Doomsday clock increasingly means less and less - not peer reviewed - and fails numerous fact checks - not given the attention to accuracy that academics use for papers for journals

Every year we get the Doomsday clock in early spring but it increasingly means less and less.

It does absolutely nothing to the world. It makes no difference if they set it to 1 second to midnight or midnight itself or to 1000 years to midnight. Their aim is to encourage politicians to work to solve our problems. But the number is increasingly meaningless.

It’s more about “what are they going to add to it now?” It’s just a sort of political stunt to try to get governments to act on things.

It is not a clock, not about Doomsday.

Contents

• Ignores almost everything positive and focuses on the negative

• Mistakes in this year’s report - too many to cover them all

• FALSE In addition, the US administration may be considering the resumption of EXPLOSIVE nuclear testing, further accelerating a renewed nuclear arms race.

  • TRUE: the US later clarified that it meant NON EXPLOSIVE sub critical testing which all the major world powers are doing already

• VERY INACCURATE In December 2024, scientists from nine countries announced the recognition of a potentially existential threat to all life on Earth: the laboratory synthesis of so-called “mirror life.”

  • CORRECT: In December 2024 researchers into mirror life decided unanimously to STOP all research into mirror life and asked governments to consider setting up some kind of international mechanism such as a global treaty to stop the research.

• FALSE Conflict between India and Pakistan erupted in May, leading to cross-border drone and missile attacks amid nuclear brinkmanship.

  • TRUE: Neither side considered using nukes or threatened them, in a minor border conflict that came NOWHERE near the threshold of an Indian army invading Pakistan too large for Pakistan to stop without nukes - after the initial terrorist attack by terrorists operating inside Pakistan nobody crossed the border in either direction

• MISLEADING The United States, Russia and China are incorporating AI across their defense sectors, despite the potential dangers of such moves.

  • CORRECTION When they talk about use of AI it would be about using it similarly to non-military applications such as asking questions and searches - just as nobody would use chatbots to fly a plane they wouldn’t use a chatbot as a general or soldier - the main issue is inaccurate information not it doing anything harmful - and this doesn’t change the law of war

• in June, Israel and the United States launched aerial attacks on Iranian nuclear facilities suspected of supporting the country’s nuclear weapons ambitions. FALSE It remains unclear whether the attacks constrained those efforts—or if they instead persuaded the country to pursue nuclear weapons covertly.

  • TRUE It’s generally agreed the attacks set back Iran’s ability to enrich uranium significantly and Iran has likely stopped the program for now - and Iran and the IEA have taken a fragile first step towards restoring inspections - and Iran has only ever done enrichment, never started on the path to actually making a nuke

  • Only Israel votes against the resolution to establish a nuclear weapons free zone in the Middle East, and three minor abstentions

• CONTACT ME VIA ddebunked.org OR EMAIL

Ignores almost everything positive and focuses on the negative

Originally it was about nukes and to encourage countries to eliminate nukes. Nowadays it isn’t really about nukes either, most of it is other things like climate change which they are not expert on. Most of it fails fact check many times now.

We only ever were at risk of nuclear war by mistake and have done many things to prevent those mistakes today.

They ignore almost everything positive and focus only on negative things.

It is just a style of presentation that some people mistakenly think is the way to get people to act.

It’s not an accurate presentation of the situation which is very positive.

It’s about nothing succeeds like success. That is the way the psychology works. When we see other people who do positive things and achieve positive things, we are inpired to do the same ourselves.

Most people if told that nobody anywhere in the world is doing anything to solve problems won’t be fired up to do something about it but will just feel hopeless and not think it is worth doing anything.

While if they are told they are part of a vibrant community of numerous people doing many different things around the world, which is the truth, most people are inspired to act in the same way. It’s the opposite of what activists would expect.

BLOG: How to motivate your self, and others to act on climate change, biodiversity or anything else
— tips from psychology
— e.g. for maximum engagement present 3 positive or supporting framings for each climate threat
You can read it here:
https://debunkingdoomsday.quora.com/How-to-motivate-your-self-and-others-to-act-on-climate-change-biodiversity-or-anything-else-tips-from-psychology

The Doomsday Clock statement always seems gloomy because it is 100% negative framing. They only look at things that have gone wrong in their assessment.

