World War III

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

For other uses, see World War Three (disambiguation).

World War III (abbreviated WWIII), or the Third World War, is a term used to describe a hypothetical conflict on the scale of World War I, World War II or larger. Most usages of the term assume the use of weapons of mass destruction such as nuclear weapons, biological or chemical weapons.

There is some opinon that the term refers to an actual war, as some use the term to refer to the Cold War ^[1] or the War on Terror ^[2].

1 Artistic treatments
2 Film and television
3 Literature
4 Comics
5 Computer and other games
6 Music
7 Prophecies
8 Historical close calls
9 See also
10 External links

[edit] 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.

[edit] Film and television

Several notable movies have been made based on World War III, including the following:

24 (season 6) portrays a nuclear terrorist attack on Valencia, California which may lead in future episodes to nuclear exchange between the United States and an unidentified Middle Eastern state. This is a good example of escalation, a principle of the Cold War.
The Twilight Zone episodes have done numerous 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 following a bizarre mental breakdown the C.O. of a SAC base orders the B-52 wing operating from his base to attack 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.

Spoiler warning: Plot and/or ending details follow.

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. When Moscow is destroyed, the US President (unnamed but clearly modeled on Kennedy) knows that an overwhelming Soviet nuclear retaliation is imminent, and the only way to forestall it is to order an American plane to bomb and destroy New York. The First Lady is in the city, and the President decides not to warn her but let her be killed along with the city's population. The book ends with the hint that these tragic events would force the world's powers to a complete nuclear disarmement.

Spoilers end here.

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 devastating 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, this allowing the Soviet Army to march throughout Europe with nothing to stop them. 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 experimental 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.
The main character from Escape from New York, Snake Plissken, was said to be a World War III veteran, although it is not mentioned in the entire movie, it is written on the case of the DVD or VHS and talked about in its "expanded universe"(comics, Fanfics, etc).
The Road Warrior (1981) and Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome (1985), the sequels to Mad Max (1979), 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.
Before The Simpsons had their own TV series, they use to appear in short films made for The Tracey Ullman Show. One such film had Homer waking the rest of the Simpsons in the middle of the night, screaming that World War III had just broken out. He herds the family into the bomb shelter, only to then pull out a stop watch and tell his family off for being too slow and if it had been for real, they would be all dead by now. He then wonders why no one is answering him. Bart, Lisa, Marge and Maggie are all shivering from fear because they still believe that the nuclear missiles are on their way.
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.
Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind (1984), is an anime by Hayao Miyazaki. It takes place 1000 after 'The Seven Days of Fire' and involves protecting the last green valley on Earth from those who would conquer it with a surviving weapon of that last war. Humanity is shown to be just barely hanging on in a very toxic world.
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.
Письма мёртвого человека (Letters from a Dead Man) 1986
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.
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 ten years after World War III. The Borg aim to attack Earth while it is still crippled from the nuclear holocaust. The Star Trek timeline places World War III as having begun in the year 2026 AD and lasting until 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 Wars) 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 weapons by the humans did little to damage the advancing AI armies (as seen in "The Second Renaissance," a two-part story from The Animatrix series).
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 is dated 1959, in the science fiction category.
The Colbert Report throughout the summer of 2006 during the 2006 Israel-Lebanon conflict the Colbert Report featured a section of the show called "The Road to World War Three", which documented the conflict and the "events that would cause Armageddon".
The sci fi series Buck Rogers in the 25th Century features an astronaught who is frozen for 500 years during a space mission. He returns to Earth to find it has been devastated by a nuclear war that had taken place just after he left. But he also finds an advanced civilisation that has risen out of the ashes of that conflict.

[edit] 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, Vladivostok 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, 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 1-84232-276-1.
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 0-06-093139-6.
The Third World War, August 1985, by General Sir John Hackett, set in a 1980s war based on the NATO scenario; ISBN 0-02-547160-0. Hackett also wrote a sequel, The Third World War: The Untold Story which expanded upon the original story; ISBN 0-450-05591-4. 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 0-425-11042-7.
Warday, 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 0-03-070731-5
Time Capsule (1987) by Mitch Berman follows a jazz saxophonist and a civil engineer as they travel through a post-nuclear USA.
Red Storm Rising, by Tom Clancy, presents a detailed 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 0-671-67669-5.
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.
The Amtrak Wars by Patrick Tilley are set in America after a nuclear holocaust.
Robert C. O'Brien'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.

