"The apocalypse may be near.

The Doomsday Clock may move closer to midnight on Thursday amid increasingly tense relations between world powers.

The clock, which stands as a symbolic countdown to the world’s end, has remained at three minutes until midnight for the past two years, marking the closest to midnight the clock has been since 1984 during the Cold War. Previous to that, the closest the clock got to midnight was two minutes to midnight in 1953, when the hydrogen bomb was first tested.

The scientists who determine how close the clock gets to midnight will livestream whether the Doomsday Clock will be adjusted at 10 a.m. ET on Thursday."

Mary Bowerman reports for USA TODAY January 25, 2017. [2]