It's finally happened, the world's gone all topsy turvy and the leaders of the world have decided enough is enough- it’s time to settle every score on the book in one major, titanic brawl, winner take all. It’s East versus West, North versus South, Capitalism vs Communism, fanboys who think The Mandalorian was a good show versus people with actual good taste in television. The gloves are off and the world is at war once more.
Lucky for you though you're one smart cookie and you subscribe to The Infographics Show- the internet's best resource for cataclysm survival stories, awesome challenges, and more than a fair bit of informative sass. Thanks to your excellent viewing habits, you're better prepared than most to survive the end of the world, basically you're a pre-order customer for Fallout 76 and are getting a one week headstart on the Armageddon over everybody else- if of course Fallout 76 wasn't literally the worst video game ever created and nobody who likes fun should ever play it. To survive the end of days, you're going to have to be prepared, and be ready to respond even before the end officially starts.
So what in the world should you be on the lookout before you pack your bags and join in on the world's biggest Fallout LARP event? If not dying in radioactive fire is in your top ten list of favorite things, then good news because despite what the disaster-hungry media may be screaming at you every day over the TV, internet, Facebook, and the sad half-dozen of you that still use livejournal. com, the truth is that the world is more peaceful than ever.
Now, just because the world is more peaceful than it's ever been doesn't mean that there's no conflict, or even a lot of them, so pump the brakes on blowing up our comments section for a sec and hang in there with us. Violence has been on the decline across the spate of human history, though it's only in the last century that we've seen significant progress towards turning the earth into one giant hippy commune. Simply put, we as individuals are more averse to violence than we have ever been in our history.
In the 16th century France's idea of public, wholesome, family entertainment was to gather the community together for a good old fashioned cat-burning, where a cat was tied to a rope and then slowly lowered into a roaring fire. The cat would shriek in pain until it finally died, and all the while the gathered crowd would roar with laughter. If you think this type of entertainment was limited to the lower classes by the way, you'd be wrong, as it was all the rage amongst the aristocracy as well.
Today though no sane person would think that lowering an animal into a raging fire was good entertainment, in fact that person would be harshly punished by law enforcement nearly anywhere in the world. As societies we've come to abhor violence, and actively work to prevent it or avoid it whenever possible- or at least limit its impact. Small-scale conflicts are still common throughout the world, but only in the less developed parts.
The developed nations of the world are almost universally stable and peaceful, something which would have blown the pantaloons straight off your cat-burning 16th century ancestor. For them a world without the constant threat of a major war existed only in fiction. For the average first and second-worlder, the only war they experience is the endless flame wars that rage across the comments section of.
. . anything.
Literally anything posted online, because someone somewhere always hates you and what you have to say. At least today they just call you names instead of bash you over the head with a rock. Despite the relatively peaceful state of the world though, there is still a serious risk for World War III, and that risk is concentrated amongst several potential 'flashpoints'.
The top three though are an east-European confrontation with Russia, a confrontation with China in the South China Sea, and a confrontation with China over Taiwan. A confrontation with Russia in eastern Europe would likely be the result of further Russian aggression against Ukraine, which could trigger a retaliatory response from NATO despite the fact that Ukraine is not a NATO member. This is unlikely though, as Russia has no appetite for a major war, though the fact that Ukraine is determined to become a NATO member by 2040 certainly ramps up the risk of war.
A more likely scenario for a third global war would be a confrontation between the US and China in the South Pacific or Taiwan. The US has repeatedly affirmed its commitment to defend Taiwan from China, and for China allowing Taiwan to remain free and independent is an ongoing national embarrasment that the Chinese Communist Party may not be willing to tolerate for very long. China will never be taken seriously as a global military power if it can't even retake a single island right off its own shores.
So let's say it happened, the US and China started shooting at each other and Russia decided, screw it, it's cold in Siberia and we're bored- time to kick off World War III. How in the world are you going to survive? If World War III goes nuclear right away, then sorry, you're not surviving.
That's it, video over. Thanks for watching, don't forget to share, like, and subscribe, and we'll see you in the nearest vault. That might sound a bit defeatist, but when we're trying to show you how to survive, we're hoping we can give you a game plan that will keep you alive for a few decades- not a month or two before you starve to death or become an irradiated corpse.
In the case of a full nuclear release, the first weapons will be impacting within 15 minutes- depending on where you live- meaning you have exactly zero time to get to safety with enough supplies to last you. We hear you, Billy Bob and Ray Jay- “Well I live me in da country, I ain't no soft snowflake like you city folk. ” Alright there, deliverance, hold on to your suspenders because we got bad news for you: you're dead too and all your wilderness survival skills or youtube prepper subscriptions aren't going to do you a lick of good.
You may survive the initial volley that targets major population centers, but what you won't survive are the secondary volleys which specifically target major water supplies and arable land. A full nuclear exchange is designed to not just military or economically defeat an opponent, but to completely obliterate a nation from the face of the earth and ensure its people cannot survive. Radiation-rich weapons can irradiate vast swaths of territory and make water undrinkable and farmland unworkable for decades.
