Minus eight and a half minutes.
Nuclear weapons are one of the greatest threats to humanity.
Every year there's a meeting to assess the risk
of global catastrophe,
and set the Doomsday Clock.
The hands are currently at 90 seconds to midnight,
the closest they've ever been.
With unique access to the experts who set the clock...
This is a very dangerous time.
Leaders are not acting responsibly.
..I want to find out what's brought us from Oppenheimer's invention
to this point.
Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds.
Nuclear weapons, nuclear terrorism, nuclear proliferation.
Right now, it's just going in the wrong direction.
TRANSLATION: I'm ordering the strategic nuclear forces
on special alert.
In Britain, our own weapons are on high alert.
There's always one out there at 15 minutes' notice to fire.
Somewhere out there? Somewhere out there.
And American nukes could soon be back on British soil.
If we get Trump in there next time,
and he may press the button because he's got a bigger button than Putin,
then we are a target.
The question is, where will the Doomsday Clock be set for 2024?
..four, three, two, one, now.
NEWSREEL: This is one unseasonally bleak scene
which has profoundly moved many people during 1982.
Well, here's the Greenham Peace Camp, 40 years ago now.
Their peaceful protest against the siting of cruise missiles here
is into its second winter...
When I was a young reporter in the '80s,
the nuclear threat was ever-present.
People talked about the threat of nuclear war between Russia,
then the Soviet Union, and America all the time.
And then it went away, and it really receded
into the, into the background, except I kept on...
I kept on investigating.
Is the Islamic Republic actively seeking to get
the means to make a nuclear bomb?
It's often rogue nations, rogue actors, as they were called,
trying to get weapons.
North Korea has tested a nuclear bomb believed to be ten times
more destructive than Hiroshima.
Yeah, it's huge. So, what, the whole village comes in here?
That's the idea?
In the last few years, we've had a whole host
of global uncertainties,
and now it seems that the nuclear threat is really back
on the agenda again.
The story of the atomic threat begins almost 80 years ago, in 1945.
NEWSREEL: You may have seen that before - the film showing
the bursting of the first atom bomb, the experimental one in New Mexico.
It was dropped from a steel tower and filmed
from about six miles away.
Afterwards, cameramen and reporters put on special canvas boots
as a precaution against picking up dangerous particles left
in the circle of devastation.
And as for the steel tower from which the bomb had been dropped,
this is all that was left of it.
I've come to New Mexico in America.
It's all pretty barren and empty out here.
I can see why it would be an area to test weapons.
The small town of Los Alamos was the birthplace
of the atomic bomb.
It feels so peaceful here.
It's extraordinary to think that this is where it all started.
This is where the first atomic bomb was built and developed
by Robert Oppenheimer and his team,
the so-called father of the atomic bomb.
We had a moment where it looked like the chain reaction
from an atomic device might never stop.
Are we saying there's a...
..chance that when we push that button, we destroy the world?
The chances are near zero.
Near zero? What do you want from theory alone?
Zero would be nice.
The recent Hollywood blockbuster Oppenheimer told the story
of the Manhattan Project and the development
of the first atomic bomb.
This modest little log cabin right on the end is the house
where Oppenheimer himself lived during those months
that he was working on the Manhattan Project.
I've been given privileged access to the house
by curator Cherie Trottier.
This is the room
why the Oppenheimers chose this house.
So have you had more interest in Oppenheimer, in the house,
since the movie came out? Definitely.
As people, as you saw, peeking through the windows,
there's a great curiosity about where did this man live?
This was Oppenheimer's study.
The typewriter? Yes.
"Opened by the censor" as well.
Because it was all so secret. Yes.
Everybody's mail, coming and going, was censored.
So Oppenheimer would have meetings in here with other scientists?
This would be a room in which a huge amount went on.
People were invited here for dinner, and Oppie
served his very strong martinis.
There are stories where people literally had
a very interesting time trying to leave and walk upright.
The basics of nuclear weapons hasn't really changed since the first bombs
were developed in the 1940s.
They are still based either on fission, which is the splitting
of atoms to release power, or they are based on fusion,
which is the fusing together of atoms to create power.
What we think of as a nuclear weapon is actually a number
of different components.
So there is a warhead, which is essentially the bit that goes bang,
that contains the fissile material, whether it's uranium or plutonium.
The warhead has to be transported in a certain way,
and it's what we call a delivery system.
So it may be, this warhead may be in a bomb that's dropped
from an aircraft.
It may be on top of a missile of all sorts of different ranges,
or indeed it could be in a whole host of different ways as well.
NEWSREEL: That's the atomic bomb exploding at Nagasaki.
All of you who see this picture can judge for yourselves
the extent of the menace to civilisation of this new weapon.
In 1945, the United States dropped their new weapon
on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
Hundreds of thousands were killed.