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 is now a beneficiary of English charity, while the Soviet Union has been bombed back to the Dark Ages.
Brad Ferguson's The World Next Door (1990) takes place in the mid-1990's at two interlinked alternate realities. In one of them, the Cuban Missile Crisis escalated into a major nuclear exchange, as in the above. What was left of the United States disintegrated into numerous virtually-independent enclaves, though President Kennedy is still alive in a bunker somewhere. Most of the plot centers on Lake Placid, New York and along parts of route 86 where an oasis of civilization was painstakingly built, threatened by a well-organised band of rapacious robbers whoclaim to be the New York State National Guard. Meanwhile, the "world next door" which avoided nuclear war in 1962 is going to experience it thirty years later, due to Gorbachev's reforms having gone wrong in the worst possible way. This war would be much worse than the one in 1962, since nuclear weapons have had thirty years more to become even more highly destructive. Characters from the first ("1962 War") world keep experiencing in dreams the lives of their analogues in the world threatened now with war. In the end of the book (and pretty much the end of the second world) quite a few people are transported across and given refuge in the "1962 War" world, where meanwhile the "National Guard" robbers had been dealt with rather ruthlessly.
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.#
In George Orwells Nineteen Eighty-four, World War Three is oftern mentioned. The book suggests that there was a war in the 1950's that pitted the United States and her allies against the Soviet Union that resulted in the use of nuclear weapons (Colchester is the only city mentioned that gets hit by a nuclear weapon). The book also suggests that the chaos caused by this war lead to Ingsoc's rise to power and the resulting nightmare world of Big Brother.
In the Joe Buff novels Crush Depth, Tidal Rip, Straits of Power, and Seas of Crisis follow a US Navy submarine commander at the forefront of World War 3. The novels pit an unexpected Axis of a suddenly Imperial Germany and an apartheid-restoring Boer coup in South Africa against the old Allies, the United States and Great Britain.
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.

*Cauldron by Larry Bond posits a conflict between a European Union headed mostly by the forces of France and Germany fighting against Poland and other eastern European states that are themselves allied with the United States and the UK. France attempts a nuclear attack on a US/UK convoy heading for Europe, but fails. Russia remains an uneasy neutral.

Of note is the Max Brooks novel "World War Z" which chronicles in oral-history format a third world war fought not nation-against-nation, but against zombies.
By the Waters of Babylon is a a post-apocalyptic short story by Stephen Vincent Benét, which takes place after third World War which occurred in the form of a nuclear holocaust.

[edit] Comics

The Atomic Wars was an important event in the 2000 AD Universe helping set the stage for Judge Dredd.
JLA by Grant Morrison features a story arc titled "World War III". Under influence by a space-faring entity, populations fight amongst themselves. However, the Justice League discovered the alien interference, alerted the world population, and used advanced technology to temporarily grant the Earth's population superpowers.
- A conflict specifically referred to as World War III takes place in the DC Universe some time in the year after Infinite Crisis. At present, the actual conflict has not been depicted- it is scheduled to feature in issue #50 of 52 [1]
World War III will be the title of a four issue series of connected one-shots that take place during week fifty of the weekly series 52 published by DC Comics on April 18, 2007. 52's 50th issue is the core story of the war with the World War III specials directly tying in.
Third World War, written by Pat Mills, was a long running story in Crisis
The Punisher: The End, a special Punisher comic written by Garth Ennis which looks at The Punisher in the aftermath of World War 3.
V for Vendetta by Alan Moore is set in an England controlled tightly by Norsefire, a totalitarian government, after a brief nuclear war.
The manga/anime series Ghost in the Shell makes references to World War III, which in the series is also known as the Second Vietnam War. This war was non-nuclear, and fought principly in Vietnam.
Apocalypse Nerd is set in the near future after Kim Jung Ill nukes Seattle. It was written by Peter Bagge and is an in depth character study.
World War 3 Illustrated is an American comics anthology magazine with a left-wing political focus, founded in 1980 by New York comic book artists Peter Kuper and Seth Tobocman.

