[MememyselfandIJK]

Personally I picked "<25%" because starting a world war doesn't really make sense for anyone.

Discuss.

[fuser]

What exactly is a world war? Anything resembling world war between advanced industrial nations will end in couple of hours, hardly time for war going global.

This is the era of small scale but highly intensified conflicts restricted to a particular region. For example I can think that a war may erupt between India and China in near future but it will be restricted to border regions without any use of strategic assets.

I think that a "world war" is just impossible now. So I vote "other" and you must have an option for "other"

[One Degree]

I think the odds of someone using a nuclear weapon are good, but I don't foresee it on a world wide scale.
The US is probably the only Western country that could feel safe enough in a large conflict, so all others will do anything to avoid it including giving in to unreasonable aggression.

[Igor Antunov]

Every country with a sizable nuclear arsenal is untouchable in a global war scenario. They would duke it out far from home on puppet territories. Only those limited to conventional weaponry would face destruction at home. For example if Russian or Chinese territory started being bombed by US fleets they would simply nuke the fleets with no fear of reprisal, since reprisal would escalate to MAD, rendering such direct confrontations unlikely in the first place. There's a reason SU and US never kicked off ww3. In a way nukes are the great peacemaker, at least for those wielding them.

Ww3 if it doesn't turn into a nuclear Armageddon between countries with sizable nuclear arsenals, will be a low intensity (by ww2 standards) series of proxy conflicts. A decidedly warm cold war of sorts. In a way we are already seeing that.

You could say Syria is the start of such a World War.

[colliric]

Yes.

Nuclear weapons are not a deterrent to land based warfare in the manner people generally think they are.

Ultimately another largescale land war is inevitable.

[MB.]

This was the most serious video appearance I have seen Donald Trump and Mike Pence give.

Trump Doubles Down on Threats Against North Korea as Nuclear Tensions Escalate

I'm concerned they expect actual conflict not long from now. This would be extremely bad. If I were the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientist I would say we are 1 and a half minutes from midnight. DEFCON fluctuations and dramatic military exchanges would be the next rung up. Deescalation might involve sending in Dennis Rodman.