World War III

For other uses of World War III, World War 3, World War Three or Third World War, see World War Three (disambiguation).

This } does not cite its references or sources.
You can help Wikipedia by introducing appropriate citations.

Nuclear arms are generally hypothesized to play a decisive role in any future world war.

World War Three is a term used to describe a hypothetical conflict on the scale of World War II or larger. Most usages of the term assume the use of weapons of mass destruction such as nuclear weapons.

In the latter half of the 20th century, military confrontation between the two superpowers was considered to pose an extreme threat to establishing world peace, when the Cold War saw the capitalist United States face the communist Soviet Union. If this confrontation had escalated into full-scale war, it was widely thought that the conflict would become "World War III," and that the end result would be the destruction of most life on Earth, an extermination of human life or, at the very least, the partial collapse of civilization, with total casualties exceeding 1 billion. (See also Mutually Assured Destruction.) This outcome ranks with asteroid or comet impact events, worldwide pandemics, and catastrophic climate change as one of the major mass extinction events that could befall humanity or even all life on Earth.

The term has carried on beyond the Cold War, and now usually refers to any potential future global conflict which would involve nuclear weapons. In modern times, the possibility of WWIII taking place between superpowers has been replaced by the threat of a nuclear attack by a smaller party, which could incite retaliation and cause a destructive domino effect.

Historical close calls

Before the collapse of the Soviet Union and end of the Cold War, an apocalyptic war between the United States and USSR was considered likely. The Cuban missile crisis in 1962 is generally thought to be the historical point at which the risk of World War III was closest. Other potential starts have included the following (see External links below for further examples):
* 1948-1949- Berlin Blockade: The USSR blockaded Western Berlin in an attempt to remove America, France and Great Britain from Berlin. Some American politicians suggested an invasion of East Germany, however Truman was dissuaded from this by analysts saying that the risk and fallout of WWIII would be too great. (The Allies dealt with the Berlin Blockade with an ultimately successful airlift).
* July 26, 1956 – March, 1957 — Suez Crisis: the conflict pitted Egypt against an alliance between the French Fourth Republic, the United Kingdom and Israel. When the USSR threatened to intervene on behalf of Egypt, the Canadian Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs Lester B. Pearson feared a larger war and persuaded the British and French to withdraw.
* October 27, 1962; Cuban Missile Crisis: the conflict pitted the United States against an alliance between the USSR and Cuba. The USSR was attempting to place several launch sites in Cuba in response to the United States installation of missiles in Turkey. The United States response included dispersal of Strategic Air Command bombers to civilian airfields around the United States and war games in which the United States Marine Corps landed against a dictator named "ORTSAC" (Castro spelt backwards). For a brief while, the U.S. military went to DEFCON 3, while SAC went to DEFCON 2. The crisis peaked on October 27, when a U-2 (piloted by Rudolph Anderson) was shot down over Cuba and another U-2 flight over Russia was almost intercepted when it strayed over Siberia, after Curtis LeMay (U.S. Air Force Chief of Staff) had neglected to enforce Presidential orders to suspend all overflights.
* October 24, 1973 — As the Yom Kippur War was winding down, a Soviet threat to intervene on Egypt's behalf caused the United States to go to DEFCON 3.
* November 9, 1979, when the US made emergency retaliation preparations after NORAD saw on-screen indications that a full-scale Soviet attack had been launched. No attempt was made to use the "red telephone" hotline to clarify the situation with the USSR and it was not until early-warning radar systems confirmed no such launch had taken place that NORAD realised that a computer system test had caused the display errors. A Senator inside the NORAD facility at the time described an atmosphere of absolute panic. A GAO investigation led to the construction of an off-site test facility, to prevent similar mistakes subsequently.
* September 26, 1983, when Soviet early warning system showed that a US ICBM attack had been launched. Colonel Stanislav Petrov, in command of the monitoring facility put the warning down to computer error and did not notify his superiors.
* November 1983: Exercise Able Archer 83 — The USSR mistook a test of NATO's nuclear-release procedures as a fake cover for a NATO attack and subsequently raised its nuclear alert level. It was not until afterwards that the US realized how close it had come to nuclear war. At the time of the exercise the Soviet Politburo was without a healthy functioning head due to the failing health of then leader Yuri Andropov, which is thought to have been one of the contributing factors to the Soviet paranoia over the exercise.
* January 25, 1995 (see Norwegian Rocket Incident), when Russia almost launched a nuclear attack. after a Norwegian missile launch for scientific research was detected from Spitsbergen and thought to be an attack on Russia, launched five minutes from Moscow. Norway had notified the world that it would be making the launch, but the Russian Defense Ministry had neglected to notify those monitoring Russia's nuclear defense systems.

