[Edge03zn (OP)]

 .

[Northstar]

overpopulation of resources OR greed from sub human dictators like hitler, saddam, or the rich like the russian czars or the french monarchy or billionaires.

[evan_au]

Internal: An overwhelming thirst for Personal, Political, Religious or Economic power. A focus on personal wealth, rather than community health. On a larger scale, a focus on national wealth, rather than world health. Objectifying, denigrating and/or wilful ignorance of people outside one's own community or nation. Apathy.

The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.

Human-Caused: Someone sets off a nuclear, chemical or biological weapon. A massive cyber-attack.  Overpopulation and overconsumption, causing exhaustion of natural resources (especially water and fertile land). Pollution. Climate-induced crop failures, changes in ocean currents, migration towards the poles and sea level rise. The war on terror. Genetically engineered humans (or, more likely, phobia of genetically engineered humans). A hostile takeover by intelligent machines?

External: An epidemic. Large meteorite. Large Coronal Mass Ejection, causing civilian infrastructure to fail but leaving the military intact. Aliens?

I know not with what weapons World War III will be fought, but World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones.

[alancalverd]

Individual terrorist acts or actual human suffering don't generally start world wars. You need a concerted act of aggression by an identifiable state against another, and so far, only Germany and Japan have succeeded in achieving this. So if ISIS succeeds in building a geographic caliphate and then invades Israel or Turkey, you can expect a pretty major conflict.

However Russian invasions of Ukraine or anywhere else won't be opposed by the West as this would lead to a nuclear exchange - the obverse of deterrence. The same goes for the Chinese invasion of Tibet and the continuing fracas between India and Pakistan: any nation that possesses a nuclear weapon can do whatever it likes without starting a world war.

[chiralSPO]

Individual terrorist acts or actual human suffering don't generally start world wars.

And WW I started how?

True, the official war started when nations (empires) declared war on each other. And yes, the world needs a certain amount of political tension for anything to turn into a large war, but given the right (wrong) circumstances, a single terrorist event can trigger a world war (for instance the assassination of a certain Archduke set everything into motion, and the actual war started one month later).

I think of it rather like a chemical reaction. There needs to be enough stored energy (tension/will to fight) for a war to happen. There also needs to be an initiation that supplies enough energy (anger?) to get the reaction (fighting) started, then as long as the fighting leads to an increased bloodlust and there is enough materiel to fight with, the war will continue. Eventually someone surrenders (or is defeated/destroyed), the war ends, and tensions begin to rise again...

[evan_au]

How about destruction of broadcast TV satellites, intentionally or by accident?

Deprived of their living-room circus, the masses go on a rampage...

[alancalverd]

That might start the occasional street riot but once they have ransacked a few shops, they are unlikely to invade one another's countries. More likely to all huddle around a cable TV set.

[PmbPhy]

That's impossible to say. It's like asking What will be the most likely cause of the next bar fight? While there are a number of reasons bar fights happen and it'd be easy to list them out, the actual cause of the next one is impossible to predict. And in fact it might be totally unrelated to any other bar fight that's ever happened before. The same argument holds for war.

[Edge03zn (OP)]

No, world war cannot be likened to a bar fight. But if you had to list the reasons of bar fights occurring, and tally them... the spread would not be even.

ie. There would be a clear top 5.

[PmbPhy]

No, world war cannot be likened to a bar fight.

You missed the point entirely. I never said nor implied that world war is like a bar fight. I can't even imagine how you got that from what I wrote! What I actually said was It's like asking ... what will be the most likely cause of the next bar fight. By this I meant that you just can't ask what will cause the next fight because it could happen for any number of reasons, most of which we probably can't even conceive of right now. Understand?

[Northstar]

The russian and french revolutions were started by the poor against the monarchies.   Hitler first caused a revolution in Germany. 
And we know what happened when hitler and stalin, both dictators, both jews started murdering people.  WWII.   So, the same impoverished conditions could lead to WWIII.

[Edge03zn (OP)]

PmbPhy. Actually it is you who has misunderstood my comment.

You quoted my first sentence, but the rest of my response is clearly a demonstration of how you Can actually predict the reason for the next bar fight.

Maybe you're saying there are thousands of reasons why a war might occur. That is only the case if you're being extremely accurate. Which would be a foolish expectation on my part. But in this case a foolish expectation on your part to think that- that is what I was asking.

Unless you can actually list a plausible reason that hasn't been listed already. Go away.

