One in Six Chance of Worldwide Nuclear War: Physicist’s Post Goes Viral

Elon Musk agrees 'probability is rising rapidly'

Characteristic mushroom shaped cloud begins formation after the first H-Bomb explosion (U.S.) at Eniwetok Atoll in the Pacific on Nov. 6, 1952. Three Lions/Getty Images

With the Russia-Ukraine war still raging, physicist and cosmologist Max Tegmark has estimated the odds of global nuclear war in the near future at one in six, in an article and a social media post that went viral.

The Swedish-American MIT professor made the prediction in an Oct. 8 post on LessWrong, a rationalist community blog created by American artificial intelligence researcher Eliezer Yudkowsky.