Stories with the Dumbest/Most Improbable World War 3's/Global Wars

Cafe Society
1

World War 3 or the “Next Big War” are extremely popular in all sorts of fiction for obvious reasons. Most of the time the origins of the war are unexplained or are somewhat realistic (border skirmish turns hot, proxy war spiraling into a global war etc.) but sometimes the writers either don’t know politics/geography or just don’t care despite the fact the setting itself is somewhat grounded or actually calls itself realistic.

This is for anything that tries to take itself seriously (as in no dragons or robots or magic or aliens or superpowers) but the cause of the war is much too improbable or even completely asinine, so much so it takes you out of the work.

Twilight 2013 is an update of the 80’s table-top RPG Twilight 2000 which itself was lauded for its realistic story, set in the aftermath of a Cold War Gone Hot in the mid 90’s over East Germany which lasts until 1997 where it ends in a limited nuclear exchange between NATO and the Soviet Union. Since the idea of a NATO/Warsaw Block Nuclear War was seen as too dated it was decided to update the setting in 2008 to envision a new probable nuclear war in 5 years time. The results were very confusing.

Starting in 2008 the background to the eventual war has a lot of things now common to the genre, the US/EU getting boggled down in various wars in Africa and the Middle East, Climate Change causing widespread crop failures, a US/European trade-war with China, collapse of Pakistan’s government which causes nuclear material to be smuggled out of the country, a regional war in the Middle East between Iran and Saudi Arabia, among other things.

Things start getting confusing fast though, after an incident where 50 Mexican civilians are killed after a shoot-out between the DEA and Drug Smugglers at a border crossing causes Mexico to completely close its borders to the United States. South Korea invades North Korea which immediately collapses and Korea is unified by the South rather bloodlessly. The United States and Europe agree to completely cut-off trade with China over them overstepping their bounds militarily in SouthEast Asia which cripples its economy while somehow not doing the same to the West.

Then things get completely stupid. Terrorists detonate a nuclear device in France in 2010 which kills 10,000 people. Europe as a whole responds by cracking down on immigration and re-militarizing. Eventually it’s discovered the terrorists were trained and had covert support by the Belarus government for some reason. France immediately responds by hitting the Belarus terrorist training camps with six separate nuclear strikes. The Belarusian government promptly collapses and Russia quickly moves in to restore order (and grab some new territory for itself in the process). Then for whatever reason Russia decides that since they now own Belarus, the nuclear attack was an attack on Russia itself retroactively and decides to nuke France in return. The European Union declares war on Russia and start launching nukes back but the United States declares itself neutral in the conflict (mainly due to the fact it’s now embroiled in the Iran/Saudi War on Saudi Arabia’s side) which Russia accepts simply because American anti-ICBM defenses are considered too strong.

With the United States seemingly unharmed for the first time ever in a Russia/NATO nuclear war they simply hang-back in the clear until 2013 where China rears it’s ugly head again and decides they want in on this nuclear war business too. Dozens of Chinese nuclear subs surface off the American West Coast and start launching nukes all over in revenge for the trade war. In addition tens of thousands of Chinese special forces soldiers are deployed all over the United States to fight a long guerilla war by destroying power plants, communications facilities and seats of government. Seeing this chaos Mexico and for whatever reason Canada decide to invade the United States and take pieces for themselves.

When the game itself begins in late 2013 the world is a total wreck. Europe is utterly devastated and England collapses back into a feudal monarchy lead by the surviving Royal Family. Russia despite nuclear devastation has its still relatively operational army slowly marching further into Europe. China is invading Japan, Korea, Taiwan, the Phillipines and Southeast Asia with a free hand due to no American interference. Israel is retreated into Egypt to escape the now massive Sunni-Shiite War that sprung from the Saudi-Iran War. The United States struggles to maintain order as a small civil war between the military and civilian government erupts. Canada immediately lost their war against the United States (for obvious reasons) and Canadians are being smuggled into friendly Mexico by a new underground railroad to escape harsh treatment by Americans. The military wins the Second American Civil War and the US President makes a last speech about how every single city and state is now on its own. The only place left untouched by the global war is now South America (I’m assuming China’s in the process of invading Australia at some point).