In addition to the above there are two other points during the Cold War that may have resulted in world war. These, however, are not generally listed as they do not relate to the United States-Soviet Union rivalry, but rather the events following the Sino-Soviet Split of 1960. The ideological split between Maoist communists (represented primarily by China) and Stalinist communists (represented primarily by the Soviet Union) divided the entire communist movement worldwide — which controlled governments or significant rebel factions on most continents. Thus a war between China and the Soviet Union may well have resulted in world war, whilst not necessarily involving the U.S. and the capitalist west (although the U.S. may have opportunistically intervened whilst its two communist rivals were distracted by war with each other). The two points the communist powers almost entered into all-out war over were:
* March 1969, when border clashes broke out between Soviet and Chinese troops over Zhen Bao Island in the Ussuri River. In total, the Soviets suffered about 90 casualties to 800 for the Chinese (these numbers are based on Soviet claims). At the time there were almost one and a half million troops deployed along the border.
* 1978 and 1979, in which the pro-Soviet Vietnam invaded the pro-China Cambodia and removed Pol Pot. China in turn invaded Vietnam in retaliation and the Soviets denounced this action strongly, although it fell short of taking action. The next year the Soviets invaded Afghanistan and the Chinese claimed this was a continuation of a strategy of encircling China with Soviet allies that had begun the previous year with the invasion of Vietnam.

Preparations for war

OPLAN (Operations Plan) 1000 was the standard U.S. military plan for the first hours or days of a national emergency such as World War III. Unclassified annexes included grounding all civil aircraft in the United States and controlling all navigation beacons. In the 1950s and 1960s, this included CONELRAD (Control of Electromagnetic Radiation), in which all radio stations broadcasting in the U.S. would operate on low power on two frequencies — to prevent Russian bombers from using them for navigation. Certain features of OPLAN 1000 were instituted during the terrorist attacks on the United States on September 11, 2001. The actual U.S. nuclear response was detailed in numerous Single Integrated Operational Plans from 1960 to the present day.

Certain sources also state that the Eisenhower Interstate Highway System was specifically designed to contain several sections which were flat and straight, to be used as emergency runways for nuclear bombers. However, the United States Department of Transportation strongly denies that such a purpose exists in the Interstate highway system. Nonetheless, several other nations, such as Finland and Taiwan have done so. The original freeways (autobahn), as produced by Germany, were built this way for planned World War II military use.

Use of the term

The mushroom cloud from the first "true" Soviet hydrogen bomb test in 1955.

Cold War

The term World War III has been used by Project for the New American Century (PNAC) to describe the Cold War of the 20th century, while the War on Terrorism is referred to as World War IV. PNAC has numerous members who are senior officials in the George W. Bush administration in the USA as well as in other high positions of influence in the United States. James Woolsey, a founding member of PNAC, stated during his opening statements while speaking on April 2, 2003 on a panel discussion at UCLA entitled "America, Iraq and the War on Terrorism, UCLA":

"A few words about this war we're in, which I don't really call a war against terrorism. I have adopted a formulation of my friend Elliot Cohen who teaches at Johns Hopkins School for Advanced International Studies calls it World War IV. World War III having been the Cold War. And I think that more accurately characterizes the degree of commitment that we are going to have to be engaged in, and the scope of what we are going to be engaged in now for some years. This Fourth World War I think will last considerably longer than either World Wars I or II did for us, hopefully not the full four-plus decades of the Cold War."

Even earlier, historian Eric Hobsbawm wrote that the "Second World War had barely ended when humanity plunged into what can reasonably be regarded as a Third World War, though a very peculiar one." (The Age of Extremes: A History of the World)

Korean War

During the Korean War, Gallup polls in the United States showed that a majority of Americans believed that World War III had already begun. The Korean War shared an important feature of previous World Wars, namely the conflict between two coalitions of opposed nations. However, hostilities were restricted to a relatively small geographical area, and loss of life, while high, did not compare to the earlier World Wars. In retrospect, no historians consider the Korean War to have been a "World War."

Gulf War

During a press conference soon after the start of the 1991 Gulf War, King Hussein of Jordan and King Olav V of Norway directly referred to the conflict between the United States and its coalition of allies against Iraq as "the Third World War" but there was no indication of any other world leaders accepting the definition.

Nagorno-Karabakh War

During the Nagorno-Karabakh War between Armenia and Azerbaijan, Turkish Prime Minister Tansu Çiller announced that any Armenian advance on the main territory of Azerbaijan's Nakhichevan Autonomous Republic would result in a declaration of war against Armenia. Russian military leaders declared that a third party intervention by Turkey into the dispute "could trigger a Third World War."

War on Terrorism

Some historians have suggested that the War on Terrorism, in retaliation to the September 11, 2001 attacks and other terrorist attacks on America, may become known by future generations as the third of the world wars due to its global impact and the number of countries involved. However, some point that the conflict actually began with the first World Trade Center Bombing in 1993. This point of view has been shared with many talk-radio show hosts over the last few months, especially by Jim Dallas of KDWN and Michael Savage, and with commentators at both WorldNetDaily and The New American, among others. Others naysayers have a point of view that is considered hyperbole and and view that it is highly unlikely that the current military conflicts in the Middle East and central Asia will escalate to the point that the major world powers would end up engaged in conflict with one another other.

The previous two world wars involved all the most powerful countries of their time in conflict against another in conflicts that had a fundamental impact on world history.

The total capabilities of the various terrorist and islamo-facist movements cannot be compared to those of any of the major participants in those world conflicts. In the 19th and 20th century, especially prior to World War I, the European Powers were almost always constantly involved in multiple conflicts globally during their times of empire, those conflicts almost always against irregular and guerilla movements. These conflictions have are not world wars, due to the conflict being regional, and mostly internal, in regards to the participants of the hostilities being citizens of the colonies of the European Powers.