It changed the face of warfare.
Scramble, scramble!
America had ignited a nuclear arms race.
Four years later, Russia began testing atomic weapons...
..followed by the UK in 1952.
NEWSREEL: After the first blinding flash,
Dr Penney turns round with a smile of satisfaction
to view the colossal spectacle.
In the '60s, France tested...
The film record has been heavily censored by the French authorities,
but this picture is impressive evidence of the bomb.
..followed by China.
Those who now possessed nuclear weapons
had the ultimate means to deter an attack,
giving them enormous power.
Soon, the nuclear club grew.
India detonated its first weapon in 1974,
then Pakistan developed the bomb in the '90s.
It's widely believed Israel has nuclear weapons,
though it's never confirmed this.
In 2006, North Korea carried out its first nuclear test.
The story of nuclear warhead proliferation
is the numbers went up exponentially.
The total number of warheads that have been built
is probably well over 100,000.
But what we've seen over the last three decades
is a gradual slowing down, a gradual reduction.
However, there are probably in the region of 13,000 nuclear weapons
in the world today in the eight (nine) states,
most of these in the US and Russia.
The two bombs that were dropped in August 1945 killed somewhere
in the realm of 200,000 people.
Most modern nuclear weapons today are more powerful,
have more explosive yield -
in the UK case, probably somewhere in the region of
six to seven times as powerful.
And many of the other states have warheads
that are more powerful still,
so even just a handful of those could probably destroy the UK.
The explosions at Hiroshima and Nagasaki,
and the radiation sickness that followed,
showed the true horrors of nuclear weapons.
Oppenheimer was haunted by his creation.
We knew the world would not be the same.
I remembered the line from the Hindu scripture of the Bhagavad Gita.
"Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds."
I suppose we all thought that, one way or another.
The Manhattan Project scientists who created the bomb
felt compelled to warn the public.
They came up with the idea of the Doomsday Clock...
..to visualise how close we are to destroying our world.
NEWSREEL: The mushroom was becoming an acceptable fungus
in man's garden.
A group of scientists tried to waken the general public from this apathy
and founded a periodical in which they tried to explain
the social and political consequences of atomic power.
Its cover design became a clock approaching midnight.
As the time for atomic scientists and the world ran out,
its hands neared the end of time.
When it was first set in 1947,
the hand stood at seven minutes to midnight.
They've moved 25 times back and forth since then.
In the 1990s, to the furthest point - 17 minutes away -
when the Soviet Union broke up.
..Vladimirovich Putin.
By 2017, with Putin and Trump in power -
and North Korea's Kim Jong-un -
the hands went forward again to two and a half minutes.
Today, on top of the nuclear concerns,
climate change and threats from new technologies like AI
are part of the assessment.
In 2023, the hands moved the closest they'd ever been to midnight,
just 90 seconds away.
I've come to Chicago,
where the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists is based.
In this room, scientists and experts will meet
to deliberate where to set the clock for 2024.
FIONA BRUCE: North Korea has threatened to detonate a hydrogen bomb over the Pacific...
ROS ATKINS: President Putin has ordered Russia's strategic nuclear forces to be placed...
DAVID MUIR: ..the President warning the risk of nuclear armageddon
has not been this high since the Cuban Missile Crisis.
The Bulletin's president is Rachel Bronson.
Very nice to meet you. Nice to meet you as well.
So this is the Bulletin? This is the Bulletin.
Bulletin of Atomic Scientist covers. Yeah.
They go back 75-plus years.
This is the original Doomsday Clock. So that was the very first iteration of the clock?
That's it, right there. Yeah.
It was created by an artist... Mm-hm.
..and it's a metaphor about how close we are to destroying humanity
with our own technologies, with our own making.
This was the late '40s countdowns.
Mm-hm. Clocks, rockets, missiles.
This was very much... This was a dangerous time. Yeah.
They saw the potential of a global arms race.
They really believed that if you could educate the public,
the public would put pressure on leaders
and leaders would have to keep us safe.
Why did you make the decision in 2023
to move that clock to 90 seconds to midnight?
It was largely around the Russian invasion of Ukraine,
which our Science and Security Board deemed as
one of the most dangerous times in history. Why?
First of all, the US and Russia control 90% of the nuclear weapons
on this planet.
Now, a nuclear power state using nuclear weapons as a tactic,
as a terrorism, psychological terrorism,
but also potentially as a tactic.
They were threatening to use nuclear weapons.
You're talking President Putin, Russia? That's right.
And so that was the first time in a very long time
that we could remember such threats
and them being bandied about so casually,
and so it was a very, very scary time.
And the likelihood of misperceptions and accidents were so high
that, largely for that reason, they moved the hands
of the Doomsday Clock closer to midnight.
PROJECTILE WHIZZES PAST, EXPLODES
Whoa!