So yeah, trying to find examples of WW3 that are as equally batshit insane as that.

2

ha ha ha … look up the political events in shadowrun theres whole wikis trying to explain it … MechWarrior/battletech too

FASA spent more time making the backstories to its game than the rules themselves

oh and dune too in the alternate tv cut of the movie the first 15 minutes of the movie is spent trying to explain the history and political setup via wall murals

3

The video game Homefront: Revolution begins with the premise that North Korea won the Korean war, became a technological powerhouse, the United States bought all of our military equipment from them, we couldn’t pay our bills* and so Korea turned off all of our super-tech guns and helicopters and walked right in.

*Ok, so that part is believable

That’s actually an improvement of sorts over the first game in which Kim Jong-un reunites Korea, conquers Japan but then pretends that he wants peace and, to prove it, launches a giant “peace” satellite that’s actually an EMP bomb. Said bomb blows up over the US, nation crippled, in comes the Koreans.

Much like the rebooted Red Dawn, the antagonists were originally supposed to be China however fears of losing the Chinese market caused the producers to lamely insert North Korea as the improbable conquerors instead.

4

I would like to propose for consideration Dan Simmons novel Flashback. The following was originally posted by me 6 years ago. I’m going to spoiler box this, not because people will no longer read the book, but because it’s a wall o’ text.

[Spoiler]In 25 years, because of the Obama administration passing huge entitlement programs that the government couldn’t afford (the possibility of cancelling these things never crossed anybody’s mind in this world, btw) the economy has completely collapsed, with the US in what the characters mockingly refer to as its 23rd year of jobless recovery. There’s about a 50% unemployment rate which has gone on for decades, people are living in cubicles built within abandoned shopping malls, etc. The entire US economy exists to pay the interest on the debt caused by the entitlement programs we were too stupid to cancel.

But the US doesn’t exist anymore, I don’t think… it’s a bit confusing. Hawaii broke off. Alaska seceded. Mexico suffered a civil war, causing 22 million Mexicans to head north into the US, overwhelming the federal government (this migration called the reconquista). Texas broke off from the US and somehow, without the assistance of the US army, resisted the migrations (and safely removed it from Simmons’ story, freeing him the pesky need to write about Texas). The Japanese have bought all the US debt and are now in sovereign control of the US, dividing the remainder of the country into 7 economic zones. However, the characters keep referring to the “United States” as it is some viable entity, so like I said, I’m a bit confused on this matter. Hopefully clarity is forthcoming).

The only thing the US is good for anymore is providing soldiers and military gear to the Japanese and Caliphate armies. Nevermind the fact that military might is a function of economic might, America just rents out its army and navy to the Japanese. Because making war is all we’re good at or something.

The top global power is the Islamic Caliphate (China burst apart in a spectacular economic bubble collapse and are no longer a superpower), who vies with India and Japan for global dominance. The United States is now a predominately Moslem country, with 9-11 being remembered as a national holiday as the first strike against the American Hegemony (this holiday being enacted no later than 2030 (19 years from now)). The worlds largest mosque now resides at Ground Zero.

But you see everybody is cool with this because 87% of the population is addicted to Flashback, where they spend most of their days reliving our favorite memories in a full tactile hallucinagenic (sp, but I’m too lazy to look it up) trip - so if I wanted to relive my first sexual experience (or my first good sexual experience), I would take flashback and relive the act.

So I’m reading this and I’m thinking WTF? 30 years? In 16 years, I’m to believe that the now-predominately Christian US will be Islamicized (is that a word) enough so that we will accept a 9-11 holiday celebrating the terrorists POV? I’m to think that 87% of the country gets addicted to Flashback? (It is stated that the drug itself isn’t addicting, it’s the reliving the best moments of our lives that is so addicting. I have a good life but I can not believe that it’s been so good that I want to spend the rest of my life reliving it). Japan is going to invade China using an “endless stream” of US troops? Really? In 30 years?

Just because we owe them money?