Perhaps some historians date the beginning of the Second World War to the Japanese invasion of a Manchuria, which was a region ignored during China's post-Imperial strife during the reign of Emperor Pu Yi.

The aftermath of the 9/11 attack on America marked the first time since its creation that NATO enacted its war action and participation articles. The United States did not call NATO into the Afghanistan or Iraq conflicts, though individual allies have participated and NATO is involved in peacekeeping in Afghanistan.

In a statement in the Wall Street Journal the father of one the passengers who died on hijacked United Airlines Flight 93, David Beamer, referred to the acts of the passengers of that flight as: "our first successful counter-attack in our homeland in this new global war, World War III." On May 5, 2006 U.S. President George W. Bush stated that he agreed with that assessment[1][2]. Talk radio hosts Bill O'Reilly [3] and Glenn Beck [4] have called the current war World War III.

2006 Israel-Lebanon conflict

After the Israeli-Lebanese conflict began on July 12, several people have speculated that the world has begun its Third World War. In a July 15, 2006 article in the Seattle Times, former U.S. House Speaker Newt Gingrich has stated that in the coming days he plans to speak out publicly, and to the Administration, about the need to recognize that America is in World War III. He listed the ongoing violence in the Middle East, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and other things as proof that America is in World War III. .Seattle Times Article Glenn Beck, who as noted above considers the War on Terrorism to be the Third World War, has also applied this label to this conflict (specifically during late July 2006 on his CNN Headline News program).

Artistic treatments

A vast apocalyptic and post-apocalyptic science fiction literature exists describing the postulated aftermath of a Third World War, describing the impact of weapons of mass destruction (usually thermonuclear weapons, though biological and unconventional weapons have also been discussed). Little of it describes a very happy world immediately after the event. Many science fiction works are also set in a far future in which a WWIII-type conflict is a historical event, with the subsequent rebuilding of civilization being a major part of the backstory (the Star Trek franchise is a notable example).

The genre of post-apocalyptic science fiction often uses post-World War III scenarios. Such stories were found mostly in Western science fiction publications; Soviet writers were discouraged from writing them.

Prophecies

Some people believe Nostradamus, as well as the Apocalypse, describe what appears like a World-scale War. Mystic interpreters and some conspiracy theorists believe that the World War III has been prophesied and we are led to it by secret societies and current political events. In some of these interpretations, the war will be followed either by the end of the world or the millennium.

The Gulf Crisis, the Kosovo War, as well as the Iraq War were thought to fulfill those prophecies and commence the war, something that did not occur.

In late 2000 a purported time traveller called John Titor made predictions of World War III beginning with an escalating crisis in the Middle East due to degrading support for Israel by the West, culminating in a short nuclear exchange in March 2015 which wipes out approximately 3 billion people across the United States, Europe and China. This occurs when the rural faction of a second U.S. civil war requests help from Russia in eliminating their enemies in the cities.

A chain e-mail circulating over the Internet after WTC attacks, quoted a fake prophecy of Nostradamus according to which, the fall of the 'two brothers' would be the origin of the third war. See also Nostradamus in popular culture for this hoax.

According to some religious scholars an extensive "code" of sorts exists in the Bible, the author being of a higher power in origin or otherwise. These individuals predict growing tensions, circulating primarily around the US, to escalate into war in 2006. These claims are heavily disputed. See: Bible code

