Is midnight upon us? Doomsday Clock panel to set risk of global catastrophe

Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists to unveil its measure of how close human civilisation is to the edge of extinction

On 24 October 1962, an American nuclear chemist, Harrison Brown, started to pen a guest editorial for the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists just as the Cuban missile crisis reached its climax.

I am writing on a plane en route from Los Angeles to Washington and for all I know this editorial ... may never be published," Brown said. Never in history have people and nations been so close to death and destruction on such a vast scale. Midnight is upon us."