protest song about nuclear war, “2 Minutes to Midnight” was written by Adrian Smith and Bruce Dickinson.
The song title references the Doomsday Clock, the symbolic clock used by the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, which represents a countdown to potential global catastrophe. In September 1953 the clock reached two minutes to midnight, the closest it ever got to midnight, when the United States and Soviet Union tested H-bombs within nine months of one another.[1] The atomic clock, set at 12 minutes to midnight in 1972, regressed thereafter among US–Soviet tensions, reaching three minutes to midnight in 1984 – the year this track was released – and at that time the most dangerous clock reading since 1953.[2] According to Dickinson, the song critically addresses “the romance of war” in general rather than the Cold War in particular.[3]
IF this intro doesn’t give you the urge to head-bang, then you must be dead…..