Since 2012 the Doomsday clock has been at 5 minutes to midnight, but on January 22, 2015 the clock moved 2 minutes forward to just 3 minutes short of midnight.

This is because prominent scientists (including Nobel laureates) say that climate change and the danger of nuclear war pose an ever-growing threat to civilization (perhaps they read U.S. House of Representative hearings which state an electromagnetic pulse from a nuclear weapon could kill up to 90 percent of Americans)

The Doomsday Clock has been around since 1947 and changed 18 times since then — from two minutes to midnight in 1953 at worst to 17 minutes before midnight in 1991 at best. The last time it was 3 minutes before midnight was 1983 due to the Cold War between the United States and the Soviet Union.