The Russian invasion of Ukraine was a war President Putin expected
to win quickly.
That didn't happen.
Ukraine fought back with weapons supplied by Britain
and other Nato allies.
Just days into the conflict,
President Putin made a threat that shocked the world.
TRANSLATION: Top officials of leading Nato countries
are making aggressive statements about our country.
Therefore, I'm ordering the Minister of Defence
and the Chief of the General Staff to put the strategic nuclear forces
on special alert.
UNTRANSLATED
Putin's warning to the world not to join the fight alongside Ukraine
revived fears of nuclear war not seen since the 1960s.
I've come to Geneva in Switzerland,
a city associated for many decades with efforts to bring peace...
..and now home to one of the main United Nations offices.
Pavel Podvig is a Russian expert on weapons of mass destruction
and Russia's nuclear forces.
Nice to meet you.
For a decade, he was involved in setting the Doomsday Clock.
The Russian President made it very clear
that nuclear weapons are on the table.
He said very specifically that if someone would intervene,
then they will see the consequences they've never seen in their lives,
which was a direct reference to nuclear weapons.
How shocked were you that President Putin would say that, at that time?
Oh, that was pretty shocking, I would say.
At that point, we didn't know what that would look like.
I wouldn't say we've never seen before,
because if we go back to, like, '62 and the Cuban Crisis,
we may have seen things of that order of magnitude,
but imagine this happening in the 21st century.
That was definitely a shock.
And President Putin, why did he do this?
And what does it tell us about him
and how far he might be prepared to go?
Well, this is exactly...what nuclear weapons are there for,
to make sure that you have
a certain freedom of action.
And at that time, apparently, the Russian President believed
that by making these statements, he could deter the West
from intervening on the side of Ukraine -
which was a correct calculation. This is how deterrence works.
But do you think there's a danger that if he was backed into a corner,
if there was an existential threat to Russia,
that Putin could use nuclear weapons?
Well...
Technically, yes. The weapons are there.
So, the only way Russia can use nuclear weapons in this conflict
is to use it in what I would call the strategic sense,
or in Hiroshima and Nagasaki sense,
to shock the opponent into surrender -
Ukraine, in this case.
The reaction of the international community
to just the idea of nuclear threats was...strongly very negative,
people didn't like it, and they did force Russia to lower the rhetoric.
And it was clear that bringing nuclear weapons again,
even as a threat, will definitely not bring Russia any threats.
This isn't the first time the world has held its breath
over the prospect of nuclear war between Russia and America.
NEWSREEL: A sea of planes that, on a moment's notice, can be in the air
to avenge any Communist strike.
In 1962, Russian missiles in Cuba raised tensions to boiling point.
PRESIDENT KENNEDY: It shall be the policy of this nation
to regard any nuclear missile launched from Cuba
against any nation in the Western Hemisphere
as an attack by the Soviet Union on the United States.
At the 11th hour, the crisis was averted.
But that close call sparked the need for better global cooperation
on nuclear weapons.
NEWSREEL: In London, representatives of three nations
sign an agreement to halt the spread of nuclear weapons -
taking out an insurance policy, so to speak,
against a worldwide nuclear holocaust.
In 1968, the Non-Proliferation Treaty was signed.
It's still in force today.
It was meant to restrict the nuclear weapons club to just five -
the US, Russia, Britain, France and China.
Other countries agreed to only develop civilian programmes,
like nuclear power plants.
Under the NPT, most countries agree
not to develop or seek nuclear weapons,
and they accept safeguards by the International Atomic Energy Agency
to verify that all of their nuclear activities are strictly peaceful,
that no nuclear facilities or nuclear materials are being used
for weapons purposes.
It basically provides stability in the international system,
in the global nuclear order.
The Treaty limited the number of countries
that developed nuclear weapons.
But the '70s and early '80s saw a massive arms race
between the two major players, America and Russia.
During the Cold War, they ramped up the number of nuclear warheads
to over 70,000 between them.
The fear was they could set off an all-out nuclear war
with devastating consequences.
NEWSREEL: The enemy realises that an attack on the United States
would likely mean committing national suicide.
Nobody wins in nuclear war
because both sides are sure to suffer terrible damage.
During the Cold War years, we were constantly at loggerheads.
We had a lot going on to try to get our hands around
the threat of nuclear weapons and the threat of nuclear holocaust,
because it is an existential threat to humanity.
It was something both the Soviets and we - later, the Russians - felt
we just had to keep working on.
Then the world changed.
A new Russian leader, Mikhail Gorbachev, came to power.
NEWSREEL: The world had waited six years for this moment,
and yet Mr Gorbachev's first words were easy-going and natural.
"Dobriy den," he says - "Good morning."
Gorbachev and President Ronald Reagan met at a historic summit.
