As world wide tensions, especially between the United States and North Korea, hot up,
the topic of World War Three has come up a lot recently, not least here on this channel.
Given the death toll of previous wars, we already know that it is likely to be the most
devastating event in human history if it ever happens…but would it be the last event in
human history?
Hello and welcome back to Life’s Biggest Questions, I am Rebecca Felgate and today
we are continuing our world war series as we ask Would World War Three mean the end
of the world?
The impact of a third world war depends on where and how it is fought.
World War 1 was fought in a small section of Europe, World War Two was fought in wider
parts of Europe and Asia, with one attack on American soil.
World War one was primarily fought on land with soldiers, guns and tanks, and world war
two took place online, in waters and in the skies, with Ariel attacks becoming prominent
and damaging.
As of yet, we can only assume world war three would involve all of the above and more, with
a further use of chemical and nuclear weapons.
The world, as in the earth, a big spinning spherical rock in space, is pretty sturdy
and at the moment there is no weapon on earth that could destroy it.
Again…at the moment.
Currently there are around 10 thousand 100 Nukes out there in the world of varying size,
most of them small, and actually, most of them decommissioned or unusable.
In fact, 2016 statistics suggested there are only 4,000 active nuclear warheads in the
world right now.
That is for sure enough to do some damage to the earth’s population, but not enough
to obliterate our rock.
While Little Boy, the bomb used to devastate Hiroshima, was awful, it would take over 3
and a half million of them to destroy planet earth.
That being said, it would only take 15,500 Tsar Bombas , the biggest bomb ever detonated,
to blow up our rock.
Of course, we have absolutely nowhere near that many Nukes, let alone Tsar Bombas!
There actually aren’t any bombs that size right now, although that doesn’t mean we
couldn’t make them.
While we are not physically be able to blow up planet earth, marking the end of the world,
but could it kill everybody on the planet?
World War One had a death toll of 18 million and ended in 1918….just 26 years later,
world war two ended in 1945 with a death toll of up to 80 million.
Now, over 70 years of peacetime later, we have more advance weapons that are capable
of killing a lot more people.
Many predict that if World War Three was ever sparked, the death toll could be in the billions,
although if every weapon on earth was detonated at the same time, perhaps we could plan for
a mutually assured world wide destruction.
In the most likely scenario, a handful of nuclear bombs would be dropped before world
leaders decided they were two devastating and called a truce.
After all, Japan surrendered immediately after Hiroshima and Nagasaki were attacked as they
could not handle another reign of fire.
Of course a handful of nukes cannot and should not be shrugged off.
While a Tsar Bomba size bomb is not currently in existence, if ever replicated, it could
kill 5.8 million people immediately, with millions more dying from nuclear fall out.
Even if millions rather than billions die in initial nuclear attacks, fallout can poison
water supplies, killing cattle and crop, meaning many people could simply starve to death Also,
huge amounts of carbon released into the air during nuclear attacks could cause a dip in
worldwide temperatures which could kill huge swathes of wildlife and humans alike.
Of course another issue that could create huge death tolls in the aftermath of war is
illness.
Following world war 2, many people died from illnesses sparked by poor living conditions.
With so many cities destroyed and people made homeless from the aftermath of World War three,
I can only imagine disease would be rife.
We could only hope the squalor didn’t lead to global pandemic, which it very well could.
Over the long term, War would have a devastating effect on economics.
Not only is war expensive to wage, its also expensive to recover from.
Business and homes will be destroyed, likely leaving millions out of work, forcing the
middles classes below the poverty line, and the already poor into possible social holocaust
As it is right now, world war three could not destroy earth, but it could kill many,
many of its inhabitants, both human and animal, with the potential for far more civilian death
than ever before.
Adding salt to the wound, it could destroy our global infrastructure.
Of course, many of our assumptions in this video have been based on the prospect of World
War Three taking place within the foreseeable future.
If the eruption of World War Three happened far off in the future, who knows what weapons
we will have?
Heck, there has even been talk of wars being fought in space, to which end we had better
hope nobody creates a death star like weapon.
Like Alderaan, it could be curtains for earth.
So that is one big question answered for you, for now at least….what kind of damage do
you think world war three could have and what would be our best chance of stopping it?
Let me know in the comments section below!
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I am Rebecca Felgate, I’ll see you in the next video…for now please do stay curious,
stay alert and never ever stop questioning.