Joint Communiqué ACDN-IDN
January 23, 2024

In 1947, as the Cold War began, atomic scientists at the University of Chicago created the Doomsday Clock, a fictional clock on which "midnight" symbolizes the end of the world - the one that nuclear weapons could cause. They then placed the big hand at seven minutes to midnight. Its position then fluctuated with international relations, between 2 minutes (1953) and 17 minutes (1991, end of the Cold War).

Since January 2020, scientists (including 14 Nobel Prize winners) have estimated that we were only 100 seconds away from the Apocalypse, due to "the inability of world leaders to face the imminent threats of nuclear war and climate change".

On January 24, 2023, the heads of the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists set the clock on the Ukraine War. According to them, we were only 90 seconds away from the end of the world.

On January 23, 2024, after wondering whether humanity had moved away from the fatal deadline since last year and compared to the past 75 years, they concluded that no: we are still 90 seconds from the Apocalypse.

In other words, we are still on the brink. Will the leaders of the nuclear weapons states, in particular France, finally realize that only multilateral, progressive and controlled nuclear disarmament -therefore negotiated- will allow us to get away from it and thus avoid an otherwise irremediable catastrophe?

It is urgent that peoples take their destiny into their own hands. It is urgent that parliamentarians take up this issue. While seven out of ten French people want the complete elimination of nuclear weapons, we call on Parliament to give voice to the people it represents, and citizens to demand it. Our survival depends in part on each of us.