Shortly after, the two superpowers signed the START treaty,
a commitment to reduce the number of nuclear weapons.
The Cold War was over and a new era of arms control began.
That was really an incredibly promising time,
because the Cold War had ended
and we had this opportunity to rethink the role
of nuclear weapons in US policy and to greatly reduce.
And nuclear weapons WERE greatly reduced over that time,
by a total of about 80%.
In 2010, US President Obama signed a second START treaty
with Russian President Medvedev,
to reduce their stockpiles still further.
I was responsible for negotiating the New START treaty.
It causes us to limit our deployments of nuclear warheads
to 1,550 warheads each.
It was a bit of a golden moment, I would say,
in the US-Russian relationship, and we were lucky to be able
to get the New START treaty negotiated during that period.
Medvedev was president,
but the real power in the Kremlin was the then Prime Minister,
Vladimir Putin.
I know for a fact that, behind the scenes, Vladimir Putin was trying
to throw a wrench in the works.
It was, I think, difficult sometimes to get things
across the finish line in Moscow.
But in that way, it was a typical arms control negotiation,
each side pushing for its own national interests.
We got it finished and it did enter into force.
Today, President Putin's invasion of Ukraine and his nuclear threats
have brought cooperation with America to a halt.
UNTRANSLATED
REPORTER: Military chiefs told Russia's leader
the task of delivering a massive nuclear strike
by strategic offensive forces had been rehearsed.
The New START treaty runs out in 2026.
At present, there are no negotiations to extend it.
That could spell the end of over 30 years of agreement
between the two major nuclear players on limiting their weapons.
We are no longer conducting on-site inspections
or...really exchanging information that provides both sides
a great deal of predictability
about nuclear weapons systems on the other side.
So, to me, it's a tragic moment for nuclear arms control.
Putin hasn't just challenged America
but all European countries in Nato,
protected under the US nuclear umbrella.
Russians have made direct threats to use nuclear weapons
against Britain, one of the founding members of Nato.
That's put the UK's nuclear readiness on alert.
Britain's nuclear deterrent is housed in the west of Scotland.
So, this is Faslane.
This is the hub, the absolute hub of Britain's nuclear deterrent.
And you know that because of the security fence,
which is really extensive, right round the base, heavily electrified
and barbed wire right along the top of it.
Since the height of the Cold War,
Naval Base Clyde - on the banks of Gare Loch -
has been at the heart of the UK's nuclear policy.
That's the guard post, the entrance to the base.
The only way you can really see the base is by going up high.
You can look down here and see the pens, the submarine pens,
down below me.
I can see that there is one of the submarines on base,
in the dock, right now.
Since the mid-1990s, the UK has relied on just one means of delivery
for its nuclear weapons - Continuous At-Sea Deterrent.
These are warheads placed on top of Trident ballistic missiles,
which are housed inside Vanguard submarines.
The UK is unique in relying on just this one particular system.
Here he is.
Feargal Dalton is a retired lieutenant commander
who served on HMS Victorious as chief weapons engineer.
Hello. Morning, Jane.
Nice to meet you, Feargal. And you. What a lovely morning. Yeah.
Welcome to Faslane.
Shall we go and have a look? Yeah.
That's the shiplift, that big building you're seeing there.
We can take submarines out of the water, do engineering work.
Further along to the right is all the engineering support.
Nuclear submarines are very complicated systems,
systems within systems.
So, how does Britain's nuclear deterrent actually work?
Well, there's four submarines, four Vanguard-class submarines,
and one of them's always deployed, one's ready to take over,
one's doing maintenance, one's maybe in refit.
There's always one out there at 15 minutes' notice to fire.
Somewhere out there? Somewhere out there.
Do the crew know where they're going?
The crew absolutely do not know where they're going.
The captain and the navigator will know where they're going.
Does the Prime Minister know where they are?
No, nobody back on land knows where they are.
Nobody in the military chain of command on land knows
where the submarine is. Nobody in Britain knows where it is.
The Prime Minister doesn't know.
And the whole point being
that if the Prime Minister had a gun literally put to his head
and was asked, "Where is your nuclear weapon arsenal?",
he wouldn't be able to answer the question.
And what is the command structure between government,
between those submarines, wherever they are out at sea?
How does it work? That starts with the Prime Minister.
And the Prime Minister would give that instruction
to the military, Chief of Defence Staff.
When the message would come in on board to the submarine,
myself as the weapons engineer officer
and the executive officer would both go to the communications department
and pick up the message, and we would hold it aloft,
holding it to each side,
so the whole crew could see that we have this message.
And then we would go and encrypt it with the commanding officer
and the strategic missile officer,
and we would check that that is a properly authenticated,
valid message.
Because there's a heck of a lot at stake.
Yes.
The whole point of the nuclear deterrent
is that it's never actually fired.
