Doomsday: The Unraveling of Time

THE PEACE ADVOCATE JANUARY 2025

Speakers at the Doomsday Clock announcement. From left to right: Daniel Holz, Herb Lin, Juan Manuel Santos, Robert Socolow, and Suzet McKinney. Not pictured: Manpreet Sethi. (Image: Jamie Christiani)

by Jania James

We were warned. The signs were there, etched into the melting glaciers, whispered through the dying forests, and screamed by the tempests that razed entire cities. And still, time slipped through our fingers. 

On January 28, 2025, the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists moved the Doomsday Clock forward by a single second. Ninety seconds to midnight became eighty-nine, a change so slight it could be mistaken for mercy. But it was not mercy. It was a reckoning. A single second closer to the precipice, a breath tighter in the chest of a world already suffocating. Because when the abyss is at your feet, even the smallest step forward is a freefall.

What Is Happening?

The planet groans under the weight of human excess. The atmosphere chokes with carbon, heating the world beyond its breaking point. The oceans rise, swallowing coastlines as if reclaiming what was stolen. Wildfires rage like vengeful deities, reducing entire regions to ash. The permafrost thaws, releasing ancient plagues long buried beneath ice.

But the devastation is not confined to nature alone. As the planet withers, the threat of nuclear annihilation looms closer. Nations stockpile weapons designed to end life in an instant, while leaders speak of war with reckless abandon. The doctrine of deterrence, once a fragile shield, now seems like a trigger waiting to be pulled. The use of nuclear weapons by miscalculation, by escalation, by madness has never been more possible.

And yet, the true horror lies in the silence that follows. The once-bustling cities stand empty, their streets littered with echoes of those who thought themselves immune to catastrophe. 

Governments collapse under the strain, economies crumble, and society fractures into desperate factions clawing for survival. This is not merely an environmental crisis or a geopolitical standoff; it is the unraveling of order itself.

What Are the Consequences?

The world as we knew it is gone. The air burns with toxicity, making each breath a battle. Food becomes a relic of the past, and water a currency of the future. Wars erupt, not for land or power, but for the simple privilege of existing another day.

Humanity’s hubris is laid bare. Those who once ignored the warnings now claw at the earth, begging for redemption that will never come. The rich who fled to their gilded bunkers find no solace, for wealth holds no value in a world that is dying. The scientist who discovered the point of no return weeps, for knowledge cannot undo what has already been done.

Extinction is no longer a possibility, it is a certainty. A slow, cruel erasure of an entire species, not by meteor or divine wrath, but by its own hands.

What Does It Do?

Doomsday does not arrive with a single cataclysmic event; it creeps in, unrelenting. It steals the future from children before they have the chance to dream. It reduces history to dust, cultures to fading echoes, and innovation to artifacts buried beneath a wasteland. It dismantles the very essence of human existence.

It is not just the end of civilization; it is the end of wonder, of love, of ambition. It is the void where stories cease to be told, where music fades into silence, where the last artist’s brush dries before it touches the canvas.

Doomsday is not just an ending. It is the absence of new beginnings.

What can we do 

Doomsday is not inevitable. Not yet. The clock still ticks, and as long as it does, there is time to turn back, to rewrite the ending before it is too late. But time is not merciful. It does not wait for hesitation or half-measures.

There are those who refuse to let the world slip into darkness. Warheads to Windmills works to stop both climate catastrophe and nuclear war, proving that the same forces that destroy can be reshaped into forces that sustain. Back from the Brink unites communities to confront the growing nuclear threat, reminding us that health, the environment, and all we hold dear are at stake. The Massachusetts Nuclear Disarmament Working Group challenges the relentless march of nuclear modernization, advocating for diplomacy over destruction, for dialogue over devastation.

But this fight is not just theirs, it is ours. It is yours. It is in the conversations you have, the questions you ask, the choices you make. It is in refusing to look away, in speaking when silence is easier. It is in pressing for change, in demanding better from those in power.

Talk about the world. Talk about the climate. Talk about the future not as something distant, but as something fragile, something urgent, something worth saving. Because every action, every voice, every second matters.

Why Is It Important? 

The future is not yet set in stone, though the chisel is poised. We are the architects of our fate, the last generation who can halt the unraveling before it becomes irreversible. Awareness is our weapon, and action is our salvation.

To understand Doomsday is to understand the cost of inaction. It is to recognize that the ticking clock does not slow for apathy, nor does it rewind for regret. The stories of those who came before us are warnings written in ink, but the story of our future is still being written.

Doomsday is important because it reminds us of the stakes. It forces us to choose between complacency and courage, between ignorance and knowledge, between destruction and survival.

The end has not yet come. But if we do not change, it will.

Jania James is an intern at Massachusetts Peace Action and a student at Emerson College