Nothing big, just the end of the world...

A friend of mine asked me the other day whether the things going on around the world would lead to WWIII. I told him “no, things have been bad like this before, and will be in the future” and I still think that is true but then I had another thought. I have been listening to a few docs on the evils of religion. I think religions have always been inherently a ban on humanity (no, not all religious people are bad people…but they could be if they thought god commanded them…and if they really believed, they would do it, no?). This is not new and has been the source (or excuses) for violence since the down of time (Don’t hold me to this part, I would need to study it better, but defiantly since the dawn of the Abrahamic religions, of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam but I am sure not limited to them) There is a difference now though.
I was remembering the Anarchist movement in the 19th century. It was responsible for the assignation of many powerful leaders, including the Tsar of Russia, but all of these remained relatively local events and had no direct impact of history (but many provoke indirect changes, especially in Russia where this moment greatly retarded the advancement of Democratic reforms as they created a authoritarian conservative backlash that kept Russia medieval right up till the Revolutions of 1917.) But as societies and technologies evolve, the potential for a single actor to possess the power to move the world has increased, take for example the assassination of the Emperor Ferdinand, that act by one gunman sparked, thanks to the context of modern military, WWI. What about today?
Today it is possible for a agent of evil (again most likely some religious person) to take a nuke and explode it in some sensitive area, like Jerusalem. What would be the response? First the US would accuse the “terrorists” (who ever they want them to be), then they will accuse those who COULD have provided it. They will ignore there own corporations, because the US government in is controlled by them; they will ignore the Western Nations because they are one of us (aren’t they?) and they will ignore the other Superpowers (yes, the US is no longer the only one) of Russia and China because they could not win a war with them. NO they US will focus its attention on the annoying and venerable, this will be Iran, Saudi Arabia (yes, the US want control of their oil, but will no longer be happy to control it by proxy, and they will have troops in the area). But the US is no longer strong enough for a conventional military operation, so it will rely on its arsenal of “advanced” weapons, this will include tactical nukes. This will put oil supplies for China and Japan (and I assume the rest of the Asia nations) in decline and incomplete control of the US. Japan will object on moral grounds, being the only other nations to have suffered an nuclear attack, and it will pull away from the US and fall into the Chinese sphere of nations. China will act against it because it will not allow its interests to be compromised or control put at risk, it will respond first by dumping its American bonds and currency, causing the US economy to collapse, and not a neat collapse like Russia after the dissolution of the USSR, no more like that of Germany in the inter-war years.
With the US society in ruins (well there society is tied up with their economy, the destruction of one will be the destruction of the other) the President, a born again fundamentalist, will see this as a sign of the end of times. He will wonder why the he is there and the Rapture has not carried him to heaven (the President of the US must be the most worthy….no?), he will figure that the Armageddon must start first, so he will launch the US arsenal of nukes on who ever they happen to be pointing at (probably China). This will start a chain of retaliatory strikes, leading to his wanted Armageddon, but no rapture, not salvations, only desolation and destructions…not for the earth, it will survive, it always has, most life will die, but not all, humans will be whipped, a curious artefact for some other, hopefully wiser and less violent intelligent race will evolve out of the remnants of life on earth, to discover and wonder what calamity caused this destruction. At least the Dinosaurs could claim that their extinction was not their fault, I fear our legacy will not have that dignity.