And that’s the problem with this world (if I understand it right, which I may not: this entire spoiler-pity-party may be completely off base) – it’s predicated on the assumption that the US government and people would never default on its debt, that whoever owns it (the Japanese, in this book) would be able to literally claim swaths of the country as economic and human collateral, where the people of the United States exist largely to service the debt, even to the point where we institute mandatory military service so we can serve as the shock troops in Japanese and Indian wars.

Also, he posits that in 16 years, all of the current population will be Islamicized enough to accept a 9-11 holiday in support of the terrorists viewpoint.

And that we’re fine with this and were fine with it up to the point where the novel begins (no mention of a US civil war, except for the secession of TX, AK, HI, and the reconquista) because everybody is addicted to Flashback. He makes it a point to mention that all Americans are flashing back to happier days (pre 9/11 or pre-collapse), but none of the characters (so far) have bothered to do so, all reliving days since the collapse. [/spoiler]

Stupid scenario. Bad world-building. Dumb book.

5

I have that game and forgot that that was the set up.

6

Yeah, there’s a rash of WW3 scenarios where they just ran a find and replace “China” with “North Korea”. But China is a large powerful country with a huge economy and trade networks and vast resources. North Korea is a tiny impoverished isolated autocracy. Maybe they might be able to set off a nuke in South Korea or Japan and cause a lot of misery, but they aren’t going to be sending paratroopers to pacify Colorado any time soon.

And the “Country A owes Country B a lot of money, so they are forced to become vassals of Country B” scenario is pretty silly too. What usually happens in these scenarios is that Country A tells Country B to fuck the fuck off, and Country B gets all upset, and there’s a lot of financial disruption in Country A because they can’t get loans for a while, and then things settle down. For the vassal scenario to actually work there has to be a credible threat that Country B could send troops over to Country A to collect the money at gunpoint. Like, say, the Versailles Treaty, where Germany agrees to pay off the Allies because the alternative is the continuation of WWI.

I mean, take a look at the Greek financial crisis. Greece owes money to everybody. So why didn’t Greece have to mortgage their country to pay off the Germans? Because Greece didn’t feel like doing that, and just told everyone that they were broke and couldn’t pay, so something else had to be done. And the German bankers who loaned all that money to Greece had to take a major haircut.

Now imagine that instead of a small poor country like Greece, the country in question is the United States. A country with a vast nuclear arsenal and various oceans between it and its creditors. How is that going to work again?

7

Yeah, a lot of people REALLY don’t get economics. How does one go from buying US treasury bonds to taking control of the US? There’s nothing about bonds and similar investments that give you any kind of ownership of the country. Also if the US defaults and refuses to pay, it just leaves you out however many trillions you invested, no one accepts that you own part of the Us. Then again, why would the US bother to default in the first place? Essentially all of the government debt is denominated in US dollars, so the US can simply print money to pay off whatever it owes entirely. Now defaulting would severely hurt the US’s ability to borrow money, and the second would cause significant-to-massive inflation, but while neither one is pleasant, they don’t result in the debt holders running the country.

8

If you thought Twilight 2013 was bad how about the backstory for the video game Call of Duty: Ghosts?

Released in 2013 by Infinity Ward it was suppose to be their follow-up to their incredibly successful Modern Warfare series which also dealt with WW3 (in this case a rather conventional “Ultra-nationalist Russians launch a coup and turn all Cold War Soviet on the West” WW3 scenario) and how do they follow their almost billion dollar series? With a very racist and dumb WW3 scenario.

It starts off with most modern speculative WW3 beginnings, in 2005 a three-way war between Iran/Saudi Arabia/Israel eventually goes nuclear resulting in an almost complete devastation of the Middle East and causes oil prices to skyrocket and a new energy crisis to emerge. This economically cripples the current superpowers (United States, European Union, India and China) but allows others like Russia and eventually South America to become the new superpowers relying on their own massive oil resources. In 2014 the now very rich countries Venezuela, Chile and Brazil unite into a single unified “Federation of the Americas” to consolidate their separate powers to become the biggest regional power. Soon most of South America except for Columbia decide to join them and they become the biggest superpower on Earth. In 2015 the Federation decides to invade Columbia to finally takeover all of South America prompting American assistance. In response the Federation start purging all non-hispanics in their borders with imprisonment and execution. A United Nations peacekeeping force in Columbia is slaughtered to a man by them.

