Is World War III Coming?

ACCORDING to scientists, humanity is on the brink of destroying itself.

- Warren Robertson

IT was supposed to be ‘the war to end all wars’, but as history showed us, the World War fought between 1914 and 1918 was just the first global conflict.

When World War II ended in 1945, the world promised itself this would be the last. The horrors of war and the Holocaust left the global population reeling, and measures were put into place to hopefully try to make sure a conflict on that scale would never happen again.

The end of that war, with nuclear bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in Japan, made it clear that if weapons of that scale were ever used in a general conflict it might mean the end of the human race. In the years that have followed, while wars have been commonplace, conflicts of the size and scale of the two world wars remain a distant threat, and no side has ever dared to raise the spectre of a nuclear catastrophe. Until now.

On January 25 this year scientists updated their prediction as to how close society is to ending itself through warfare, by moving the time on the Doomsday clock. The clock is a metaphor and today stands at two-and-a-half minutes to midnight – the closest it has ever been to our permanent destruction as a species. The reason for this is that recently three clear threats have emerged, which might test the fragile peace maintained by the global superpowers.