A surreal, bone-dry satire disguised as a declassified after-action report, The Third World War of 2025 is the only war in history whose most devastating consequence was paperwork.
This isn’t Hackett’s Third World War. There are no armored thrusts through the Fulda Gap, no hypersonic duels over the Taiwan Strait, no “Red Storm Rising” crescendo of NATO tank divisions blazing across the North German Plain. This one is quieter. Dumber. More plausible. Far more British.
2025’s Third World War was not won, lost, or avoided. It was rescheduled. Indefinitely. Due to system errors, political embarrassment, and one power outage in North Dakota.
Opening Scene: The Substation IncidentAs the war begins—accidentally, as all proper modern wars must—the United States attempts a limited strategic response to an ambiguous cyber-nuclear event in the Baltics. But in a twist so bureaucratically fatal it could only be American, the simultaneous opening of 346 silo doors in the Midwest immediately trips local substations, blacking out half of the U.S. Strategic Command’s launch grid.
“We had the warheads,” one officer admits in a post-failure inquiry. “We just couldn’t get the lights on.”
Most missiles stay parked, their arcs calculated but untraced, as technicians scramble to find manual override manuals last printed in 1979.
The Fleet That Couldn’t FloatMeanwhile, the U.S. Navy’s entire nuclear ballistic submarine force is found clustered in harbor, their hatches sealed not by diplomacy but by a Safety Bulletin issued two weeks earlier, requiring inspection of an obscure hatch gasket component known as the T-14 'quieting baffle coupler'.
“It’s not that we weren’t ready,” one admiral explains in an after-action briefing. “It’s that we were too compliant.”
By the time the fix window ends, the crisis is over, and a dozen captains have retired quietly with full pensions and a new appreciation for deferred action.
France Fires First — and OnlyLeave it to the French to take the one decisive action—and aim it exactly nowhere. The Force de Frappe, in what appears to be either heroic resolve or spectacular indifference, launches a full strike. Every warhead is pre-set for Bikini Atoll—a Cold War test site still listed as the default “training target” in launch systems never fully modernized.
The result is an extraordinarily expensive coral reef heating event.
When asked why the targets hadn’t been updated, the French Minister of Defense was overheard muttering:
“Zut, alors,”
while staring at a phone last used to play Tetris.
The Almost That Wasn'tIn the one potentially consequential act of the war, Israel prepares a nuclear strike on Iranian enrichment sites. All systems are primed. Bombers warm. Targets confirmed.
But ten minutes before takeoff, an Israeli cabinet minister—reputedly while eating yogurt—raises the obvious point:
“If we do this… won’t that mean we’ve confirmed we have nukes?”
The room falls silent. Operations are stood down. The official press release announces “an extended military exercise in the Negev,” and the world moves on—politely, and a little sheepishly.
Aftermath: The War That Missed EveryoneWhen the conflict finally “ends,” it has:
Zero fatalities
No physical damage
$17 billion in projected hardware wear and logistics costs
And a dozen books with titles like Crisis Management in the Age of Smart Grid Interference.
The most lasting consequence is a NATO directive requiring all future war targets to be cross-checked with environmental preservation zones and verified for socket compatibility.
Final Verdict“The Third World War of 2025” is a brilliant failure, a haunting comedy, and a mirror held up to the 21st century’s inability to manage its own machines, let alone its destiny.
The lesson?
The apocalypse won’t be postponed by diplomacy. It’ll be deferred by firmware.
Four stars. One empty silo. And a toast to the war we forgot to fight.