Book Release

Toronto, Ontario | October 13, 2012

DOOMSDAY: Iran - The Clock is Ticking by James G. Zumwalt

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Cover concept (may not be the final published cover)

About the Doomsday Clock

Sixty-five years ago, a universally recognized means for assessing global vulnerability to self-destruction based on man’s development of weapons of mass destruction was established. As of 2007, that vulnerability assessment began to include man-made catastrophes related to climate change and emerging technologies.

Dubbed the “Doomsday Clock,” it is monitored by the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists (BAS) in Washington, D.C. When these scientists determine man’s actions or inaction are allowing such vulnerabilities to significantly increase the danger to mankind, the minute hand of the clock is moved closer to midnight—with the number of ticks reflected by the seriousness of the danger. Alternatively, a movement of the hand farther away symbolizes a reduced likelihood such an event will occur.

Over these past six and a half decades, the minute hand has covered a fifteen minute spread, springing precariously close to midnight before easing back. The decision on any adjustment is made by the organization’s Board of Directors, after consultation with their Board of Sponsors—a group that includes 18 Nobel Laureates.

Adjustments to the Clock are not made annually but on an as-needed basis. When an adjustment is required—which has occurred twenty times during the Clock’s existence—normally it is made in the month of January. In 2007, the Clock was moved forward two minutes from its 2002 position, to five minutes before midnight; in 2010, it was moved backward to six minutes; and, most recently, in January 2012, an adjustment was made moving it forward again to the 2007 five-minute-before-midnight mark.

In 2012, when the Doomsday Clock’s hand moved one minute closer to midnight, it was attributed to three developments: (1) The narrowly avoided disaster at Japan’s Fukushima nuclear plant triggered by the March 11, 2011 earthquake and tsunami; (2) the transition of power and control of North Korea’s nuclear weapons to another generation of the Kim dynasty; and (3) Iran’s designs on developing nuclear weapons.

It is the third development that is most worrisome as a theocracy, which has proven itself to be ruthless and brutal, in Tehran communicates to the civilized world exactly what violent intentions it has for the future—all while refusing to come clean on whether those intentions include a nuclear weapons capability.