Your only hope of surviving World War III and perhaps living to the ripe old age of forty is if the war is a slow burn that doesn't immediately turn nuclear. If you're an American, Canadian, or Mexican, then congratulations because you won the geography lottery, and for the first few months of the war the only noticeable effect will be a seriously slumping economy. With two huge oceans on either coast, no enemy on earth can breach the geographic barrier that protects North America.
In our US VS The World video we showed you how the US Navy is big enough to fight all the world's navies combined to a standstill, and the world doesn't have enough transport capacity to actually get troops to North America. That means that all the fighting will be overseas, which gives over privileged North Americans lots of time to prep their shelter for the end of the world. If you're Asian or European, you're screwed.
Not only will most of the fighting be happening on one or both of these continents, but they will be the hardest hit economically by a third world war. While North America countries can still trade with themselves and even South America, war-torn Asia and Europe wouldn't have that option. To make matters even better, the first nuclear weapons that fall will be in these places.
This will likely come in the form of small-scale tactical nuclear strikes, which inevitably will be escalated to a full nuclear exchange. If war breaks out in Europe, the best thing you can do is get as far west as you possibly can. The great European plain spans across eastern europe and reaches into the northern half of western europe.
Historically, this plain has been all but undefendable, and no nation has suffered more for it than Russia. Thanks to the vast European plain with little defensive features, Russia has been repeatedly invaded by other European powers for the last several hundred years. Historically major powers have fought to expand their influence across the European plain.
The further into the plain they could push their boundaries or influence, the deeper they could stage their forces. This meant that they could then launch an attack against a neighboring power using any number of different avenues, and the defender would be spread perilously thin trying to cover them all. The European plain is the single greatest reason for why Russia has historically fought to push its influence westwards- specially after suffering so terribly at the hands of invaders.
If war were to break out between NATO and Russia, Russia would immediately launch a series of tactical nuclear strikes- not against actual military targets, but rather into the territory of the great plain itself. By irradiating the land, Russia would force NATO to funnel its forces into fewer and fewer avenues of attack, giving the Russian military a chance to stop NATO cold in its tracks. For NATO's part, they would be doing all they can to spread out across the plain and push into Russian territory across many different fronts.
One can quickly see how the European Plain is a tactical disaster for the Russian military- and why NATO's expansion on its borders angers Russia so much. By heading west you'll avoid most of the initial fighting, and the effects of the tactical nuclear strikes by Russia meant to funnel NATO forces into defensible corridors. A single miscalculation by Russia though- whom has already publicly declared it would use nuclear weapons in a first-strike capability against NATO forces- would quickly escalate the conflict, and soon major European cities would be the target of nuclear strikes.
The safest bet for Europeans would be to simply leave the continent altogether. The best hope would be found by crossing the Mediterranean and into Africa and the Middle East, where there are few military or economic targets for nuclear strikes. In a complete reverse of the recent refugee crisis, this time it would be Europeans flooding African and Middle Eastern nations seeking asylum.
Good thing you guys have been treating your asylum seekers so well, right? For our Asian viewers, the good news is that as long as you don't live in China, India, or Pakistan, there's few valid military or economic targets for a nuclear strike. While most Asian nations favor the US and the West, few of them are allied close enough with the United States to warrant having a Chinese nuclear weapon lobbed their way.
For the Chinese, well aside from Pakistan nobody is really China's friend on the world stage- at least not friend enough to join it in a war against the US. Many people may be tempted to flee to Australia, thinking themselves safe in the land down under- except Australia is a resolute ally of the United States, and on really bad terms with China. Tensions between Australia and China only became worse with the recent defection of a Chinese intelligence official to Australia, who provided information on covert and espionage action against Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Australia.
Then there's also the fact that the United States and Australia jointly operate several key military facilities which would be critical in a war against China- meaning it's time to say goodbye to Australia and its ten million venomous animals because nuclear attacks against the nation is guaranteed. Instead, Asian survivors should seek to leave populated areas behind and return to the countryside. With so much of Asia still living an agrarian lifestyle, the region may perhaps be the best suited for surviving a full-blown apocalypse.
Or at least for the first few months. Once widespread debris from a global nuclear war has brought about a nuclear winter then crops will begin to fail all around the world, though it will be the rainforest areas of Asia that are hit first, and hardest. Crops there are especially vulnerable to cold, especially rice which is a staple crop for billions of people.
Luckily a lot of the initial predictions for a nuclear winter have in time been discovered to be overblown. Instead of the freezing cold nuclear winter of old, the world would most likely experience a nuclear autumn with a drop of 5-10 degrees celsius. That would drop a balmy summer day of 75 degrees Fahrenheit to 57 degrees.
Sadly, that's far out of the tolerance range for most major crops, and what crops did survive- such as wheat- would be in extremely low yields. Mankind would starve to death as crops wither and animals die. To make matters worse, giant dust storms would constantly spread irradiated material across the globe, making the air itself deadly to breathe.
It's highly unlikely that all of humanity would die, but most would and the reality is that the few survivors that did make it would probably not be able to kick-start the human race before a natural extinction event simply took them out. Maybe if you happened to be a Bigfoot with internet access watching our videos, you might survive- for the rest of us though, it's lights out. Now that you've enjoyed this totally not depressing video, why not cheer things up by clicking on this video next!
Or maybe you'd rather watch this one over here instead! Whichever you pick, do it fast, because time is literally running out for all of us!
