The risks that move the clock
The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists groups the threats it tracks into three broad categories: nuclear, climate, and 'disruptive technologies' (biology, AI, disinformation, space). We present them as five families — the ones used in the simulator (which adds natural and systemic risks: asteroid, supervolcano, solar storm, grid failure, financial crash). Each page explains the risk, what makes it worse, what reduces it — and what has already turned the clock back.
Nuclear
~12,000 weapons, nine states, and no bilateral treaty in force since February 2026. The only risk that can change everything within the hour.
Climate
Added to the clock in 2007. Not extinction, but a multiplier of every other risk: famine, migration, conflict.
Pandemics
Natural, accidental or deliberate. Covid exposed how fragile our systems are; synthetic biology changes the scale.
Artificial intelligence
Autonomous weapons, industrial-scale disinformation, loss of control: the most uncertain risk, and the fastest-moving.
Collapse
Societal collapse, human extinction, existential risk: what exactly do these mean, and what do researchers say?
Why treat them together?
Because they cascade. A climate shock deepens a food crisis, which feeds a conflict, which drains budgets from disease surveillance, while disinformation blocks any coordinated response. That chain reaction is what the simulator tries to make visible, and it is why the Bulletin emphasises governance — the ability of states to cooperate — more than any single risk in isolation.