Are there chances of 3rd world war

His entire character changed. He turned into a morose, violent drunk, subject to devastating headaches. His wife divorced him, and his family, who had once been so proud of him, closed their doors to him when he came round, angrily demanding money from them.

Harold eked out an existence as a homeless beggar for nearly 50 years, and eventually died on a bench at Waterloo station in London. The silver watch he wore when he led his men over the top on 1 July was still on his wrist.

It seems unlikely - but that, of course, is exactly what people everywhere believed before the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand and his wife by a Serbian extremist in June There are certainly potential flashpoints at present. Europe and Russia are trading angry insults over Ukraine, and China and Japan are squaring up over a few uninhabited islands in the East China Sea. The first is that smaller countries can drag larger ones into conflict.

The second is that governments are sometimes tempted to believe they can launch limited, successful wars that will be over quickly. They are usually wrong. We assume nowadays that our globalised world is too closely linked together for a wider war to break out. Well, maybe, but in a man named Norman Angell thought exactly that. He wrote a book, The Great Illusion, to prove that war would be madness, given the close trading ties between the great powers.

What will cause the war in the first place? Will anyone survive? We will explore the timeline of the event that would lead up to our imaginary World War in this first part of the series. Kabul, the last major city in Afghanistan to hold out against the Taliban offensive, has fallen in the hands of militants. Bureaucrats of the last government flee Afghanistan. Soldiers switch sides, and ethnic cleansing to enforce religious laws soon take place.

Taliban starts shaping domestic policy for the next two months. News is censored, and North Korea-like fortification is underway. China is silent, but there is an accelerated movement of equipment, components, materials, and, in all probability, technology for both ballistic missile and nuclear weapons programs. The US condemns the act but stays silent.

The army takes over Islamabad. Two of the nine tactical nuclear weapons go missing in Pakistan. Not immediately. It could be months before there is enough for every American.

It will probably take two shots, a few weeks apart, to give you a good chance of immunity. And it will take months upon months to line up everybody and get them protected. Probably not before June.

They are a lot more certain to give protection even than a vaccine. Far into the future, physical protection will be important to crush this bug. Herd immunity didn't work in Sweden, and anyway, getting there will cost , lives. The hardest tool to use in epidemiology is quarantine. Stay home; lock down the economy; hold until there are no new cases. With a strict quarantine, this disease would have been crushed , lives ago. Quarantine works, but people don't like it. Even putting limits on public behavior is hard; I want to go to a restaurant, want to hug my daughter, and see my son.

I also wear anti-virus body armor, just as my daughter, a noncombatant in Afghanistan had, to wear her armor. Mine is lighter, and cheaper; it's just a simple surgical mask. In February when there weren't enough masks to protect our doctors and nurses, we were asked not to use scarce supplies. Doctors and nurses were at greater risk. But that was a long time ago; masks are widely available now.

The nation of Afghanistan is in a state of crisis after Taliban fighters stormed the capital over the weekend. Kabul was the last major city in the country to fall, there were scenes of panic across the region.

The airport was closed earlier for soldiers to try and clear the runways - US military planes are now landing, including one carrying US marines. US President Joe Biden has defended his decision to pull out of Afghanistan, admitting events developed quicker than he thought.

Many Afghans left behind have spoken to the terror on the ground, with witnesses reporting occasional gunfire. President Ashraf Ghani fled Afghanistan yesterday as Taliban leaders broadcast a victory message from the presidential palace in Kabul. A UN document has warned the Taliban has now stepped up its search for people who worked for Nato or the previous Afghan Government.

Door-to-door searches are reportedly being undertaken in a bid to find targets and threaten their family members. The hardline Islamist group has tried to reassure Afghans since seizing power in a lightning offensive, promising there would be "no revenge". But these recent actions indicate the Taliban's tactics have not changed since it was in power during the s. US troops have now withdrawn from Afghanistan and the Taliban has called the nation a "free and sovereign" state, describing the departure of US troops as "historic".

Fundamental tensions at the heart of the US-North Korea relationship could result in combative action. These incendiary comments were made after President Joe Biden delivered a policy speech to Congress earlier this month during which he discussed nuclear programs in North Korea and Iran saying they posed threats which must be addressed through "diplomacy and stern deterrence".

Pyongyang also blasted Washington for criticizing its human rights record and Seoul for failing to stop anti—North Korea leaflets from being sent across the border. Speaking on the topic of North Korea, first-term US leader Mr Biden said he is seeking middle ground between former president Donald Trump's emphasis on personal diplomacy and former president Barack Obama's approach of conditioning engagement on North Korean concessions.

As North Korea is a nuclear power with its own complex relationship with China, it is a critical nation for US national security concerns. The nations undertake many weapons and missile tests, small-scale military and cyber attacks with each posing a significant risk for potential escalation.