[edit] 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.
Command & Conquer: Generals — real-time strategy game: the GLA (Global Liberation Army, a terrorist faction similar to Al-Qaeda, against United States and China; the GLA even captures a nuclear launch-site and use it against the occidental world in a mission. Despite Chinese army is considered allied to Americans in the campaign, skirmish games could set the two sides in war. Also in the campaign there is a mission where some rebel Chinese generals betray their side and join the GLA, and the player must destroy their base and nuclear facilities.
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.
Battlefield 2142 Which takes place in the year 2142, where the whole of Europe is covered in ice caused by a new ice age. The battle rages between the EU forces and the fictional PAC forces. (PAC invaded Europe, similar as Germany did in 1939)
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 [2] 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.
Twilight 2000 is a mid-1980s pen and paper role playing game set in World War III. The players are US, Canadian or English soldiers trapped in Poland after a full nuclear exchange destroys all semblance of command and control for the army.
Operation Flashpoint; while not actually depicting a full-scale Soviet-NATO conflict, the game features Red Army and US forces in open battle, much like Red Storm Rising; the final missions are based around the US attempt to destroy the Russian mobile SCUD launchers and so prevent the outbreak of a full-blown conflict in Europe. Due to the integral mission editor, it is possible to create huge scenarios involving massed Soviet tank assaults and third party mods have resulted in tactical nuclear bombs being available, thereby allowing members of the on-line community to make missions that depict World War III.
DEFCON Players control a country during a nuclear standoff set in the 1980's.
On the final mission, "Rise Hard", in the game Counter-Strike: Condition Zero Deleted Scenes, you are required to play the role of an SAS Operative to prevent a nuclear warhead from being detonated by the Phoenix Connexation in a large city business district. Upon completion of the mission, you are contacted by radio by the SAS Commander, and told at one point you have prevented the outbreak of World War III.

[edit] Music

A music critic once described Van Halen's "Eruption" as "the soundtrack to World War III".
STYX member Tommy Shaw recorded "This Is Not A Test", a song about the news of a nuclear war starting, on his second solo album, 1985's What If.
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.
Randy Newman's "Political Science" is a satirical song in which America should declare nuclear war on everyone but Australia because of global ingratitude ("...They all hate us anyhow, let's drop the big one now!).
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 where-as "Fight Fire with Fire" also by Metallica warns of an inevitable nuclear war.
"4th of July", by Soundgarden on their Superunknown album contains imagery suggestive of a post-nuclear world.
"World War III", released on the album Blue Room by San Diego punk band Unwritten Law.
"Nuclear Winter" by Funker Vogt details the desolation of a winter caused by a nuclear world war

Def Con One is a song from punk band Pop Will Eat Itself which bizarrely mixes world war 3 with fast food.

World War VII pt. 2 by Sum 41 features an apocalyptic style lyrical message

"Living Through Another Cuba" by XTC. An album track from their Black Sea LP which describes the nuclear tensions between the Soviet Union and America during the early 1980s. However, singer Andy Partridge erroneously sings that the Cuban Missile Crisis occurred in 1961.
"Rumours of War" by Billy Bragg is a song in which the protagonist describes everyday activity during the preparations for a nuclear attack.

[edit] 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.^{[verification needed]}

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.

[edit] Historical close calls

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Before the collapse of the Soviet Union and end of the Cold War, an apocalyptic war between the United States and the 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 the Berlin Airlift, which was ultimately successful).
1950-1953 Korean War. General MacArthur planned to invade and bomb China to eliminate threat of communism in eastern Asia.
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 External Affairs Lester B. Pearson feared a larger war and persuaded the British and French to withdraw. The Eisenhower administration, fearing a wider war, had applied pressure to the United Kingdom to withdraw, including a threat to create a currency crisis by dumping US holdings of British debt. Lester B. Pearson later received a Nobel Peace Prize for his efforts towards peace.
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 - Yom Kippur War: 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 - False 'Soviet First Strike' Alarm: 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 realized 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 in the future.
March 30, 1981- Ronald Reagan assassination attempt: In the panic the United States government had confusion on who was in control. The DEFCON status was raised and intelligence showed movement of Soviet forces.
September 26, 1983 - False 'US First Strike' Alarm: Soviet early warning systems showed that a US ICBM attack had been launched. Colonel Stanislav Petrov, in command of the monitoring facility, correctly interpreted the warnings as a computer error and did not notify his superiors.
November 1983 - Exercise Able Archer: 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 concern over the exercise.
January 25, 1995 - Norwegian Rocket Incident: A Norwegian missile launch for scientific research was detected from Spitsbergen and thought to be an attack on Russia, launched from a submarine five minutes away 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 could 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, while not necessarily involving the U.S. and the capitalist west. 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 (Sino-Soviet border conflict). 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 pro-Soviet Vietnam invaded pro-China Cambodia and removed Pol Pot. China in turn invaded Vietnam in retaliation, withdrawing after 1 month 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 Vietnamese invasion of Cambodia.

Finally, since the end of the Cold War, there have been at least two points in the decades-long conflict between India and Pakistan over Kashmir which almost escalated into nuclear conflict.