/Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists/PA

On 24 October 1962, an American nuclear chemist, Harrison Brown, started to pen a guest editorial for the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists just as the Cuban missile crisis reached its climax.

“I am writing on a plane en route from Los Angeles to Washington and for all I know this editorial … may never be published,” Brown said. “Never in history have people and nations been so close to death and destruction on such a vast scale. Midnight is upon us.”