A Trump tweet, a North Korean saber-rattle, or a terrorist attack won't budge the minute hand, at least not on its own.

Instead, the board meets twice a year to discuss whether to move the hand, based on the overall global situation. It's important to keep in mind that the Doomsday Clock doesn't move in response to specific events. 'The Bulletin’s Science and Security Board has once again assessed progress-actually, lack thereof-in managing the technologies that can bring humanity both relief and harm.' 'In 2017, we saw reckless language in the nuclear realm heat up already dangerous situations and re-learned that minimizing evidence-based assessments regarding climate and other global challenges does not lead to better public policies,' wrote Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists Editor John Mecklin in the announcement. Now it's ticked forward again, to two minutes to midnight - the closest we've come since 1953. The clock stood at 3 minutes to midnight in 2015, then advanced to two-and-a-half minutes last year, the first time the Bulletin had ever used a half-minute. In 2007, the Doomsday Clock started to factor in worries besides nuclear war: climate change is the big one, but the Bulletin's board members also consider bioweapons, rogue AIs, and cyberwarfare. In 1991, with the end of the Cold War and the breakup of the Soviet Union, the clock eased back all the way to 17 minutes to midnight. and the Soviet Union started testing the first hydrogen bombs. The last time the clock stood this close to midnight was in 1953, when the U.S. Since 1947, the Bulletin's board members have adjusted the clock 23 times - sometimes forward, sometimes back. The gesture was an expression of concern about the rapidly-escalating threat of nuclear war with the Soviet Union. They state, 'Despite some modestly positive developments in the climate change arena in the past year, reflecting continued advancement of renewable energy technologies, current efforts are entirely insufficient to prevent a catastrophic warming of Earth.So the clock is, as Sandberg puts it, 'a form of probabilistic rhetoric,' but where did it come from? In 1947, a group of veteran Manhattan Project scientists, the Chicago Atomic Scientists, put a clock, with its minute hand set at seven minutes to midnight, on the cover of their journal, the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists. Although we have made small advancements in this arena, the scientists at the Bulletin assert that we don't need small advancements. They continue by noting that global warming is one of the key threats to our world. These failures of political leadership endanger every person on Earth.' In the release, the scientists assert: 'In 2015, unchecked climate change, global nuclear weapons modernizations, and outsized nuclear weapons arsenals pose extraordinary and undeniable threats to the continued existence of humanity, and world leaders have failed to act with the speed or on the scale required to protect citizens from potential catastrophe.

Of course, the state of our nuclear weapons facilities are a factor as well. The Doomsday Clock was moved to just 3 minutes to midnight. Today, in a press release, they stated that our unchecked interference with Earth's natural systems, and our irresponsible mismanagement of its resources, have left us in a rather bad position.

Scientists at the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists just announced that things are not looking too good for humanity or for planet Earth.

Doomsday 3 minutes to midnight