Doomsday used to be so simple. In the halcyon days of the 1950s, the world could tell how close we were to a catastrophic end.

Atomic weapons were the sole concern when the Doomsday Clock was first unveiled at the University of Chicago as a way to convey fears for humankind.

At the time, the clock was set at seven minutes to midnight with the witching hour a metaphor for the world’s end as we knew it.

The clock is maintained by directors of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists and we’re wondering if we’ll soon witness another tick of their infamous clock of doom.

Over the years, the clock has been ‘corrected,’ though it’s generally stayed within a quarter-to of armageddon. In 1991, at the end of the Cold War, the clock was re-set to 17 minutes before midnight. The closest we’ve come to end times (11:58) was in 1953, when the U.S. and the Soviet Union engaged in an ostentatious round of nuclear testing.

These days, concerns from climate change to biosecurity factor into the clock’s adjustments. In 2007, we moved to five minutes to midnight. North Korea’s active testing of nukes and Iran’s flirtation with the technology are among the main reasons for the advance. The pace of climate change was also a factor: increasing damage to Earth’s ecosystems, devastating storms and the melting of polar ice.

Things are appreciably worse today, as the global financial meltdown has shaken economies. With major world powers calling for extreme upheavals, our economic order has never been more threatened.

For every optimist pointing to improved relations between the U.S. and Russia, countless worrywarts are alarmed by such events as Chinese and Iranian persecution of their own citizens, an old-school military coup in Honduras and new concerns about how nanotechnology affects our health.

It might be hard to fathom from our rather insulated position on the South Island, but followers of global events ought to be increasingly alarmed. Tick tock, tick tock.