People say, "Oh, you know, it's a weapon system
"that would never be used." It's being used at the moment.
As we speak, at the moment, there is a nuclear deterrent out there.
The Vladimir Putins of this world know that it's out there
and they know that it's credible and that we could use it if needs be.
If the government was taken out by a nuclear strike,
how would the submarine, the commander, the crew
know what to do, where to go, who to target?
If we determine that there is no British government left,
there is the letter of last resort,
which is a letter from the Prime Minister
to the commanding officer.
And where is that letter?
That letter is in the authentication safe
in the control room of the submarine.
Every time there's a new Prime Minister, one of the first things
he or she does is sit down and writes that letter
to the commanding officer of the nuclear deterrent.
Feargal is one of a handful of people
who have fired a Trident missile - with a dummy warhead -
from one of the subs.
We're demonstrating to our military commanders
that we can safely operate and deploy nuclear weapons.
We're also demonstrating to our political bosses
that we have this ability, this capability.
And there's also an element of demonstrating
to the potentially hostile nations of the world
that Britain has this capability.
So I guess when I pulled the trigger and the missile was launched,
it was a real sense of achievement, a sense of pride.
I think any thoughts you have about it, you do beforehand.
How I reasoned that in my own mind was that
Britain is a democratic country. We have elections.
There are political parties who stand on a mandate for deploying
and operating nuclear weapons, and they win those elections,
and we will take our orders from our political bosses.
The Vanguard-class submarine, launched in 1993,
was supposed to have a lifespan of 25 years.
The oldest is now entering its 31st year of operation.
A new class of four Dreadnought submarines
are currently under construction at a potential cost of £40 billion.
The process to replace the current fleet of submarines
actually began well over a decade ago.
Building submarines takes an awful long time.
This is a multi-decade project.
Slowly, one by one, the new submarines will replace
the current fleet, so that by the mid-2030s,
we will have a new fleet of nuclear armed submarines
that will then probably be deployed until the 2060s.
For decades, Britain has been reducing its warhead stockpile
to around 225.
We asked the Ministry of Defence to explain their nuclear strategy.
They turned down our request for an on-camera interview.
But the UK's policy is in publicly available documents from 2021.
Well... Well, this is interesting.
It says, following the Government's most recent defence review,
they announced that the cap on the UK's nuclear stockpile
would actually increase to no more than 260 warheads.
And given the current global security environment, they say,
they'd be extending their policy of deliberate ambiguity
and no longer making public any operational details.
So, Britain has increased the cap on its nuclear arsenal by 35 warheads,
and there's even greater secrecy around them.
Sir Lawrence Freedman is a professor of war studies
at King's College London.
Good to see you. Let's sit down.
Why do you think the UK Government has recently become less transparent
about the nuclear stockpile?
I think because when they did discuss it in '21,
I think they felt it was overinterpreted,
people were making more of it than it deserved.
It becomes an issue every time you look at replacing one generation
with the next because it looks expensive - there's, you know,
billions and billions of pounds involved.
But that's a question of government priorities
rather than sort of the basic strategic principle
of whether you're a nuclear weapon power or not.
Has it allowed Britain to, as it were, punch above its weight
over the years?
I think that claim was made - and it was probably true -
in the late '50s and early '60s,
where the UK did play quite an important part in arms controlling
because it was a nuclear power.
I don't think it has a major impact now.
They're still essentially on this same idea
that we're staying in the nuclear business,
but we're not trying to compete with the big boys,
we're not trying to be a superpower.
We just want to make sure that we have a credible deterrent,
as we've been through with the war in Ukraine,
where Russians quite regularly make threats to the United Kingdom.
It's a degree of reassurance to be able to say,
"Have you forgotten something,
"that you may wish to do all these terrible things to us,
"but we could do terrible things back in return?"
Is there an argument that what happened with Putin's threats
over Ukraine, which was essentially outrage across the world,
has put them out of bounds?
The whole morality of nuclear weapons has been shown up
to be a real problem for states.
The problem is that nuclear deterrence worked for Putin.
I don't think he thinks nuclear deterrence has been a failure for
him, whatever the moral outrage caused by his invasion of Ukraine,
because the Biden administration and other Nato governments said,
"We understand that if we get directly involved,
"fighting side by side with the Ukrainians,
"that risks a nuclear war." And they didn't.
And they made that clear right at the start.
The lesson of Ukraine is that deterrence can work.
The British Government is not alone in seeing the value
of increasing their nuclear deterrent programme.
MILITARY BAND PLAYS
According to the Pentagon,
China has significantly expanded its nuclear stockpile in the last year
to 500 operational warheads,
and it's hoping to double that to 1,000 in the next six years.
In Russia, President Putin has recently revealed there will be
two new nuclear submarines added to the Russian fleet.
