Time to put on some Iron Maiden, because the napalm screams of human flames may be nearing. The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists has moved the symbolic doomsday clock thirty seconds closer to the end of existence, after what they called a "grim assessment" of the current state of geopolitical affairs, according to the Washington Post.

“As of today,” Bulletin president Rachel Bronson told reporters, “it is two minutes to midnight.” Cue the Maiden baby!

In all seriousness, this is extremely disheartening on a variety of levels. The Bulletin cited “the failure of President Trump and other world leaders to deal with looming threats of nuclear war and climate change" as its reason for moving up a notch. The organization is composed of over 15 Nobel Laureate winners, and they state collectively, "the world is not only more dangerous now than it was a year ago; it is as threatening as it has been since World War II."

Maiden's original "2 Minutes to Midnight" was written back in 1984, and was a single off their album Powerslave. The protest song was released in the midst of the cold war (though singer Bruce Dickinson says it speaks more to the idea around "romance of war" rather than the cold war specifically) when it reached three minutes to midnight the year of the song's release. It was considered the most dangerous rating the clock had hit since 1953, and this new report pushes it even further.

Bulletin officials Lawrence M. Krauss, a theoretical physicist, and Robert Rosner, an astrophysicist wrote in an Op-Ed: “To call the world nuclear situation dire is to understate the danger — and its immediacy. North Korea’s nuclear weapons program appeared to make remarkable progress in 2017, increasing risks for itself, other countries in the region and the United States.”

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