What happens when the Doomsday clock strikes midnight? | News World

As you read this, humanity is merely 85 seconds away from disaster.

This week, leading experts set the Doomsday Clock, a stark symbol of scientific worries about humanity’s, well, doom.

Wars, climate change, disruptive technologies, and authoritarian governments, amongst other things, prompted them to set it to 85 seconds to midnight.

It’s the gravest outlook ever on Earth’s future from the timepiece’s creators, a nonprofit called the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists.

But does this mean you should grab your toilet roll and Google your nearest bunker?

What’s the Doomsday Clock?

Very first thing to know is that, no, it’s not actually a physical clock. It’s only a metaphor.

But it surely’s not a metaphor for a tragic blue sky – if the symbolic clock strikes midnight, humanity has failed to stop an Apocalypse.

Because it was created in 1947, experts in security, nuclear tech, climate and other fields have met to maneuver the clock hands forwards and backwards.

What would occur if the Doomsday Clock struck midnight?

Let’s say the strike of doom happens – it’s 12am. What happens then?

David Orson Newton, a combat veteran and technologist, tells Metro that this isn’t something to have a good time like Recent Yr’s Eve is.

‘A “post-midnight” world doesn’t signify fast human extinction, but a dangerous threshold beyond which global damage becomes irreversible and recovery uncertain, because the institutions, norms, and safeguards that when stabilised civilisation begin to fail,’ he says.

Such disasters include, but are usually not limited to: a nuclear war, climate catastrophe or an AI-facilitated collapse of the world’s power grids.

In other words, it’s the purpose of no return, bringing the dawn of a world dominated by the necessity to survive.

As Newton says: ‘Humanitarian conditions deteriorate for thousands and thousands, environmental systems cross critical tipping points and powerful technologies outpace our ability to manipulate them safely,’ he adds.

The creator of Seconds to Midnight says that, of all things, a post-midnight world within the UK would likely mean higher taxes.

The British government could be facing an increasingly uninhabitable world, a danger officials can only ever be so prepared for.

‘We could be living with an edge in each day life that almost all within the UK have never known,’ Newton says.

Newton says such a life would consist of normal phone signal, web and electricity outages.

Stockpiling up to a few days’ supply of food and water could be essential, as doomsday preppers have previously told Metro.

Newton, whose time in the military brought him to Afghanistan and Iraq, predicts that national service would also likely be brought back.

Climate wars – resembling over water insecurity or mass migration – could erupt between survivalist countries.

‘As a nation, our communities would gravitate to a notion of service,’ Newton says.

‘From schools to workplaces, service in all its guises could be respected and lauded once more.

‘Why? Because we are going to all know someone who either serves or has served.’

While evenings spent relaxing watching Netflix, Newton says, will probably be routinely interrupted by government public service announcements.

‘Briefly, the relative peace we have now enjoyed that many parts of the world have lived without for a long time would come to an end,’ Newton warns.

‘We’d move right into a recent climate for the UK, metaphorically and literally, one among heightened anxiety, stress and price.’

‘This point in itself is Armageddon’

Climate expert and forecaster Jim NR Dale had a similarly… cheery overview of what a post-midnight world would appear to be.

Our continued reliance on fossil fuels, which cough out planet-warming gases, is changing the world little by little.

Scientists like Dale have long warned that this implies hotter summers, wetter storms, higher seas and fierce wildfires on the cards.

It’s because the complicated balancing act the Earth has to keep up life (just like the coral reef and permafrost) is being tipped over.

Dake told Metro that the world becoming 3°C warmer, compared with preindustrial levels, is ‘inevitable’ inside the following few a long time.

‘This point in itself is Armageddon,’ Dale said, ‘but when we move by 4°C, then that basically is the tip.’

By ‘end’, Dale says this might mean ‘water wars’. All continents have undergone high levels of drying since 2002, increasing water insecurity.

With limited water, this might make growing crops and tending to farmyard animals tricky.

‘Hence, an incredibly loud ticktock,’ Dale says.

Why are we now even closer to disaster?

Listed here are some events from 2025 that scientists said had informed this yr’s Doomsday Clock setting:

Get in contact with our news team by emailing us at webnews@metro.co.uk.

For more stories like this, check our news page.

MORE: I’ve suffered from thinning hair, and this Centred complement has brought it back to life

MORE: Vladimir Putin finally agrees to not bomb Ukraine – for one entire week

MORE: Pandora’s recent Bridgerton collection is pure Regency glam – and just in time for season 4