The People's Clock

Abstract

From Iron Maiden to Ronald Reagan, songwriters, politicians, and novelists have made the Doomsday Clock and its “minutes to midnight” refrain their own.

POLITICS In 1983, President Ronald Reagan tussled with a reporter over the Clock's meaning, as it stood at three minutes to midnight: “Well, now … in the Bible weren't we told that a long period of time was only a moment or even a second to God? I don't know what their minutes refer to.” No doubt familiar with the Clock's iconic power, former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev labeled the world's environmental crisis “five minutes to midnight” in 2006. Marking the 1992 ratification of the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty, President George H. W. Bush praised efforts “to reverse the hands on the nuclear Doomsday Clock.” On the eve of the Iraq War, U.N. weapons inspector Hans Blix warned Baghdad that it's “five minutes to midnight.”

MUSIC The lyrics for the songs “Two Minutes to Midnight,” Iron Maiden, 1984; “Why Did I Fall for That,” The Who, 1982; and “Easy/Lucky/Free,” Bright Eyes, 2005, all reference the Clock.

RESEARCH The report “Military Spending, the Peace Dividend, and Fiscal Adjustment,” IMF Staff Papers, 2001, uses the Clock as a measure of international tensions throughout its analysis. Separate economic research used the Clock as a meter of how the public's nuclear fears impacted savings rates.

BOOKS Alan Moore used a Clock look-alike as a motif throughout his apocalyptic 1986 graphic novel Watchmen. Iowa Democratic Sen. Tom Harkin mimicked the Clock's refrain for the title of his 1990 treatise on the nuclear danger, Five Minutes to Midnight. Suspense writer Helen McCloy employed the Clock as a plot device in her 1977 novel The Impostor. British writer Piers Anthony summoned the Clock's imposing presence in his 1986 sci-fi novel Wielding a Red Sword. In his 1997 book, Prayer for the Twenty-First Century, Australian young adult books author John Marsden hopes the Clock will “not be rewound.”

POP CULTURE Trivial Pursuit included a question about the Clock on a special, atomic-themed game card.

The time of creation

Somehow, her anecdotes always wondrously interconnect, with one enchanting tale or name quickly leading to another. “I speak in footnotes,” says Martyl, the famed artist whose most renowned work, the Doomsday Clock, differs greatly from the landscapes that mark many of her creations. These footnotes invariably include prominent figures of the nuclear age–Edward Teller, Arthur Compton, Cyril Smith, and, of course, Hyman Goldsmith and Eugene Rabinowitch, the Bulletin's founders.

Doomsday Clock creator Martyl.

She designed the Clock twice actually. Once at Goldsmith's behest in 1947, as she recounted in an internal memo she wrote in the 1980s (at right), and again in 1989 when she updated the design by placing the Clock's hands on the globe. Each time the confines remained virtually the same–design something clever without a budget. In her mind, the limitations merely strengthened the idea. “Sometimes restrictions are helpful,” she says. “With parameters, you can do really interesting things.”

JOSH SCHOLLMEYER

“Except for J. Robert Oppenheimer, I was the only artist any of those scientists ever knew. It seems like I still am on account of the Clock.”

“My husband never wanted to work at Los Alamos. Other scientists found it to be an intriguing scientific pursuit. Everyone draws their own line, and he felt differently. The research, yes. But he refused to go where the bombs were made.”

“The creativity in art and science are the same. I once painted cyclotrons and radio oscillators. They were unusual shapes and just wonderful objects. I exhibited them in New York. The reviewer said I had this unusual originality. I wrote him, ‘If I invented these, I would have won a Nobel Prize a long time ago.’ But the scientists hated it. They didn't want anyone taking liberties with their work.”

“It was a panicky time. My husband was recruited for speaking tours around Chicago. Nobody knew anything. It's hard to believe today that the word ‘atom’ was alien. The scientists, however, wanted to inform the public. So they went on the rubber chicken circuit–Rotary Clubs, Better Business Bureaus, etc. The groups would say, ‘We'll give you 20 minutes to tell us about atomic energy.’ It's insane, but they tried.”

“That I can't take credit for. It was a wonderful idea, and it fit with the urgency theme. I originally set the Clock at seven minutes to midnight simply because it looked good.”

“The editor wanted some illustrated relief on the page so they'd send me the stories to illustrate. My friends did it, too. It was all done gratis; there was never any money. They did it because I asked them.”

“It was just a good idea, and the fact that it survived–and became even more important–is one of the nicer things that's happened in my life.”