And then recently - it’s almost like they feel they have to keep the number going down. So they did the first half minute reduction, then 10 seconds and now it’s 5 seconds. Soon they will be doing one second reductions.

Also it’s not comparing like with like. Each year they add new things that were never considered in any of the previous updates. Climate change, pandemics (only in the year after the COVID pandemic started), deep fakes (which never became the major thing they were expected to be) and so on.

Many of these things are way out of the areas of expertise of the contributors and they do very little by way of checking them, missing many obvious mistakes. They keep saying things that fail the most basic fact check.

So it is full of FALSE negative statements nowadays.

See also our thread here on the new forum.

https://ddebunked.org/d/1616-to-all-those-panicking-about-the-doomsday-clock-its-just-a-load-of-nonsense?cleanskipx

(remove the ?cleanskipx at the end of the URL if you want to see it within the forum).

Here are some of my previous debunks, then I’ll do a fact check of the latest one, but only look at some of the mistakes as there are so many this year.

The "Doomsday clock" is not really a clock - no longer much about nukes - almost no positive framing which psychologists say drives action - suggested positive version: "shoots for future growth"

Also

There is no scientific method for calculating their numbers. And they also write about things they are not expert on and nowadays frequently say things that fail the most basic fact check.
BLOG: “Doomsday clock”
— time totally meaningless
— activist scientists trying to influence decision makers
— arbitrary numbers with no scientific method to them
— this year it repeatedly FAILS MOST BASIC FACT CHECK
You can read it here: https://debunkingdoomsday.quora.com/Doomsday-clock-time-totally-meaningless-activist-scientists-trying-to-influence-decision-makers-arbitrary-number

Mistakes in this year’s report - too many to cover them all

Then to this year’s report, it has too many mistakes to fact check them all.

It’s almost like a compilation of some of the most major errors that we have had to fact check for scared people in the mainstream media in the last year.

Fact checking their statement here

https://thebulletin.org/doomsday-clock/2026-statement/

Here are some of them.

FALSE In addition, the US administration may be considering the resumption of EXPLOSIVE nuclear testing, further accelerating a renewed nuclear arms race.

TRUE: the US later clarified that it meant NON EXPLOSIVE sub critical testing which all the major world powers are doing already

BLOG: The US sub critical test is NOT a nuclear test
— and Russia withdrawing from the comprehensive test ban treaty is just politics
— the nuclear powers act as IF it was ratified even though many including US haven’t ratified it
You can read it here:
https://debunkingdoomsday.quora.com/The-US-sub-critical-test-is-NOT-a-nuclear-test-and-Russia-withdrawing-from-the-comprehensive-test-ban-treaty-is-just-p

VERY INACCURATE In December 2024, scientists from nine countries announced the recognition of a potentially existential threat to all life on Earth: the laboratory synthesis of so-called “mirror life.”

CORRECT: In December 2024 researchers into mirror life decided unanimously to STOP all research into mirror life and asked governments to consider setting up some kind of international mechanism such as a global treaty to stop the research.

It is actually something very positive. It shows that scientists COMPLETELY STOPPED a BILLION DOLLAR project to protect Earth’s biosphere.

It should be a positive not a negative.

BLOG: Why we are safe from mirror life
— every researcher receiving funding has stopped all research
— and US government agrees
— likely to be stopped globally with a treaty
You can read it here:
https://doomsdaydebunked.miraheze.org/wiki/Why_we_are_safe_from_mirror_life_-*every_researcher_receiving_funding_has_stopped_all_research*-*and_US_government_agrees*-_likely_to_be_stopped_globally_with_a_treaty

FALSE Conflict between India and Pakistan erupted in May, leading to cross-border drone and missile attacks amid nuclear brinkmanship.

TRUE: Neither side considered using nukes or threatened them, in a minor border conflict that came NOWHERE near the threshold of an Indian army invading Pakistan too large for Pakistan to stop without nukes - after the initial terrorist attack by terrorists operating inside Pakistan nobody crossed the border in either direction

There wasn’t any nuclear brinksmanship. Neither side even considered using nukes. The Pakistani nukes are to deter an attack by an Indian army large enough to overwhelm the Pakistani defences. India meanwhile has a strong no first use policy. Nothing happened that came even close to that threshold and nobody threatened to use nukes.

