Third World War
The Third World War was a conflict on Earth that ran sporadically from 2026 to 2053. The war caused the deaths of over 600 million Humans on Earth, it was characterised by the extensive usage of Tactical Nuclear weapons by all sides as well as chemical and biological agents as well as the usage of narcotics to control soldiers. The war was the most destructive in recorded history, even surpassing the Dominion War in scale. The various warring factions entered a stage of détente after 2053, which was slowly broken down after First Contact with the Vulcans. However, various nation states devolved into a state of total societal collapse, often referred to as the Post-atomic Horror, in the aftermath of the war, as a direct result of damage suffered during the war.
Causes
The roots of the Third World War go back to before even the devastating Eugenics Wars of the 1990's, some could even trace back their roots to the Second World War. The formation of two Major power blocs in the immediate aftermath would have a huge effect on the future. Despite the fact that the Eugenics Wars devastated large tracts of Africa and the Middle East, due to direct and proxy wars between surviving non-Eugenic and Eugenic factions. The Eugenic factions took a number of different forms, some chose to found dictatorships, such as the one established in Italy, by Torem Jacobs, or ran Religious sects or even terrorist cells.
Eventually, rather than fighting their own independent proxy wars, the two Power blocs of the time, the United States of America and the Soviet Union forged a temporary alliance to removed the Augments from power. They eventually succeeded and in 1998 the last of the Augments, Khan Noonien Singh was forced to flee in a DY-100 class Sleeper Ship.
Here is where it is generally accepted the roots of the Third World War lie. With the end of the war the two Powers, instead of co-operating to forge a new and more peaceful war, they began to squabble over areas of influence. This eventually lead to, in 2011, the creation of two larger Military Alliances, an expanded Mutual Defence Treaty Organisation (MDTO), based upon the old NATO model and ECON, or the Eastern Coalition.
Tensions between the two blocs mounted for the next decade as natural resources such as oil became scarcer. The droughts of 2008/9 also had a major effect on the ECON's outlook. Despite the fact that some of the largest partners of ECON, India, China and the Soviet Union were suffering severely from food shortages, MDTO nations, such as Great Britain and America, instead of sending their surpluses to minimise the humanitarian impact of the droughts, decided instead to embark on a Bio-fuels program. This above all, rooted a deep seated hatred of the Western powers in the post-Khan Chinese populace. This nation, which by 2020 would have risen to be the primary in ECON would shape the form of World War 3.
Tensions continued to build like this, right up until 2025, when feeling that they had finally gotten the strategic hand over on MDTO, after Australia and New Zealand had declared themselves officially neutral powers, they declared that Taiwan, one of the two remaining MDTO power in South East Asia was a part of Sovereign Chinese territory and launched an invasion.
Within hours, MDTO responded by declaring war on ECON. The Third World War had begun.
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