Film and television

Several notable movies have been made based on World War III, including the following:
* The Twilight Zone episodes have done numberous treatments of themes relating to WWIII. These episodes include: Time Enough at Last (1959), Two (1961), The Shelter (1961), One More Pallbearer (1962), A Little Peace and Quiet (1985), and Shelter Skelter (1987).
* Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (1964), a black comedy by Stanley Kubrick in which an American general Jack D. Ripper, concerned about fluoridation of drinking water, orders a nuclear attack on the Soviet Union. The title character, Dr. Strangelove, is a parody of a composite of Cold War figures, including Wernher von Braun and Herman Kahn. The secret code Operation DROPKICK, mentioned by George C. Scott's character, may be an oblique reference to Operation DROPSHOT.
* Fail-Safe (1964 and 2000), based on the novel by Eugene Burdick and Harvey Wheeler, involves an American atomic bomber group which mistakenly receives orders to bomb Moscow, and cannot be subsequently recalled due to fail-safe procedures designed to protect against fraudulent radio communications from Soviet imposters.
* The War Game (1965), produced by Peter Watkins, deals with a fictional nuclear attack on Britain. This film won the Oscar for Best Documentary, but was withheld from broadcast by the BBC for two decades.
* The Bed Sitting Room (1969), a surrealist post-nuclear comedy, adapted from the stage play by Spike Milligan and John Antrobus.
Colossus: The Forbin Project (1970), where two (U.S. and USSR) military artificial intelligences ally to blackmail humans with the threat of using nuclear weapons into assembling more artificial intelligences like themselves.
* A Boy and His Dog (1975), based on a short story by Harlan Ellison, takes place after World War III.
* A few stories from the British science fiction television show Doctor Who involved the threat of war during the Cold War. In Day of the Daleks (1972) the Doctor prevents an attack on a peace conference which in an alternative future would result in a series of devasating global wars and a subsequent Dalek invasion. The Master would also try to start a global war by firing a stolen nerve gas missile at another peace conference in The Mind of Evil (1971). A group of evil scientists conspired to start a third world war by using stolen missile codes in Robot (1975); ditto Silurians and Sea Devils in Warriors of the Deep (1984). We learn in The Talons of Weng-Chiang (1977) that by the year 5000 AD humanity has clocked up its sixth world war. Paradise Towers (1987) is set in a large apartment building in a post-apocalytic world. In World War Three (2005), the alien Slitheen family attempts to start a nuclear war on Earth in order to convert the planet into a cheap source of fuel. However, their plan is thwarted and the war never happens.
* Several James Bond films feature villains who seek to engineer a world war for their own goals. In The Spy Who Loved Me (1977) Bond and Soviet agent Anya Amasova prevents mad ichthyophile Karl Stromberg from using hijacked nuclear submarines to trigger a thermonuclear war. In Octopussy (1983) a renegade Soviet general tries to stage a nuclear accident in Berlin, hoping that the ensuing outcry would result in Western Europe unilaterally disarming. A war between Britain and China, organised by media magnate Elliot Carver for the sake of ratings, is averted in Tomorrow Never Dies (1997).
* La Jetée (1962) short movie (or "photo-roman") by French director Chris Marker, is about a group of German scientists and captive survivors of destroyed Paris and radioactive global surface living underground at Chaillot. The technicians conduct research about time travel, hoping to send someone able to recover food, medicine, or energy. They're convinced that only the future and the past can save the present. The basic elements of the plot and relationship between characters were used in the later movie Twelve Monkeys by Terry Gilliam, though with nuclear catastrophe replaced by a global disease epidemic, German scientists by Americans, and the French experience subject (Davos Hanich) by an American one (Bruce Willis). The movie won the Grand Prix of the 1st Science Fiction Festival 1963 and the Jean Vigo prize.
* Damnation Alley (1977), based on a novella by Roger Zelazny, about a group of World War III survivors in the United States trekking from California to New York in search of survivors after hearing a lone radio signal.
* Mad Max (1979), and sequels such as The Road Warrior (1981), present a post-war Australian outback where the survivors battle for oil.
World War III (miniseries), aired on NBC in 1982. A Soviet invasion of Alaska in order to destroy the oil pipeline escalates to a full scale war. This miniseries ended with the President releasing US nuclear forces against the Soviets, and according to some sources may have been given an "open" ending with the possibility of a sequel or a regular network series being spun off. The miniseries' poor ratings prohibited both.
* The Day After (1983) was a controversial ABC Movie of the Week about a full-scale nuclear war and its aftermath, told from the viewpoint of ordinary Americans in the Midwest. The shocking and disturbing content discouraged advertisers, but it was a tremendous ratings success.
* WarGames (1983), starring Matthew Broderick, involves a teenage hacker who challenges an unknown computer system to a simulation game called "Global Thermonuclear War", only to discover that the computer controls NORAD, and the nation's leaders think the simulated Soviet attacks are the start of a real nuclear war.
* Red Dawn (1984) is about a successful surprise attack by the Soviet Union and Cuba against America set in its heartland, and a small band of teenagers that fight the occupation using guerrilla tactics.
* Threads (1984), a movie shown on the BBC, dealing with the short- and longer-term consequences of a nuclear attack on the city of Sheffield, England. Notable for its graphically disturbing and realistic accurate depictions of post-nuclear survival.
* The Terminator series (1984, 1991 and 2003), stars Arnold Schwarzenegger as a cyborg from a post-apocalyptic future. An AI software network called Skynet starts World War III in order to eradicate humanity, and then resorts to sending "Terminator" cyborgs back through time after the surviving humans successfully revolt, in order to stop the leader of the human resistance from ever existing to begin with.
* When the Wind Blows (1986), a bleak cel-animated feature based on a Raymond Briggs book, depicts an elderly couple's attempts to survive World War III through their nostalgic memories of how they survived World War II as children. Features original music by Roger Waters.
* Miracle Mile (1988); the movie's protagonist learns in the first act that America has just triggered World War III, it follows his attempts to escape the Northern Hemisphere's destruction.
* Akira (1988), anime film adaptation of its namesake manga, in which events take place in Japan, after World War III and a nuclear explosion in Tokyo.
World War III (1988) from The Tracey Ullman Show. Homer Simpson makes everyone practice for a nuclear war drill... in the middle of the night.
* By Dawn's Early Light (1990), which depicts a post-Cold War explosion instigated by Soviet rebels, which causes a nuclear war to start between the United States and the Soviet Union (in its dying days). The film follows the crew of a B-52 bomber, the U.S. President, and AWACS as events unfold.
* The Simpsons (1995) episode Lisa's Wedding. In a hypothetical year 2010, World War III has happened in which Great Britain saved the United States from defeat.
Star Trek: First Contact (1996), where the USS Enterprise NCC-1701-E chases the Borg back through time to a period on Earth just 10 years after Star Trek's version of World War III. The Borg aim to attack Earth while it is still crippled from the war. The Star Trek timeline places World War III beginning in the year 2026 and ending by the year 2053, although an episode of Star Trek: The Original Series, "Space Seed" established that another world-wide conflict (sometimes also referred to as a third world war but better known as the Eugenics War) occurred in the 1990s.
* Blast from the Past (1999) is a comedy about a 1960's family caught in the grip of Cold War paranoia. Falsely convinced that World War III has started, they hide in their fallout shelter, only to emerge 35 years later in the post-Cold War world.
* The Matrix series (1999 and 2003) is set in a post-apocalyptic world where humans are controlled and farmed by a hostile artificial intelligence. Heavy use of nuclear arms by the humans did little to damage the advancing AI armies (as seen in The Second Renaissance, a two-part short of The Animatrix).
* Equilibrium (2002) Following an apocalyptic Third World War, the strict government of the dystopian city-state Libria has eliminated war by suppressing all human emotion.
Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex and Ghost in the Shell: S.A.C. 2nd GIG make frequent references to "the last world war", and the general age of the characters suggest that a Third World War had taken place. With the release of the second season, more information on this war has become available: It was nuclear, and fought throughout the Eurasian continent, in South America, and in Central America. The only nations to escape the war largely unscathed were the American Empire and Japan.
Testament (1983) centers on a small-town suburb of San Francisco, California, and how a family survives the outbreak of World War III.
Hokuto No Ken (1985, Fist of the North Star in English) is based on the manga series of the same name. The story takes place in a post apocalyptic Japan. Although the story is loosely based in a Mad Max-like setting, the plot revolves around a fighter named Kenshiro who goes and kills gang members and psychotic dictators of the new Japan who tend to oppress the now-poor populace just trying to find food and water.
The World, the Flesh, and the Devil involves a man, a woman, and a bigot (the devil) roaming New York City after a nuclear war. Only those three characters appear in the film. The film dates 1959 under science fiction category.