In New Mexico, the United States is also modernising and expanding
its nuclear arsenal.
I'm looking down on the old Los Alamos laboratories.
And in the foreground is the massive new Los Alamos complex,
where thousands of scientists are still working today
on nuclear weapons research.
And over there to the south is the old Trinity test range,
where that first atomic weapon was tested.
And it is still a test range for the US military today.
Los Alamos is still one of the jewels in the crown
of the US nuclear programme,
building on the history of Oppenheimer and his team.
The labs here design and develop the main element,
the explosive nuclear warhead.
Thomas Mason is the Director of the Los Alamos Lab.
Due to the secrecy of the work,
we are meeting in the historic part of the old town.
Would you say there was a renewed effort to develop, here at the labs,
develop those nuclear weapons because of the concerns
that we've seen globally, potentially,
about the use of such things which we all thought
was long in the distant past?
So, right now, we're in the midst of a modernisation
that was really conceived of, you know,
before the significant change in the geopolitical environment.
Of course, what's happened since then is, both in Europe -
with Russia and its unprovoked invasion of Ukraine -
and some of the events in Asia -
with China rapidly expanding its arsenal -
there is now a different geopolitical environment.
We're now, for the first time since the '80s,
having to look at a new set of military requirements,
driven by the actions in other countries.
And, in fact, we've started work here on the W93,
which will be the first new warhead introduced into the stockpile
since the '80s.
The Russians and the Chinese might look
at what's happening here in the States -
more money being spent on developing these kind of weapons -
and say, "Well, this is ramping it all up.
"Why wouldn't we do the same?"
Well, in fact, they have been.
For decades, the US policy was to not do anything
towards developing new weapons,
to not do anything that might be seen as provocative.
And as it turned out,
while we sort of pursued that policy of not developing new systems,
you know, Russia went ahead and modernised their systems.
In fact, they're largely complete with that modernisation
and have introduced a lot of new weapons.
And China is in the midst of what has been characterised
as "strategic breakout". So, you know, I think...
I think it was a good effort to kind of demonstrate restraint,
but it appears not to have been successful.
It's a balance, isn't it, you've got to strike
between modernising, moving ahead, having that arsenal
and not causing the problem, not inflaming the situation?
I think that balance, that challenge of the balance,
has been with us since 1945,
and it's with us today.
And I think it's going to be with us for quite some time into the future.
In Chicago, the scientists are meeting
to decide where to set the Doomsday Clock for 2024.
The war in Ukraine is entering its third year,
there's new conflict in the Middle East
and many nuclear arsenals around the world are growing.
Their discussions may well be some of the most difficult
since the clock started ticking.
The Doomsday Clock discussions are some of the most interesting
that I participate in.
There's really a full exchange of views.
At various times, I've been on both sides of this,
arguing there's reasons for optimism and hope.
I've also, at other times, pointed out how the risks
have...increased significantly.
I think when we come into the room, it's a...
..it's a heavy feeling.
It's a sobering feeling.
There's a lot of responsibility.
We know a lot of people are going to pay a lot of attention
to what we say.
As always, we know there'll be a lot of criticism,
but that it will be used by leaders at the highest of levels
and by kids writing book reports.
Everybody uses the clock.
What's the general feeling amongst the board as to where we're at now?
This is a very dangerous time.
We have moved from a period
where nuclear weapons were considered unusable
and a nuclear war unwinnable.
We're seeming to move into a period of time where we're not so sure.
Every major country - UK included -
is investing in their nuclear arsenal.
But nevertheless, no nuclear weapon has been used for 70, 80 years.
People would say, "Isn't this scaremongering?
"There's no way we're moving towards that again."
And they'd be wrong. People would be wrong to say,
"There's no way we're moving towards that again."
In fact, when you look at operational plans from the Russians,
they militarily practise as if nuclear weapons are usable.
With the major nuclear powers investing billions,
global tensions are increasing,
so newer players could see these weapons as the ultimate guarantee
of preserving their status, even their very existence...
..like North Korea.
Leader Kim Jong-un regularly showcases their military might
on state TV.
This clip from 2022 shows the testing of a long-range missile
capable of carrying a nuclear warhead.
So far, the immediate threat is to their neighbours,
South Korea and Japan.
But Kim Jong-un's also made a big show with his recent test
of a missile capable of hitting America.
I'm meeting scientist Sig Hecker,
who's travelled the world visiting nuclear programmes,
including those of Russia and North Korea.
Sig? I'm Jane. Yes. Jane, pleasure to meet you.
And you. Thanks for coming. Thank you. Come on in.
He's also been involved in setting the Doomsday Clock for many years.
Oh, what a beautiful house you've got. Thank you.
You see many of the Russian... Yeah.
..matryoshka dolls, because... So, why have you got these dolls?
So why did I get those? Because I've been in Russia 57 times...
