Sources & method

The World Violence Clock is an editorial gauge of worldwide armed violence, modelled on the Doomsday Clock. Fifteen countries are scored from cited reporting. A watch list tracks the next tier. Every country on the map also shows UCDP's conflict-event record for 2026.

The clock

Index = 0.5 × mean country score + 0.3 × escalation share + 0.2 × breadth
Minutes to midnight = 60 × (1 − Index ÷ 100), rounded.

• Escalation share is the % of tracked countries rated Rising, minus those rated Falling.
• Breadth is the number of countries scoring 70 or more, as a share of 15.
• Midnight (an index of 100) means every tracked country is at maximum violence and all are escalating.

Scores

• Country violence score (0–100):
  • Lethality and tempo over the last 72 hours and the current month (0–40)
  • Number and spread of active fronts (0–20)
  • Harm to civilians, including strikes on infrastructure and displacement (0–20)
  • Escalation in the latest reporting (0–20)
• Takeover risk (0–100):
  • Share of territory held or contested by a non-state or foreign force (0–40)
  • Pressure on the capital or major cities (0–30)
  • The challenger's momentum (0–20)
  • State weakness or coup risk (0–10)

The clock moves only when cited reporting changes a score or a trend.

Publishing rules

• Confirmed (T2): two or more independent credible outlets or officials, an official open-data record, or a UCDP entry. Only T2 reports are counted.
• Provisional (T1): one wire service or major broadcaster plus one other independent source, or one on-record official statement.
  • Shown with a badge and a separate tally, and kept off the clock.
  • Hidden after 72 hours unless confirmed.
• Casualties: conservative floors with ranges, deaths and injuries separate. We never write "feared dead".
• Corrections: each report keeps its own correction log. Retractions are marked for 7 days, then removed from totals.
• Headlines: the "Latest headlines" boxes show publishers' own headlines with links. They are not verified by us and never move a score.
• Wire and UN copy: AP, Reuters, UN/OCHA, the WHO attacks-on-health-care tracker, RSF and similar sources appear only as a link plus facts in our own words. We do not copy their text, quotes, photos or datasets.

Geography and disputed areas

Countries are identified by ISO 3166-1 codes and drawn with Natural Earth boundaries via world-atlas. Disputed areas follow ISO 3166-1 and UN M49:

• Gaza and the West Bank are attributed to Palestine (PSE).
• Somaliland is counted under Somalia.
• Northern Cyprus is counted under Cyprus.
• Kosovo is shown on its own (XK, a user-assigned code).
• Western Sahara is shown as its own area.

Boundaries do not imply endorsement.

Sources and credits

Leads only, never displayed: GDELT 2.0 event files (unlimited use with citation; we use them as leads only), Bluesky wire accounts, Liveuamap.
Never used, and never copied as text or datasets: ACLED, GTD, the WHO attacks-on-health-care tracker, the Aid Worker Security Database, CPJ datasets, Telegram scraping, Truth Social scraping.

Conflict-event baseline: UCDP Candidate Events Dataset (CC BY 4.0), Uppsala Conflict Data Program. Hegre et al. (2020); Sundberg & Melander (2013).

Source status (live)

Limits

Scores are editorial judgements built from public reporting. Battlefield and casualty claims by armed parties often cannot be verified and are labelled as claims. UCDP candidate data are preliminary and can be revised.