Instead after terrorists from Pakistan attacked tourists in India, India did some missile strikes not targeting the Pakistani military but rather targeting alleged terrorists in Pakistan and then Pakistan shot down some of the Indian fighter jets with Chineses air to air missile technology that India was unaware could hit them from so far away. Only the initial terrorists from Pakistan crossed the border. After that nobody crossed the border, they just fired missiles and artillery over the border from a distance.

My debunk:

Also:

Also:

MISLEADING The United States, Russia and China are incorporating AI across their defense sectors, despite the potential dangers of such moves.

CORRECTION When they talk about use of AI it would be about using it similarly to non-military applications such as asking questions and searches - just as nobody would use chatbots to fly a plane they wouldn’t use a chatbot as a general or soldier - the main issue is inaccurate information not it doing anything harmful - and this doesn’t change the law of war

It has to be safe. There is nothing to suggest they want to use it in unsafe ways.

For example nobody would use a chatbot to fly a plane in the current state of the technology. That is because it can’t be proven to be safe. Even if a chatbot could master the controls and be linked to a physical robot and be able to fly the plane accurately most of the time, we need a PROVABLY safe autopilot for a plane

Well many military applications are similar to that. You would not rig up a chatbot to a weapon system at all not for the decision of whether to fire or not or whether a target is a legitimate target.

But we do already have machine learning in weapons systems. They are used WITH A HUMAN IN THE LOOP. A human says “that is the target, hit it”. Or they ensure there are no civilian targets it could hit by mistake. And that’s been around for a long time. The Patriot air defence system uses machine learning to identify targets quickly. But then it relies on a human being to approve it.

Sadly there were some early example of friendly fire of the Patriot air defence system shooting down the Americans’ own fighter jet. It shot down two aircraft and narrowly missed a third in the Gulf war

https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2003-apr-21-war-patriot21-story.html

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MIM-104_Patriot#US-led_invasion_of_Iraq_(2003)
It’s safe now.

It is an early example of lethal AI mistakes.

So - yes in battlefield conditions then there can be mistakes and when the systems involve AI that needs especial care.

AI is just machine learning. We already have weapons with machine learning but they have to be safe. Just like a car or a microwave has to be safe or an airplane

We already have drones with guns on them and other lethal weapons in Ukraine hunting soldiers though with humans to make the final decision. But they are only used on the battlefield and for a civilian to have something like that would be like owning a machine gun.

It’s not really that different from mines and mine fields.

We have had automated traps that can kill people back to before modern technology with pits.

Now we have anti-personnel mines, but many countries have agreed to ban them. Ukraine and Russia still use them. Ukraine is using ones that stop functioning after a few days which makes them safer. It’s a big job cleaning up mine fields for anti-personnel mines or mines for tanks and heavy vehicles - it’s going to cost Ukraine $10s of billions.

So - we need to keep our weapons safe and as we develop new weapons we need new international legislation to keep them safe, international treaties.

BLOG: Yes we can keep weapons safe with AI — mines are already automated and challenges are similar — indeed modern missiles use AI already with many precautions to protect civiliansYou can read it here: https://doomsdaydebunked.miraheze.org/wiki/Yes_we_can_keep_weapons_safe_with_AI_-*mines_are_already_automated_and_challenges_are_similar*-_indeed_modern_missiles_use_AI_already_with_many_precautions_to_protect_civilians

We are not talking about using a chatbot as a general.

And any decisions have to comply with the law of war.

Basically it is a compilation of some of the most major errors that we have had to fact check, in the mainstream media in the last year.

In June, Israel and the United States launched aerial attacks on Iranian nuclear facilities suspected of supporting the country’s nuclear weapons ambitions. FALSE It remains unclear whether the attacks constrained those efforts—or if they instead persuaded the country to pursue nuclear weapons covertly.

TRUE It’s generally agreed the attacks set back Iran’s ability to enrich uranium significantly and Iran has likely stopped the program for now - and Iran and the IEA have taken a fragile first step towards restoring inspections - and Iran has only ever done enrichment, never started on the path to actually making a nuke

Pretty clear the Ayatollah doesn’t want Iran to develop nukes. Because it easily could have followed that path by now.

It stops just short of nukes. Also every year Iran votes in the UN for a nuclear weapon free Middle East. It is joined with all the Middle East countries apart from Israel which is the only country to vote against. Even globally - virtually all countries in the world vote in favour, US and a few others abstain.

