Is this World War III?

There have been various points in recent history when I have sat back to take a good look at what is going on in the world, wondering if we would soon face World War III. But now I'm looking at the situation and no longer wonder if we will soon face another international war. I'm wondering if World War III has already started—and we just don't know it yet.

And I'm desperately trying to predict how events will play out… so I can decide how I'm going to manage the fallout as it impacts me.

It's time to really take a look and speculate if the next big international war has already begun.

A Quick Walk Through History

War has never been something that started out of the blue. Prior to the start of any war, there would have been tension and random conflicts already at play. Tensions would have escalated with a series of actions that may or may not seem related… until we hit a critical mass and conflict erupts on a grand proportion.

The start of World War I might be attributed to the death of the Austrian heir to the throne Archduke Franz Ferdinand (a friend of Kaiser Wilhelm II) and his wife. However, tension already existed between the Serbians and Austrians, resulting in two successive military conflicts in the region. But it was when Russia and Germany started to get involved that the conflict escalated into what we now call the First World War.

World War II started as a joint British and French response to the invasion of Poland by Nazi Germany in 1939. However, there are records of conflicts that started as early as 1931, with the Japanese invasion of Manchuria, followed by the Italian invasion of Abyssinia in 1935.

My point is that while the start of these great world wars has widely been attributed to a single action, there was already conflict in place.

And the scary thing here is that we humans seem to refuse to learn from history. Instead, we are ignoring.

Recent Conflicts as a Precursor

If we were to look at the current war between Russia and Ukraine, the records are so muddled about when the war actually started. Some reports suggest 2014, whereas other records say 2022. But regardless of when it actually started, I think we can all agree that it is still going, with no sign that it will end anytime soon.

If we explore the history of the Arab-Israeli wars, there are records of on-going conflicts dating back to 1948 (post-World War II), with the most recent escalation in 2023. And last year (2025), we saw it take on another level of insanity and escalate even further, in part because of the US involvement.

And now (2026), we have a full-on war happening between the US and Iran that is quickly devolving into this pissing contest of who has more guns—not who has the better guns, but who has more!

That's three major conflicts that the rest of the world is slowly but surely being sucked into.

All we have to do is look at history. Based on what we saw at the beginning of WWI and WWII, we can confidently say that WWIII isn't just coming. It's already here. It's now just a question of what side of the conflict that the British, the French, the Canadians, the Germans, the Australians, the New Zealanders, and every other country of the world decide to back.

And we have to ask ourselves: Will someone be mad enough to use nuclear weaponry?

By the way, one doesn't need to use an atom bomb or any fusion bomb to make one hell of a mess. A normal bomb that just happens to have a certain quantity of nuclear material, commonly known as a dirty bomb, can be just as devastating, if not more so. Because with a dirty bomb, we don't know about the nuclear fallout until it's too late. There's no mushroom cloud or shockwaves to warn us of doom. The initial disaster relief response is the same as any terrorist bombing. Then the radiation poisoning sets in, making the damage caused just that little bit bigger, lasting that little bit longer.

The Differences with Now

The biggest differences that we face now, as opposed to what we faced during WWI and WWII, is that the forms of communication are vastly different. The telecommunications network of today means that we are able to witness events as they unfold on the other side of the globe. Global powers are able to respond in a matter of seconds, not the days that it would have been in the 1910s or the hours that it might have been in the 1930s and the 1940s. And systems today don't even need a human at the controls.

It might have taken years for escalated tensions to rise to a global boiling point in the past, but we have already had years for the current tensions. And that global boiling point is now only a keystroke away.

No Control on the Outcome

It sounds horrible and mean, but my husband and I are both spiraling into this apathetic response: "The world has gone to shit, but there's nothing I can do about it, because madmen are at the controls. Instead, I'll focus on my little corner of the world and do what I can to survive."

We feel for the innocent souls caught between the bullies with their pissing contests. But both of us are so glad that we are as far away from the conflict as we could possibly be.

But if I'm honest with myself, I'm terrified, constantly on the verge of tears, confident that this is it. World War III has begun, even if we don't choose to recognize it as such.