Could our planet survive World War III?

The planet will survive, I don’t know if the rest of us will however.

Einstein said he didn’t know what weapons would be used in World War III, but he said World War IV would be fought with rocks and sticks.

I have no idea and I hope to God we never have to find out… but it does seem to be headed that direction, doesn’t it?

<cynic>
It’s hard to tell if we, human civilization, survived WW II. In the US that set the stage for neo-con corporatism, in the form of the military-industrial complex, to get deep hooks into the government. Finance was not far behind, and they have their hooks in the rest of the corporatists. The US has such influence on the economies and policies of countries all over and many have taken the technicolor pill we have to offer. The whole mindset has encouraged ignorance of its resulting pollution and imbalance, because those are not measurable in the same ways as the other things on the spreadsheets, they don’t hit the bottom line if it can be avoided. The corporatists may tip our civilization sustantially into collapse.

One used to be able to complain that the government had control of everything. The king or the bureaucracies or city hall. Now it’s becoming the corporatists, and they are harder bums to kick out of office, because we can’t even pretend to elect them. They’ll keep our government running in a way that distracts us into believing our votes still count. When even the majority of votes of the Supreme Court are driven by corporatism, the votes that really count are counted behind closed the closed doors of the WTO and the IMF and the G-8 and the G-20.

Did we, civilization, or what semblance we had of self-rule/democracy, survive WW II ? It goes further back than that, of course. Whenever the merchant class controls more resources than the nominal government, the government does its bidding. In recent centuries it’s been called fascism, but it’s an old story.

But if there is something we’ll call WW III then Einstein has a bead on it : it doesn’t matter with what weapons it is fought, we will be eating grubs by the end of it.
Consider that, before WW III could happen, maybe some huge solar flares will toast all our electronics over a span of just a few weeks and pretty much all our infrastructure would grind to a halt. Our vulnerability due to de-natured lifestyles and dependence on gadgets may kill us.
The people who survive could be those know how to eat grubs today.
<\cynic>

Our planet? Yes. The human race? There’s a decent chance there’ll be scavenging survivors of which only those with grit will survive. What happens after, who knows? Will society be successfully rebuilt or will we reduced to barbaric morlocks?

@dabbler Has it right. The jury isn’t in yet on continued survival of WWII. What we are left with is unsustainable and unconscionable. It WILL bring WWIII if it continues, and then we will see if Einstein was an optimist.

Sure, I mean look how bad Beverly Hills Cop III was & things carried on pretty much as normal after that catastrophic event in cinematic history.

WWIII is occurring right now, has been for a while. Are you mistaking the messes in Africa and the Middle East for non worldly wars?

Yes, the planet will survive, just not our societies and governments.

The planet will survive, even Man will survive, but ‘civilisation’ as we know it will have gone never to return. All the easily obtainable oil and minerals will have gone and if Mankind advances it will have to be in a different direction from the one we have taken.

@flutherother That may well lead to the beginning of true civilization, not its end.