The 12 day war had a significantly damaging effect on Iran’s nuclear program. Set it back at least 2 years and if you take account of sanctions possibly far more damaging to it.

In particular, there is considerable uncertainty regarding the extent of the damage inflicted on Iran’s nuclear programme. According to some assessments, Iran could restore its capabilities in this area within two years. The fate of up to 440 kilograms of uranium enriched to 60% also remains unknown; in theory, this stockpile could be rapidly enriched to the 90% level required to produce weapons-grade nuclear material.

https://www.osw.waw.pl/en/publikacje/osw-commentary/2025-12-18/iran-crisis-landscape-after-twelve-day-war

The Doomsday clock statement is likely about the verification program not about whether it set back development of nukes.

In early September, the IAEA and Iran reached an agreement in principle that inspectors could return to conduct on-site inspections. This would include inspecting Iran’s stocks of highly enriched uranium, as well as all nuclear sites and facilities, including those damaged by the US-Israeli attacks in June. And it would allow the IAEA to conclude an independent assessment of the state of Iran’s nuclear programme, which would form an important contribution to transparency.

However, there is no agreement on when inspectors will return, or when Iran will once again provide data on its nuclear facilities to the IAEA. That makes the agreement in principle only a fragile first step towards a restored inspections regime
https://www.chathamhouse.org/2025/09/iaea-and-iran-reached-agreement-inspections-looming-sanctions-mean-its-already-trouble

Only Israel votes against the resolution to establish a nuclear weapons free zone in the Middle East, and three minor abstentions

Iran would like to establish a Middle East nuclear weapon free zone on this map.

This is voted for regularly in the UN General Assembly.

ONLY ISRAEL VOTES AGAINST.

Three abstain: Argentina, Cameroon and the USA.

Several others don’t vote, small island states.

Eeryone else votes in favour including all the Middle East states except Israel

Color the map

This is the record of votes for 2024:

https://reachingcriticalwill.org/images/documents/Disarmament-fora/1com/1com24/votes-ga/404.pdf

If Iran does agree to stop its enrichment program in a verifiable way with the IAEA - why then does Israel need nukes?

Maybe this will lead to a nuclear weapon free Middle East once the current conflict becomes past history - and hopefully also with a peaceful and just end to the Gaza conflict somehow.

See section in longer blog post:

It’s a kind of committee decision. They give the list of authors at the bottom of the page here:

https://thebulletin.org/about-us/science-and-security-board/

They are trained academics. They certainly have the capability to do the fact checking we do. So they must just not give their report close scrutiny. It’s not peer reviewed by a journal - it would never pass peer review. They just talk it over I think and write stuff down without checking it much. For instance the mistake I opened out with - that they claimed that the US plans to do explosive nuclear tests - because that is what was in the news and the media were saying. But if you check it more carefully you quickly find that they never said explosive nukes. It was always consistent with subcritical and a few days later confirmed as subcritical.

So - they missed that - why? Just must be that they didn’t spend the same amount of time checking / verifying it as they would for an academic paper. It’s basically sloppy work. Or it could be because of an activist approach that they don’t look carefully at something that supports their narrative of lots of problems in the world.

CONTACT ME VIA ddebunked.org OR EMAIL

You can Direct Message me on Substack - but I check this rarely. Better, email me at support@robertinventor.com

OR contact me at our new forum

https://ddebunked.org

Please do NOT Direct Message me on Facebook any more unless you are already in contact with me.

If already in contact on FB then please understand if I don’t reply for a while except to very urgent messages

Try email or other ways to talk to me until this is sorted out.

For now I only want to talk on FB about how to message me somewhere else.

FOR MORE HELP

To find a debunk see: List of articles in my Debunking Doomsday blog to date See also my Short debunks

Scared and want a story debunked? Post to our forum which is set up for voluntary fact checking.

The forum itself is here:

ddebunked.org

Also do join our forum if you can help with fact checking or to help scared people who are panicking.

