Terrorist threats may reset Doomsday Clock

CHICAGO -- After three years of standing still, the Doomsday Clock of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists may be moved closer to midnight after its board deliberates on recent world events later this month.

Bulletin publisher Stephen Schwartz said Friday the clock, a Cold War icon in which midnight symbolizes nuclear destruction, has never responded to terrorist activities because they did not alter the global security landscape. But fears that terrorists may obtain nuclear capability, only an abstract threat three years ago when the hands of the clock were moved forward to nine minutes to midnight have grown since the Sept. 11 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.

The world's moral landscape has changed, Schwartz said, and the myth that terrorists do not kill large numbers of people has been destroyed.

Schwartz said he does not expect terrorists to acquire nuclear weapons overnight because of the extensive expertise needed to build one. And even if terrorists stole a weapon, it would still be relatively difficult to deliver it to a target.

However, Avrom Blumberg, a DePaul University chemistry professor who teaches a course on weapons development during wartime, said building a bomb may not be an immediate goal of terrorists.

He said it would be easy to construct a radiological weapon, one in which radioactive isotopes are put into a standard bomb that can spew radiation.

The board of the Bulletin will meet Nov. 16 and Nov. 17 to discuss a variety of issues, including whether the clock's hands should be moved.

The clock has long been a globally acknowledged symbol of the nuclear danger faced by the world.

It is a 1 1/2-foot-square, wooden mock-up in the offices of the magazine at the University of Chicago. It started at 11:53 in 1947, two years after the Bulletin began as a six-page newsletter among scientists of the Manhattan Project.