8 November 2026 – Remembrance

Carlo Rovelli has written a little book, less than a hundred pages, entitled, ’85 Seconds to Midnight’. It has a subtitle, ‘A physicist’s argument against rearmament’. As you can imagine from the author’s credentials as a celebrated and world-renowned scientist,  it is well researched and written.

The title is intriguing. It refers to the Doomsday Clock created by the ‘Bulletin of Atomic Scientists’ and is a measure of how close they think we are to a nuclear catastrophe. In 2025, the clock said 89 seconds to midnight. This year it was recalibrated to 85 seconds – the closest it has ever been to our destruction.

Clearly, the world is a more dangerous place than it has been for a very long time. Wars proliferate and the consequences are felt globally. The failure to extend the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty between the USA and Russia adds to the uncertainty.

In his book, Rovelli makes an interesting point about the development of the nuclear bomb. He argues that the USA was pressurised into spending excessive amounts of time and money on this development for two false reasons.

Firstly, Germany was in a race to be first to produce a nuclear bomb. It turned out to be false. The Germans thought it unlikely that anyone could produce a nuclear bomb before the conclusion of warfare. This proved to be correct.

Secondly, the nuclear bomb would help to secure the conclusion of the war. But Germany surrendered before the bomb was completed. Rovelli argues that if the Americans hadn’t panicked and nuclear research had been conducted in peacetime, there would have been more scope for international agreement and control.