The Lion's Den: What the 'Doomsday Clock' means and why it's bad when we're close to midnight

CNN)The Doomsday Clock is being reset Thursday, letting humanity know if we've inched any closer to the complete and total annihilation of the earth (well, at least metaphorically).

Midnight on the Clock symbolizes the end of the world, and each year, the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists decides what time it is. Last year, it was set to 11:58 p.m. -- just two minutes away from destruction.

The Doomsday Clock is a design that warns the public about how close we are to destroying our world with dangerous technologies of our own making," the Bulletin said on its website. "It is a metaphor, a reminder of the perils we must address if we are to survive on the planet."

So what factors determine how close we are to midnight? Mainly, the threat of nuclear weapons and climate change, according to The Bulletin's President Rachel Bronson.

When the Clock was created in 1947, the greatest threat to humanity was nuclear war as the US and Soviet Union were headed into a nuclear arms race.

"But in 2007, we felt we couldn't answer those questions without including climate change," Bronson said.

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