[chiralSPO]

The russian and french revolutions were started by the poor against the monarchies.   Hitler first caused a revolution in Germany. 
And we know what happened when hitler and stalin, both dictators, both jews started murdering people.  WWII.   So, the same impoverished conditions could lead to WWIII.

Is this a typo, or do you believe that Hitler and Stalin were Jews? And even if they were Jews, what would that have to do with any of the rest of your argument?

I agree with you that there are many historical examples of revolutions brought on by disparities within countries (and empires, etc.), and some of these have transformed into larger regional or even world-wide conflicts--I just don't understand what Judaism has to do with that...

[PmbPhy]

PmbPhy. Actually it is you who has misunderstood my comment.

Nope. Not at all. It's you who didn't say what you meant because it was you who said

No, world war cannot be likened to a bar fight.

My analogy is about asking about predicting whereas here you seem to have thought that the analogy was between likening war to a bar fight, which are two separate issues.

At any rate it doesn't matter. Anything more than this would be getting the last word in and I hate doing that.

[Colin2B]

...we know what happened when hitler and stalin, both dictators, both jews started murdering people.  WWII.

Is this a typo, or do you believe that Hitler and Stalin were Jews? ................I just don't understand what Judaism has to do with that...

There seems to be a number of 'therorists' who believe that Hitler was illegitimately related to Rothchild!
A surprising number of 'theories' have anti Semitic link (now there is a 'theory')

[wolfekeeper]

The thing that will cause WWIII may already have happened: the 2008 banking crisis.

If you think about it, WWII was caused by the effects of the Great Depression. Hitler got into power by promising to sort out the economic chaos that that caused, and we all know how that turned out.

So, now all it would take is some ideologue to get into power somewhere in the world and start an invasion; the economics is set up for people to be unhappy enough to vote them in.

[alancalverd]

I had always imagined that rising sea levels would at least precipitate a serious conflict as the population of Bangladesh moved northwards. Initially the police and army would attempt to prevent have-not refugees from occupying the property of the haves but within a few years they would recognise the inevitable and lead the entire population to invade India.

However the present tide of people leaving Africa and the Middle East for Europe seems to have anticipated my hypothetical model. At some point I expect the Hungarians or whoever to defend their border with lethal force, where upon all hell will break loose in the Balkans, as usual, with the invading force supported by whoever loses in Syria - either China or Russia.

[puppypower]

One thing that might cause WWIII is an attempt to form a world government that tries to flex its muscle and imposes its will over national sovereignty. Such a world wide power centralize power grab, although intoxicating to many, will lead to resistance by those who have the most to lose. 

As one scenario, if you assume man made global warming is real, and then assume you need to lower carbon emissions, this means the poor countries will always remain poor, since they will not be able to use cheap fossil fuel to help jump start their economic growth. Green energy is too expensive for poor countries to jump start their climb up the ladder.

To balance the needs out of these poor countries, a world government would need to redistribute the allowed fossil fuel. This will cause destabilization of the larger countries due to shortages fro the middle class. The large countries will not go down without a fight and many will ignore these laws. This will challenge the authority of the world government, so they will need to play hard ball. Since a world movement has its finger in all pies, the playing of hardball will cause international tension.

[Pecos_Bill]

One need only to look at Rapa Nui (Easter Island) where the human beings bred like rats until they finished up like the Gingham Dog and the Calico cat. [1.]

A similar fate awaits our current civilization if we continue to accelerate our births past the carrying capacity of the planet.

The best way to stop this trend is to teach women to read and give them power over their own wombs.

I once asked a gravida 13 woman if she wouldn't like to stop popping out more kids - now that she had 13.

"Oh,Mr. Bill!. she disconsolately replied, "If I did that my husband would leave me and these kids flat and go back to Zacatecas and find a 16 year old to marry!"

So it goes. Maybe a world government might be the only hope, even if it has to sterilize a few dudes or protect some women from marital rape..

[1.]  http://www.bartleby.com/102/231.html

[alancalverd]

Give every woman £500 ($800, or whatever the local value equivalent is) every 6 months if she isn't pregnant. It's a lot cheaper than providing social, health and education services for the children she might produce, and will buy plenty of contraception, legal aid, or whatever else she needs to avoid making babies that society doesn't need.

Sterilising "a few dudes" won't do the trick, nurse! A radiographer colleague told the ER doctor "I think this patient is pregnant". He replied "but her husband has had a vasectomy". "Quite probably" said Betty "but there are twenty million men who haven't". She was.