Wow. ..since 1992, so I've worked so close with the Russians.
57 times?
57 times. You beat me.
Oh, how many times have you...? Oh, maybe 15 or 20.
Oh, really? LAUGHS: But not 57!
Sig's recently returned from another visit to the Far East.
I've been to North Korea seven times,
so I've been to their nuclear facilities,
I've talked to their diplomats.
People sometimes look at crazy behaviour, you know,
by the North Koreans -
"Would they launch a missile or do a nuclear test?"
I see all much more of sort of a calculated progression.
So what do they have and what could they do with it?
So, of course, North Korea being what it is,
it's pretty difficult to look inside.
So, my best estimate at this point,
they have been able to build up a pretty good stockpile
of highly enriched uranium, over 1,000 kilograms by now.
And if they turn all of that into weapons,
they may have 50 to 60 weapons today.
That's really significant, isn't it? That's really significant.
What makes it even worse is, what kind of weapons do they have?
They've done six nuclear tests.
The first one in 2006 didn't work so well.
The last one - so far - in 2017, that worked too well.
So, because of that, today, my general assessment is
they can put a nuclear warhead
on their short- and medium-range missiles and deliver them.
So, in other words, all of South Korea and most of Japan
is within reach of a North Korean nuclear-tipped missile.
That's really bad.
You know, we should've never let them get there,
but that's where they are.
They have demonstrated the missile or rocket capabilities
to reach all of the United States,
but they still haven't done enough nuclear tests
to make the warhead small enough to put into those missiles
and survive, essentially, the ride, including the re-entry,
and so they're not yet there.
But that's what they're currently focused on,
because they want to be able to threaten the United States.
They're not there yet, but they could be?
They will be there eventually, because I've watched them.
And every time when somebody said, "North Korea can't do this,"
a few years later, they did it.
As I think about it, the big concern is nuclear weapons use.
OK. Who would nuke the United States?
Well, you know, possibly Russia. They have the capability.
Possibly China. They've been improving that capability.
Who else? North Korea. That's it.
So, there are only three countries that can threaten the United States
with nuclear weapons, and this little bitty North Korea
of 25 million people is one of those.
So, another player in this whole field is Iran.
Iran wants nuclear weapons. Where's it got to?
Iran today has everything in place.
So, should they decide that they're going to go ahead
and enrich the uranium fully up to weapons-grade,
they could build a bomb in six months to a year timeframe.
That must be a concern.
That is a great concern because that, in the Middle East,
particularly as we see what's happening today, is really...
It's very different than North Korea.
But Iran, it's a sea of instability, the whole Middle East,
and so that's a great concern.
But they don't have the nuclear weapons
and haven't decided to go there at this point.
Some governments see the benefits of having nuclear weapons,
but their existence has always proved controversial
with the public.
CHANTING
Since the birth of the atomic bomb, there's been protest.
In the 1980s, millions took to the streets
to voice their opposition to nuclear weapons.
In Britain, it's not just been protest against our own warheads,
but against having American ones based here, too.
PROTESTORS SING
The Greenham Peace Camp was home to thousands of women
who fought to get the weapons removed.
SINGING, CHEERING
NEWSREEL: The women protesters were doing their best to tear down
the airfield's perimeter fence with their bare hands.
If we get together, we can actually force the government to turn back
the decision that Nato made on siting cruise missiles in Europe.
After a long battle, they succeeded.
Since 2008, there have been no American nuclear weapons in the UK.
But that may be coming to an end.
Pentagon budget documents suggest the UK will now be one of six
Nato countries where US special weapons will be stationed.
It could well be here - RAF Lakenheath in Suffolk.
US fighter planes that will be capable of dropping such weapons
are already based here.
And there are now plans by the US Air Force
to increase accommodation for a potential nuclear mission.
CHANTING
It's small-scale so far,
but there's protest here by the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament.
Sophie? Hi, I'm Jane from the BBC. Oh, hi! Hi, I've got cold hands!
No wonder, being up there! What's the idea of today?
What's this about?
This is all about putting the spotlight on Lakenheath.
We've got overwhelming evidence
that the US are planning to site nuclear bombs here.
The government will neither confirm nor deny, but it's absolutely clear,
and we know that we've got public opinion on our side.
You know, nearly 60% of the population
do not want to have US nuclear bombs sited in Britain.
This base is surrounded by secrecy.
They don't want people to know what's going on -
because if people do know, they'll...
They're up in arms about it!
I'm here protesting today because people need to know about
the threat of nuclear weapons being stored at this site,
or anywhere, really.
So, tell me about the '80s. Were you at Greenham Common?
We were part of a women-only demonstration,
and we came from all over the country -
women who were just desperate to get rid of these terrible weapons
that were going to be put on our soil.
That's why I can't believe we're doing this again.
