In 1947, a group of scientists – including Albert Einstein and Robert Oppenheimer and others who had worked on the Manhattan Project – founded the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists. Haunted by the destructive force they had unleashed on the world, they sought a way to warn humanity. They needed a symbol that could communicate urgency, fragility, and danger without a single word.
They created the Doomsday Clock.
The hands on this symbolic clock could be shifted back or forward depending on how close humanity stood to catastrophe; whether from nuclear weapons, climate change, or, more recently, artificial intelligence. Midnight meant destruction. Midnight meant the end.
Over the years, the hands have moved back and forth, but never by much. Humanity, it seems, is always flirting with disaster.
Today, that clock stands at just 89 seconds to midnight – the closest it has ever been. Nuclear threats sharpened by the war in Ukraine, rising global instability, conflict in Gaza, a worsening climate crisis, a US president that treats allies as enemies and enemies as allies, and the unstoppable march of technology have all conspired to keep us teetering on the edge.
The UK demolition and construction industry does not have a Doomsday Clock. But perhaps it should. For if such a clock existed, its hands would not rest calmly at twenty or thirty minutes from midnight. No. This industry – long plagued by crises both slow and sudden; longstanding and relatively recent – would find its own symbolic clock drawing ever closer to catastrophe. Each unresolved problem, each mounting challenge, each missed opportunity for change ticks the hands forward.
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