Alternatively you can post to our Facebook group. Please look over the group rules before posting or commenting as they help the group to run smoothly

• Facebook group Doomsday Debunked

However I am not able to comment or post there at present because

SEARCH LIST OF DEBUNKS

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CLICK HERE TO SEARCH: List of articles in my Debunking Doomsday blog to date

NEW SHORT DEBUNKS

I do many more fact checks and debunks on our Facebook group than I could ever write up as blog posts. They are shorter and less polished but there is a good chance you may find a short debunk for some recent concern.

I often write them up as “short debunks”

See Latest short debunks for new short debunks

I also tweet the debunks and short debunks to my Blue Sky page here:

. doomsdaydebunks.bsky.social

I do the short debunks more often but they are less polished - they are copies of my longer replies to scared people in the Facebook group.

I go through phases when I do lots of short debunks. Recently, I’ve taken to converting comments in the group into posts in the group that resemble short debunks and most of those haven’t yet been copied over to the wiki.

TIPS FOR DEALING WITH DOOMSDAY FEARS

If suicidal or helping someone suicidal see my:

BLOG: Supporting someone who is suicidal

If you have got scared by any of this, health professionals can help. Many of those affected do get help and find it makes a big difference.

They can’t do fact-checking, don’t expect that of them. But they can do a huge amount to help with the panic, anxiety, maladaptive responses to fear and so on.

Also do remember that therapy is not like physical medicine. The only way a therapist can diagnose or indeed treat you is by talking to you and listening to you. If this dialogue isn’t working for whatever reason, do remember you can always ask to change to another therapist and it doesn’t reflect badly on your current therapist to do this.

Also check out my Seven tips for dealing with doomsday fears based on things that help those scared, including a section about ways that health professionals can help you.

I know that sadly many of the people we help can’t access therapy for one reason or another - usually long waiting lists or the costs.

There is much you can do to help yourself. As well as those seven tips, see my:

BLOG: Doing what matters at times of stress
— new WHO booklet to help with mental health during COVID19 pandemic

BLOG: Breathe in and out slowly and deeply and other ways to calm a panic attack

BLOG: Tips from CBT
— might help some of you to deal with doomsday anxieties

PLEASE DON’T COMMENT HERE WITH POTENTIALLY SCARY QUESTIONS ABOUT OTHER TOPICS - INSTEAD JOIN OUR NEW FORUM ddebunked.org

PLEASE DON’T COMMENT ON THIS POST WITH POTENTIALLY SCARY QUESTIONS ABOUT ANY OTHER TOPIC:

INSTEAD PLEASE COMMENT IN OUR NEW FORUM HERE:

ddebunked.org

It’s just a forum not social media. No age verification. Set up by myself with free open source software Flarum.

For details see my:

The forum itself is here:

ddebunked.org

If you have any issues joining it do let me know.

Why I ask you to post to our forum with anything scary off topic instead of here

The reason I ask you to post there instead of comment with your concerns about unrelated topics here is that I often can’t respond to comments here for some time. The unanswered comment can scare people who come to this post for help on something else

Also even an answered comment may scare them because they see the comment before my reply.

Do comment here with anything that is on topic for this post, E.g. if you spot any mistakes however small please let me know.

Also, though your first comment should be on topic, it is absolutely fine to digress and go off topic in conversations here in a natural way if that is how the conversation develops.

This is specifically about off topic comments here hat might scare people on a different topic.

PLEASE DON’T TELL A SCARED PERSON THAT THE THING THEY ARE SCARED OF IS TRUE WITHOUT A VERY RELIABLE SOURCE OR IF YOU ARE A VERY RELIABLE SOURCE YOURSELF - AND RESPOND WITH CARE

This is not like a typical post on substack. It is specifically to help people who are very scared with voluntary fact checking. Please no politically motivated exaggerations here. And please be careful, be aware of the context.

We have a rule in the Facebook group and it is the same here.

If you are scared and need help it is absolutely fine to comment about anything to do with the topic of the post that scares you.

But if you are not scared or don’t want help with my voluntary fact checking please don’t comment with any scary material.

If you respond to scared people here please be careful with your sources. Don’t tell them that something they are scared of is true without excellent reliable sources, or if you are a reliable source yourself.

It also matters a lot exactly HOW you respond. E.g. if someone is in an area with a potential for earthquakes there’s a big difference between a reply that talks about the largest earthquake that’s possible there even when based on reliable sources, and says nothing about how to protect themselves and the same reply with a summary and link to measures to take to protect yourself in an earthquake.