Literature

Notable literature dealing with World War III include:
* Robert A. Heinlein's story Solution Unsatisfactory was written as early as 1940, when the Second World War was still to run most of its course. Heinlein predicted that the US would develop radioactive dust as the ultimate weapon of war and use it to destroy Berlin in 1945 and end the war with Germany. The Soviet Union would develop the same weapon independently, and war between it and the US would follow, still in 1945, which would become known as "The Four Days' War." The Americans would destroy Moscow, Vladivostoc and several other Soviet cities, win the war and establish a complete hegemony over the world, but a military dictatorship would emerge in the US itself.
*In Domain, the 3rd book in The Rats series created by James Herbert, there is a nuclear war and London is destroyed, and very few survive underground in bunkers, sewers, and subways. After the war, man-eating rats attack the survivors. The prime minister and royal family are killed in their bunker. In the end, it says that the Middle East was on the brink of war and acting like if they were putting the world on ransom, and China started the war (this book was made only in 1984).
* In Poul Anderson's "Psychotechnic League" series - a Future History when written in the early 1950s, now an Alternative History - World War III broke out in 1958, with a Soviet pre-emptive strike and a land invasion which reached France. However, the Western retaliation was far more lethal, thoroughly destroying the Soviet Union and China - with survivors reduced to cannibalism. Afterwards, there were still years of bitter fighting when undergrounds throughout Europe fought to get rid of the stranded Soviet garrisons. All of this is in the series' background, with the stories themselves describing power struggles in the devastated post-war Europe and the efforts of the refounded United Nations to create an effective world government and avert new wars.
* "The Third World War: A Terrifying Novel of Global Conflict" by Humphrey Hawksley tells of a war between an alliance of fascist generals in Pakistan and North Korea with the rest of the world.
* Fail-Safe , a book which was adapted into two movies, described above. Due to faulty procedures, US bombers get a mistaken order to destroy Moscow and cannot be recalled; following the destruction of their capital, the Soviets prepare to launch a full-scale attack on the US; as a desperate last measure to avoid total destruction of both nations and the whole world, the President of the United States (unnamed but modeled on Kennedy) orders an American bomber to destroy New York and thus redress the balance and avoid the Soviet attack.
* The Martian Chronicles, a sequenced collection of short stories by Ray Bradbury in which, among many other threads, the Earth is destroyed by nuclear war while human Martian colonists watch helplessly; especially poignant and poetic is the short story titled There Will Come Soft Rains;
* On the Beach (1957), by Nevil Shute, was also made into movies of the same name (1959 and 2000); ISBN 1842322761.
* Alas, Babylon, by Pat Frank, dealt with the survival of the fictional town of Fort Repose, Florida, after a Soviet missile strike obliterates most of the United States; ISBN 0060931396.
* The Third World War, August 1985, by General Sir John Hackett, set in a 1980s war based on the NATO scenario; ISBN 0025471600. Hackett also wrote a sequel, The Third World War: The Untold Story which expanded upon the original story; ISBN 0450055914. In Hackett's scenario, the actual war lasts for only a few weeks and climaxes with a single exchange of nuclear weapons, resulting in the destruction of Birmingham, England and Minsk, Belarus (then part of the Soviet Union). This same NATO/Warsaw Pact scenario was also used in Harold Coyle's novel, Team Yankee; ISBN 0425110427.
* Warday (novel), by Whitley Strieber & James Kunetka. Presented as an extended piece of journalism, two writers tour America five years after a limited nuclear exchange between the Soviet Union and the United States. The work assembles a fictional documentary of life in the aftermath, weaving together interviews, government documents, and the chronicle of their travels - written with an aim of showing how horrendous would be the results of even a "limited" nuclear exchange ; ISBN 0030707315
* Red Storm Rising, by Tom Clancy, presents a detailed, realistic scenario of World War III fought only with conventional weapons (although tactical nukes were considered) in the 1980s.
* The Sum of All Fears also by Tom Clancy is about an almost nuclear exchange between Russia and the US caused by Islamic terrorists.
* The World Aflame, written by Leonard Engel and Emmanuel Piller in 1947 and set amidst a protracted nuclear war from 1950–5.
* Red Army, by Ralph Peters, told from the Soviet perspective; ISBN 0671676695.
* Yellow Peril by Wang Lixiong, written under the pseudonym Bao Mi, about a civil war in the People's Republic of China that becomes a nuclear exchange and soon engulfs the world. It's notable for Wang Lixiong's politics, a Chinese dissident and outspoken activist, its publication following Tiananmen Square protests of 1989, and its popularity due to bootleg distribution across China even when the book was banned by the Chinese Communist Party.
*The City of Ember, by Jeanne DuPrau, is set in a post-apocalyptic community, the City of Ember, built underground. The protagonists, Doon Harrow and Lina Mayfleet, are on a quest to find the way to get out of Ember, because the city is beginning to run out of lightbulbs, the only things keeping the Emberites from dying in darkness. In the sequel, The People of Sparks, we learn that the world above has been reduced to small roving bands of humans, with the settlement the Emberites emerge upon having a population of 300, and that being considered prosperous. The remaining humans occasionally scavenge the cities for things from the past society. They only partially believe in the fables of telephones, televisions, and passing references to the Internet. Surviving books show that the death knell was a combination of plagues and atomic weapons.