The United States finally directly intervenes in the Federation/Columbian War by launching a direct assault on the Federation capital of Caracas. US Marines and Special Force make headway into the city to assassinate its leader who in a desperate attempt to stem the American military orders the destruction of all dam leading to the city. This results in the city being completely flooded and the US military pulling back but the leader is still killed while trying to escape by US Special Forces.

Now with their leader killed, their capital city completely destroyed, with US military forces now rampaging across Venezuela, you’d think the Federation would either surrender or just simply collapse due to in-fighting among the various countries fighting for new dominance. Instead apparently nothing else happens. America just gives up and leaves the war, the Federation recovers and completes its invasion of Columbia and by 2016 has now forcibly occupied all of Mexico and Central America with nary a peep from the United States who instead focuses on an entirely defense minded strategy of commissioning an orbital space station loaded with tungsten rods for kinetic bombardment as well lasers for defense. United Nations negotiators trying to stop the Federations wars in Central America are murdered by the Federation. In the meantime Russia now begins an invasion of Eastern Europe which draws the European Union into a massive conventional war in Europe.

2017 is when everything in the timeline ceases making sense. The newly completed Orbital Defense Initiative Space Station is first made operation by the United States. For reasons unexplained the Federation hijacks an American space shuttle and uses that to try to forcefully take over the station in space. With control over the weapons systems the Federation troops on-board immediately start launching orbital strikes on the American cities of El Paso, Houston, Las Vegas, Los Angeles, Miami, New Orleans, Phoenix, San Antonio, San Diego, and San Francisco. Over 27 million Americans are killed instantly. While Federation troops are attempting to input coordinates for more city strikes the remaining Americans on-board the space station forcibly deorbit it killing everyone on-board and destroying the space station.

Now, 10% of the United States population has just been killed by the Federation in a completely unwarranted and surprise attack. What should have happened was an immediate and justified nuclear attack on the Federation by the United States, as they Federation still lack nuclear weapons as well as losing control over their brief superpower of the space station. Instead the United States just kind of still plans for a defensive war and to nobody’s surprise a week later Federation forces in Mexico launch an attack on the Southwestern United States. They advance deep in Texas, New Mexico and Arizona but American forces hold them off in California to San Diego’s northern borders. The furthest the Federation advance north is into Dallas but they’re firmly held in a static line that bisects Arizona and New Mexico and ends in San Diego. Eventually the United States builds a giant defensive wall along this line to prevent further Federation incursion.

The war bogs into a stalemate for ten years until 2027, when the video game actually begins and when they again try to take the remains of Los Angeles from American forces.

As you can see, nothing in this timeline makes much sense and is to justify a “realistic” invasion of America by Mexico.

9

This legitimately reminds me of the 1979 book The Turner Diaries which at least has the excuse it’s a literal out-and-out white supremacist fantasy novel.

For those who don’t know, the basic premise is that a white supremacist/Neo-Nazi group known as “The Organization” is fighting a guerilla war against the American government in the 1990s that is basically the far right-wing stereotype of what “liberal’s America” is where ordinary white people are punished for no reason, minorities run rampant committing crimes without being punished, gay people control pop culture and promote sin, unemployment is at an-all time high due to financially unsound welfare policies etc. The Organization themselves has less than 5,000 core members but is able to basically infiltrate multiple police and governmental organizations to allow them to commit crimes with impunity.

The climax of the book is among the most out-there global war scenarios I’ve ever read, and I’ve seen multiple books/video games where unified Koreas somehow conquer America. Basically with only 500 armed men, the Organization somehow takes over all of Southern California. You read that right, 500 men are all that’s needed to take over what was around 18 million people back then. They take on the California National Guard and US Army in “The Battle of Los Angeles” and somehow these lightly armed guys take on all 75,000 opposition forces (these were the actual stated numbers used in the book, I’m not joking) and force the US government to retreat from all of Southern California.