We shouldn't have weapons of mass destruction anywhere in the world.
But when they're on your turf,
it's extra incumbent on you to do something about it.
We've got nothing to do with this base.
It's totally under United States control.
If we get Trump in there next time - and he may press the button,
cos he's got a bigger button than Putin -
then we are a target.
The British Government and the American Government would say,
"We need this because Putin has threatened to use nuclear weapons
"in the context of the invasion of Ukraine."
The idea that we just have to, everybody has to nuke up,
it's not... It's false. It's not working. Do you know what I mean?
If you look at it, like, nuclear weapons haven't kept the peace.
We're now in this very, very dangerous situation
where, you know, the Doomsday Clock,
the atomic scientists who put that together,
they're now saying the world is in a far more dangerous situation
precisely because of what's happening in Ukraine,
so we feel that, like, just adding more nuclear bombs to that situation
is not going to make it safer.
So that's why we're going to continue protesting here,
because we want these...we don't want these nuclear weapons
coming here. We want to encourage our government
to say, "Nope, we're not going to accept them."
CHANTING: Say, "Hey!" Hey!
Say, "Ho!" Ho!
Nato nukes have got to go!
Say, "Hey!" Say, "Ho!"
Nato nukes have got to go!
There's now a global movement for a total ban on these weapons.
The International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons
has introduced a ground-breaking treaty.
In 2017, they won the Nobel Peace Prize.
Daniel Hogsta is the deputy director.
Hi there. Hello, I'm Jane. I'm Daniel. Welcome to ICAN.
Nice to meet you. Very nice to meet you as well.
So, you've got a lot of photographs here. We do.
Yeah, this is the photos from the historic days in Oslo in 2017,
when we were fortunate to receive the Nobel Peace Prize.
So, this is the original medal... Mm-hm. ..that we received.
You can hold it if you'd like.
Was it surprising to get this?
Incredibly surprising.
We were just three people in the office at that time,
working at ICAN.
We had no expectation of winning,
so when I picked up the phone and answered the call,
I thought it was a prank initially.
What is the treaty about?
The Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons
is the first treaty among governments
that comprehensively prohibits nuclear weapons and all activities
involved in nuclear weapons, from use to testing to modernisation.
But it also contains other important provisions that are aimed at helping
the communities that were impacted by the nuclear weapons tests -
over 2,000 of which took place since 1945 - as well.
So, how many nations have signed up
and how many are you still trying to get on board?
Well, of course, we're trying to get all governments to join the treaty,
but currently we have 69 governments that have ratified
since the treaty entered into force in 2021.
But there's 190-some countries in the world,
so you're...a long way to go. We are a long way to go.
We're under no illusions about how difficult this is going to be.
I mean, the nuclear weapon states are steadfastly against this treaty.
What about Britain? Because they haven't signed up.
"We're a nuclear weapon state and not going to sign that treaty"?
The UK is one of the countries that is very much opposed
to the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons
and is perhaps even pressuring other countries to not join the treaty.
The UK always talks about nuclear weapons as its deterrent.
It never refers to them as what they are, which is weapons
of mass destruction as well, which put its own citizens at risk.
But it's naive, isn't it, to think that weapons states -
nuclear weapons states - would sign up to getting rid of them?
It's the source of their power.
Yeah, nuclear disarmament activists are often accused of being naive,
but I think the real naivety comes when assuming
that you can have this weapon in the world
and that it will never be used,
when all the nine nuclear weapon states are emphasising constantly
that they are ready to use them.
So, basically, we are trusting the nine individuals
who are in control of those nuclear arsenals
to never launch a nuclear weapon.
When asked for comment, the Ministry of Defence said,
"The UK is committed to the long-term goal
"of a world without nuclear weapons,
"in line with our obligations under the NPT.
"We firmly believe the best way to achieve this
"is through gradual multilateral disarmament."
The Bulletin of Atomic Scientists will soon reveal
where the hands of the Doomsday Clock will now be set.
Now, in 2023, we judged that the risks of catastrophe
were increasing and unacceptably high,
and so we set the clock to 90 seconds closer to midnight.
And I would judge that the risks of catastrophe
still remain unacceptably high.
Nuclear weapons, nuclear terrorism, nuclear proliferation -
right now, it's just going in the wrong direction.
I think there is a very good argument for setting it back.
We've seen that the opposition to the idea
of threatening nuclear weapons is very strong and it is universal.
And I think that must be reflected.
The clock is a very powerful instrument to send that message.
We are investing across the globe
as if the nuclear weapons are usable for a very long time.
And these are not the weapons that we need for the 21st century.
People are scared.
It doesn't feel normal out there.
It feels dangerous.
And in some ways, we can say, "It is. You're not crazy."
We should think it's scary and dangerous.
Leaders are not acting responsibly.