* A Canticle for Leibowitz, by Walter M. Miller.
JLA by Grant Morrison. Under influence by a space-faring entity, populations fight amongst themselves.
* The Amtrak Wars by Patrick Tilley are set in America after a nuclear holocaust.
*Robert C. O'Brian's "Z for Zachariah" in which a nuclear war leaves a small valley untouched and follows a young girl who is seemingly the only survivor.
*Robert McCammon's novel Swan Song opens with a massive nuclear exchange, involving a description of the destructive firestorm created by a nuclear missile. While much of the novel involves supernatural elements, the backdrop is a post-apocalyptic wasteland, and a central plot development involves several opposing, marauding, guerilla armies trying to seize power in the aftermath.
*A series of novels under the title World War III by Ian Slater, follows the key players and a number of related characters in campaigns around the planet.
*"Arc Light", by Eric L. Harry, describes a nuclear exchange between Russia and the U.S. as well as the following U.S. invasion of Russia.
*"Neuromancer," and the rest of the "Sprawl Trilogy" by William Gibson is set in a post WWIII world.
China War and the Third Temple by Irvin Baxter, Jr. is a fictional scenario based upon Bible prophesy.
First Clash by Major (Retired) Kenneth Macksey, MC, is a fictional scenario based on the actions of a Canadian Brigade Group in a defensive action in the Federal Republic of Germany.
Counterstroke by Major (Retired) Kenneth Macksey, MC, is a follow-up to First Clash. In it, a Canadian Brigade Group fights in an offensive action in the Federal Republic of Germany.
*The trilogy Kinderen van Moeder Aarde (Children of Mother Earth), written by the Dutch Thea Beckman tells about a completely changed world after the two days during WW III
The Chrysalids, A novel by John Wyndham, about a post-apocalyptic society several hundred to a thousand years after a nuclear war.
*"The Illustrated Man", A science-fiction series of short stories by Ray Bradbury, uses futuristic settings and modern humans to deploy the ideas, devastations, and comings of a nuclear World War III along with other scenarios.
V for Vendetta by Alan Moore is set in an England controlled tightly by Norsefire, a totalitarian government, after a brief nuclear war.
Farnham's Freehold is a science fiction tale set in the near future by Robert A. Heinlein. It is a post-apocalyptic tale, as the setup for the story is a direct hit by a nuclear weapon, which sends a fallout shelter containing a man, his wife, son, daughter, daughter's friend, and black domestic servant into the future.
*Robert L. O'Connell's The Cuban Missile Crisis: Second Holocaust is an Alternative History description of a world in which the 1962 crisis escalated into war. After a confrontation between American and Soviet ships off the Cuban coast, a Soviet missile is shot from Cuba and destroys Washington, D.C., killing Kennedy, Johnson and most other civilian decision-makers. The American generals embark on an overwhelming retribution: completely destroying Cuba and the Soviet Union, killing 95% of the island's population, 80% of the Soviet Union's and a large part of the population in the East European countries and continuing the bombing long after all military resistsance had ceased. As a result, the US is completely isolated and ostracised in the post-war world and accused of having perpetrated genocide, the "Second Holocaust" of the title. (Published in the collection What Ifs? of American History, 2003.)
*In a similar vein, Brendan DuBois' Resurrection Day is an Alternative History set in 1972, ten years after the Cuban Missile Crisis escalated into a major nuclear exchange. The United States is under martial law and in an ironic twist of fate is now a beneficiary of English charity (the reverse of the situation after World War II), while the Soviet Union has been bombed back to the Dark Ages.
*In Robert Merle's Malevil, published in French in 1972 and translated to English in 1975, a group of friends meet to drink wine and enjoy themselves in the cellar of Medieval castle - and being in the cellar saves their lives as France and rest of the world are devastated by nuclear war. In the grim struggle which ensues among the bands of survivors, the protagonists must restore the castle to its original purpose.
*L Ron Hubbard's Final Blackout is a short novel about a company of soldiers who survive WWIII and have to re-establish society when they leave the continent and return to England.
*Many Philip K Dick stories involve post-apocalyptic scenarios. He mentioned that he much preferred to deal with the aftermath of such events and how humans survived than with how humans created them in the first place.
*The Penultimate Truth Philip K Dick World War III is raging - or so the millions of people crammed in their underground tanks believe. For fiteen years, subterranean humanity has been fed on daily broadcasts of a never-ending nuclear destruction, sustained by a belief in the all powerful Protector. Now someone has gone to the surface and found no destruction, no war. The authorities have been telling a massive lie.
Plan of Attack by Dale Brown involves a clandestine effort by the Russians to stage a Thermonuclear war against the US using a secret Tupolev Tu-22M Backfire fleet based in Siberia in retaliation to US operations in Turkmenistan.
Riddley Walker by Russell Hoban discusses the life of a "Connexion Man" in a primitive post-World War III society.
*There are many short stories that deal with the consequences of World War III, including:
*Tomorrow's Children by Poul Anderson and F.N. Waldrop
*The Last Objective by Paul Carter
*The Figure by Edward Grendon
*Deathlands and Outlanders series are both post WW3 books.

