World War III

Since the Manhattan Project's development of nuclear weapons in 1945 and their use by the United States in the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki at the end of World War II, the risk of a nuclear apocalypse causing widespread destruction and the potential collapse of modern civilization or human extinction has been a common theme in speculation and fiction about World War III.

The first usage appears in its 3 November 1941 issue (preceding the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor on 7 December 1941) under its "National Affairs" section and entitled "World War III?"

"[5][6] Time continued to entitle with or mention in stories the term "World War III" for the rest of the decade and onwards: 1944,[7][8] 1945,[9][10] 1946 ("bacterial warfare"),[11] 1947,[12] and 1948.

Operation Dropshot was the 1950s United States contingency plan for a possible nuclear and conventional war with the Soviet Union in the Western European and Asian theaters.

Co-operation between the United Kingdom and Ireland would be formed in the event of WWIII, where they would share weather data, control aids to navigation, and coordinate the Wartime Broadcasting Service that would occur after a nuclear attack.

While US troops could be easily flown across the Atlantic, the heavy equipment and armor reinforcements would have to come by sea and be delivered to POMCUS (Pre-positioned Overseas Material Configured to Unit Sets) sites.

The United States needed to be able to send active-duty army divisions to Europe within ten days as part of a wartime NATO general deployment.

[26] In addition to assessing the capabilities of the United States, Reforger also monitored the personnel, facilities, and equipment of the European countries playing a significant role in the reinforcement effort.

Therefore, in the event of a Soviet invasion, in order not to resort to tactical nuclear strikes, NATO forces defending against a Warsaw Pact armored spearhead would have to be quickly resupplied and replaced.

It started with the assumption that NATO would launch a nuclear attack on the Vistula river valley in a first-strike scenario, which would result in as many as two million Polish civilian casualties.

However, the USSR saw the SDI concept as a major threat, since a unilateral deployment of the system would allow the US to launch a massive first strike on the Soviet Union without any fear of retaliation.

The weapons are under custody and control of USAF Munitions Support Squadrons co-located on NATO main operating bases that work together with the host nation forces.

The brilliant landings at Inchon and the cooperative efforts of the American armed forces with the United Nations Allies have won us a victory in Korea.

[45] Secretary of State Dean Acheson later acknowledged that the Truman administration was concerned about the escalation of the conflict and that General Douglas MacArthur warned him that a U.S.-led intervention risked a Soviet response.

The most serious of these border clashes, which brought the world's two largest communist states to the brink of war, occurred in March 1969 in the vicinity of Zhenbao (Damansky) Island on the Ussuri (Wusuli) River, near Manchuria.

The 9th National Congress of the Chinese Communist Party, held in the aftermath of the Zhenbao Island incident, confirmed Defense Minister Lin Biao as Mao Zedong's heir apparent.

[53] A false alarm occurred on the Soviet nuclear early warning system, showing the launch of American LGM-30 Minuteman intercontinental ballistic missiles from bases in the United States.

A retaliatory attack was prevented by Stanislav Petrov, a Soviet Air Defence Forces officer, who realised the system had simply malfunctioned (which was borne out by later investigations).

In response, the military prepared for a coordinated counter-attack by readying nuclear forces and placing air units stationed in the Warsaw Pact states of East Germany and Poland under high alert.

[58] Mike Jackson, a British Army general who contacted the Russians during the incident, refused to enforce Clark's orders, famously telling him "I'm not going to start the Third World War for you".

[59] Captain James Blunt, the lead officer at the front of the NATO column in the direct armed stand-off against the Russians, received the "Destroy!"

The incident was the first destruction of a Russian or Soviet Air Forces warplane by a NATO member state since the attack on the Sui-ho Dam during the Korean War in 1953.

[63][64][65] On 24 February 2022, Russia's president Vladimir Putin ordered a full-scale invasion of Ukraine, marking a major escalation of the Russo-Ukrainian War, which began in 2014.

[74][75] The Russian government has threatened retaliation against countries supplying military aid to Ukraine, and said it meant NATO was waging a "proxy war" against Russia.

[76] Senior Russian politicians—including president Putin, foreign minister Sergey Lavrov and United Russia party leader Dmitry Medvedev—have made statements widely seen as nuclear blackmail.

Masses of fighters on the back of pickup trucks and twisted souls plotting in apartments or garages pose an enormous danger to civilians and must be stopped.

[117] James Burnham of the Office of Strategic Services (the precursor to the CIA), also believed in survival: The uniqueness of the atomic weapons is commonly found in that they can totally annihilate human life, including through climatic and geological chain reaction, but such is not the case.

[118] A 1998 New England Journal of Medicine overview found that "Although many people believe that the threat of a nuclear attack largely disappeared with the end of the Cold War, there is considerable evidence to the contrary".

[126] In 2020 and 2023, the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists advanced its Doomsday Clock, citing among other factors a predicted destabilizing effect from upcoming hypersonic weapons.

Nearly 40 discrete attacks were launched by Russia which permanently destroyed files in hundreds of systems across dozens of organizations, with 40% aimed at critical infrastructure sectors in Ukraine.

Nuclear warfare is a common theme in hypothetical World War III scenarios.
If activated, Operation Reforger would have largely consisted of convoys like this one from Operation Earnest Will in 1987, although much larger. While troops could easily fly across the Atlantic, the heavy equipment and armor reinforcements would have to come by sea.
A Warsaw Pact invasion would have come via three main paths through West Germany.
U.S. president Ronald Reagan and Soviet double agent Oleg Gordievsky , who later told the West how close the Able Archer 83 exercise had brought the Soviets to ordering a First Strike .
An example of nuclear artillery power test in the US
Protest in Amsterdam against the nuclear arms race between the US/NATO and the Soviet Union, 1981
United States M48 tanks face Soviet Army T-55 tanks at Checkpoint Charlie , October 1961.
A US Navy HSS-1 Seabat helicopter hovers over Soviet submarine B-59 , forced to the surface by US Naval forces in the Caribbean near Cuba. B-59 had a nuclear torpedo on board, and three officer keys were required to use it. Only one dissent prevented the submarine from attacking the US fleet nearby, a spark that could have led to a Third World War (28–29 October 1962).
Buildings destroyed by the Russian Bombing of Borodianka , March 2022
Large nuclear weapons stockpile with global range (dark blue), smaller stockpile with global range (medium blue), smaller stockpile with regional range (light blue)
September 11 attacks