The Doomsday Clock.

Byline: The Register-Guard

For everyone old enough to remember the Cold War, the Doomsday Clock brings back teeth-clinching memories of childhoods haunted by the specter of nuclear apocalypse.

When the clock was introduced by University of Chicago atomic researchers in 1947, its hands were poised at seven minutes before a midnight that symbolized nuclear holocaust.

The world has changed dramatically since then, but the Doomsday Clock survives as an unofficial gauge of how close the world is to nuclear Armageddon - and a reminder of the still-urgent need for disarmament.

At a recent news conference, the hands of the clock were moved forward for only the third time since the end of the Cold War in 1991 and the 16th time overall. The hands were nudged forward two minutes to seven minutes to midnight, identical to the position they were in when the clock made its debut 55 years ago.

The movement of the clock elicits a strange mix of emotions. It's heartening that the clock, and the world it has sought to warn, are still around and have not been incinerated into drifting dunes of radioactive ash. Yet it's also disturbing that the need for the clock still exists and that nuclear disaster remains as close as it was five decades ago.

There's scant comfort to be found in the evolving nature of the nuclear threat. For decades, the primary danger was a nuclear confrontation between the world's two great superpowers, the United States and the Soviet Union. Global security remains a concern, but now there are eight recognized nuclear powers that maintain a total of 31,000 nuclear weapons.

Of even greater concern in a post-Sept. 11 world is the recognition that terrorist groups such as al-Qaeda are actively searching for the material and expertise needed to develop nuclear weapons.

Other factors pressing forward the hands of the Doomsday Clock are the growing concern about the security of stockpiled nuclear weapons around the world, and the rising disparity between the world's rich and poor.

There's also a troubling inclination of the United States under President Bush to shun international agreements and go its own way. It's difficult, for example, for the administration to make a convincing argument that emerging nations shouldn't test nuclear weapons when the United States continues to make exceptions to a comprehensive test ban treaty.

There's also the Bush administration's baffling failure to fully fund a low-cost, high-yield program intended to safeguard Russian nuclear material from theft and the president's pit-bull insistence on deeming countries such as North Korea as part of an "axis of evil" instead of engaging them in dialogue.

The nature of the nuclear threat has indeed changed. Yet the Doomsday Clock still carries the same message, one best summed up by Albert Einstein: "The unleashed power of the atom has changed everything save our modes of thinking, and thus we drift toward unparalleled catastrophe."