Computer and other games

*Crystalis — Action RPG for the NES
*World War 3 (online game) — online real-time browser-based game in combination of Risk game and strategy. Involves military combat in 1000+ cities around the world combined with weapons of mass destruction, terrorism and intelligence. Running since 2001, last updated 2006.
*World War Three in 1985 — This scenario collection, created with the Harpoon3 naval / aerial warfare simulator, takes a look at what might have happened had the Cold War gone hot in September 1985. The scenarios focus on technical detail and a solid historical background, and is intended to give an accurate account of the war that never happened.
World War III: Black Gold — real-time strategy game: Released late 2001, WWIII:BG depicted a U.S. invasion of Iraq for oil, Iraqi terroism in the United States and Rebel Soviet Generals seizing the Russian Federation. Due to its time of release, the game never became as popular as any of the Earth 21** games made by the same games company, Reality Pump. Game's website
Command & Conquer — real-time strategy game: terrorists (the Brotherhood of Nod) fights against a UN organisation (the Global Defense Initiative).
Command & Conquer: the Red Alert Series — real-time strategy game where an alternate time-line leads to conflict between the Soviets and other nations. The first confrontation was technically not a World War III conflict; in this world, World War II never occurred; however the events of Red Alert 2 — a full scale invasion of the United States — would be the start of World War III.
Wasteland — computer role-playing game set in a post-nuclear world after World War III in 1997.
Fallout — computer role-playing game set in a post-nuclear world with retro-50s style, after World War III in 2077. Said to be the unofficial sequel to Wasteland.
Superhero League of Hoboken, a tongue-in-cheek lampooning of the post-apocalyptic genre
Computer War (Thorn EMI) and WarGames (Coleco) — similar titles with real-time strategy elements, based on the "War Games" movie, for ATARI 800/XL series computers.
Theater: Europe, a strategy game pitting NATO forces against the Warsaw Pact during an attempted Soviet invasion of Central Europe. Written for primitive 1980s Apple, Atari, and Commodore computers, the game's objective is to endure and deter the invasion for 30 days (1 day per turn) without triggering a massive nuclear attack.
Missile Command, a stand-up arcade game, also published for numerous early PCs, in which the player must defend cities and missile bases by manually targeting (via track-ball or joystick) incoming nuclear warheads with ground-based ABMs. The game becomes progressively more challenging and ends when all of the players assets are destroyed.
Raid Over Moscow, an arcade-style game for the C64 and ZX Spectrum in which the player has to destroy Soviet nuclear missiles being launched at the U.S.
Battlefield 2 which takes place as a postmodern war between the People's Liberation Army of China, the fictional Middle Eastern Coalition, the United States Marine Corps and European Union forces.
The Strength of Nations in which three nations struggle for dominance in a world devastated by nuclear holocaust.
The Day After: Fight for Promised land, Released in 2005, is a stand-alone of Nival Interactives Blitzkrieg, where the Cuban Missile Crisis back in 1962 results in a nuclear apocalypse and trigger World War III, where USSR invades Europe and Middle East, defended by American, British, French and German NATO troops and a Chinese invasion of USSR and Asia.
Act of War: Direct Action [5] a real-time strategy game developed by Eugen Systems and published by Atari. The game is based on the Command & Conquer concept of modern warfare RTS. The game was released in March of 2005.
*The Armored Core games take place after an event referred to as the "Great Destruction", where mankind devastated the surface of the Earth in a nuclear war and was forced underground to survive.
*In Ground Control (computer game) WWIII is part of the game's background story and is referred to as The Sixteen-minutes War.
The Morrow Project is a tabletop science fiction role-playing game (RPG) set after a devastating nuclear war. Created by Kevin Dockery, Robert Sadler and Richard Tucholka. Published by TimeLine Ltd. The game is based around the idea that a group of industrialists predict the coming of an apocalyptic nuclear war and create a plan for an infrastructure that will survive it. This plan becomes the "Morrow Project".
World in Conflict With the Soviet bloc on the verge of economic collapse Warsaw Pact forces invade West Germany and Soviet Forces land in Washington State sacking the city of Seattle.
Half-Life 2 takes place an unspecified amount of time after a Seven Hour War.
*Warhammer 40,000 is an example of such a war on a galactic scale and millennia, rather than mere decades or centuries, in the future