Now that they own Southern California they proceed to just start genociding all minorities and “race traitors”, still with less than a 1,000 people plus collaborators against millions of resisting people. The US government completely surrounds the area controlled by the Organization and the Organization responds by detonating suitcase nukes they stole in the cities of Miami and Charleston. In response the United States decides to just nuke all of Southern California to get rid of the Organization once and for all, and the Organization seizes control of Vandenberg Air Force Base and the ICBM’s contained within and launches them at the Soviet Union hoping to force a counter-response. The Organization actually contacts the US Government shortly after launch and gives them an ultimatum, if you joint launch your own ICBM’s at the Soviet Union you can potentially destroy the Soviet counter-response. This completely ignores the fact that the whole world knows that Southern California is currently being controlled by a white supremacist terrorist organization who have already nuked American territory, and at this point the US has no actual reason to nuke Russia. Despite all of this the US Government somehow agrees and hundreds of nukes slam into the Soviet Union, crippling them but not before a few missiles from the Soviets launch and hit 20 American cities, killing 60 million Americans instantly. But the Organization? Literally only a single nuke hits an unoccupied part of Southern California causing no casualties. So basically somehow in a nuclear war between two superpowers nobody thought to nuke Los Angeles.

With the United States devastated the Organization launches their final coup on the United States Government by flying a fighter jet carrying a nuclear bomb into the Pentagon where the US President and top Generals are discussing how to recover from the nuclear war, killing all of America’s top leadership and allowing the Organization to somehow proclaim themselves the new White Rightful Leaders of the United States. They immediately take over much of the United States, and nuke Toronto where the remains of the US Government-in-Exile had fled to. Then in the epilogue you find out Europe and China decided to start nuking each other for no real reason, taking them out of the picture and allowing the Organization to basically take over the entire world. 90% of the human population is gone and the world is still reeling from nuclear winter decades later with much of Europe and Asia completely irradiated but hey April 20th is now the world’s new Independence Day, so yay?

10

You say this like Simmons’ book isn’t.

11

What the fuck happened to Dan Simmons, anyway? His Hyperion Cantos - a strong candidate for the best science fiction story *ever *- featured a heroic Palestinian soldier as one of its main protagonists (one who - spoiler alert! - had a torrid love story with a Jewish woman). If anything, his major issue was with Catholicism, not Islam. How did he get from there to here?

12

Same thing that happened to a lot of people, I suppose. Some people did something in 2001 and he completely lost his chill.

Although - best science fiction story ever is … well, let’s just say it’s an opinion.

13

Not only is it an opinion, it’s MY opinion. I made it myself, from stuff I had lying around the house.

14

Simmons is a racist asshole. I’d argue that he always was a racist asshole. But he was given incentive to be an openly racist asshole in 2001.

I won’t object when someone shows me their true colors.

15

I dunno - I don’t remember any evidence of racism in his early work, although feel free to prove me wrong. I think that sometimes people just change, and sometimes that change is for the worse.

16

Simmons’ early work was brilliant and there was little indication of this streak of politics prior to 2001. If he felt that way, he did not dwell on it in his books.
I read Hardcase and saw something had changed – the entire book was just an excuse to lovingly describe various guns.

17

Song of Kali was pretty racist.

18

You’re always learning new things on this board. I’ve read some of Simmons’ early works but am not a major fan. I had no idea he had gone off in this direction.

But on the more general topic, I’ll add the world war described by John Varley in Demon. It’s the final book in a trilogy and Varley apparently felt the need to shake things up. So he describes how a nuclear war started by accident with various countries joining in. As I recall, the war started when Utah accidentally launched a nuclear missile at Western Australia. Western Australia retaliated by launching a nuclear missile back at Utah but also launched attacks against its traditional enemy, Burma. Burma used this as an excuse to attack the Papal States. And other countries kept joining in.

I think Varley was trying to make a point that nuclear wars are irrational. But all he really said was that irrational acts are irrational. The international situation he describes (he just says that a whole bunch of new countries exist a hundred years from now without explaining why this happened) and the cavalier way he has these countries start nuclear wars isn’t believable. Varley seems to want to say that nuclear war is a terrible thing but he has his characters treating it like it’s trivial.