Music

*The song Guerilla Radio by Rage Against The Machine uses the term, in the line "transmission third world war third round".
*KMFDM an industrial rock group based in Seattle, Washington has a song called "WWIII" on their 2003 release of the same title. The album is extremely critical of George W. Bush's administration. Frontman Sascha Konietzko stated that the album was more specifically pointed at criticizing the American war machine.
*Anarcho-punk band Crass emulate the reaction of a nuclear attack, in the song "They've Got A Bomb", with a chorus countdown ending in an abrupt stop and a period of silence. The band later explained that the idea of the space in the song, when performed live, was to "suddenly stop the energy, dancing and noise and allow the audience to momentarily 'confront themselves' and consider the reality of nuclear war."
*The punk rock band the Clash wrote a few songs about nuclear war, notably London Calling and Ivan Meets G.I. Joe.
* Old school hip hop legendary MC, Melle Mel releases the single, "World War III" in 1984
* Several early-80s synth pop bands responded to Cold War tensions with nuclear war songs, including Frankie Goes to Hollywood's "Two Tribes", Ultravox's "Dancing With Tears In My Eyes" and Nena's "99 Red Balloons".
*Ska-funk band Fishbone sing about WWIII with energy and humour in the song "Party at Ground Zero".
*Ex-Smiths frontman Morrissey compares a seaside resort town in winter to a post-nuclear holocaust world in the song "Every Day is Like Sunday".
*Depeche Mode expresses the desolation of a destroyed Europe after nuclear weapons detonate after receiving a nuclear-attack warning only a mere two minutes prior to the explosions in "Two Minute Warning" on the 1983 album Construction Time Again. Various tracks on the album generally addressed the various topics (nuclear, environmental, social welfare) of pathos and angst felt by European Generation X living in a world pulled perhaps senselessly in two opposing directions by the two sides of the Cold War.
*The satirist Tom Lehrer gained renown for several apocalyptically-themed songs, including "So Long, Mom (A Song for World War III)" and "We Will All Go Together When We Go". In his introduction to the latter he said "if we want any good songs to come out of the next war, we had better start writing them now".
*The heavy metal band Megadeth has numerous songs dealing with nuclear war such as the songs "Set the World Afire", "Rust in Peace... Polaris" and "Black Curtains." Nuclear war is also the inspiration for the band's name (see megadeath).
*Much of the post-rock band Godspeed You! Black Emperor's work deals with apocalyptic destruction and its consequences (see the lyrics to their song "The Dead Flag Blues").
*"Weird Al" Yankovic penned a satirical song called "Christmas At Ground Zero", that appears on the album Polka Party!, about the Christmas holiday after a nuclear war. He also mentions the prospects of World War III specifically in an early song called "Happy Birthday" that appears on his first, self titled album "Weird Al" Yankovic.
*The pop punk band Simple Plan in their song "Crazy" briefly compares World War III to how children may feel about marital problems their parents may have.
*California punk band Bad Religion has a number of songs about WWIII, including Part III and World War III.
*Pop singer Pink refers to the destruction of traditional family as World War Three in her song Family Portrait
*Pink Floyd's 1983 concept album The Final Cut ends with the beginning of a nuclear war (Two Suns in the Sunset).
*UNKLE released a mix album titled "World War III" in 2003.
*Bob Dylan wrote a song called "Talkin' World War III Blues" in 1964.
A Hard Rain's a-Gonna Fall by Bob Dylan was written at the height of the Cuban Missile Crisis and is purportedly about nuclear Armageddon, although Dylan himself has denied any explicit allusions to nuclear fallout in the song's title.
* "We Will Become Silhouettes" by The Postal Service is an upbeat song about living through the aftermath of a nuclear war.
* The song "Electric Funeral" by Black Sabbath talks about the consequences of a nuclear war.
* The 2003 album "Absolution" by Muse deals with an apocalypse that can be assumed to be the result of a third world war from the military march in "Intro" and the nature of songs such as "Ruled by Secrecy" and "Apocalypse Please".
* Though not referencing it by the actual term "World War III", two albums from the progressive metal act Ayreon deal with a devastating war in 2084 that completely destroys all life on Earth; The Final Experiment, which tells the story of telepathic messages sent in post-war Earth to a blind minstrel named Ayreon in Authurian times and his attempts to warn the population of the growing threath, and The Universal Migrator which chronicles the past lives of the last human being alive.
* "Blackened", by Metallica, talks about the effects of a nuclear world war.

External links

* WW3- World War 3 in Detail.
* 20 mishaps that might have started an accidental nuclear war
* Scientific American article about nuclear near-misses, dated November 1997
* Transcript of PNAC members James Woolsey, William Bennet, and Paul Bremer discussing fellow PNAC-member Elliot Cohen's WWII and WWIV terminology as used by PNAC and people in positions of influence and power in the USA
* The Project for the New American Century, many of whose members are in positions of power and influence in the USA

World War III: Encyclopedia BETA

Contents