Featured Image Credit: Kirill Rudenko / Getty
With various world leaders supposedly stockpiling weapons in their ever-growing nuclear arsenals, you can't blame us for being more than a little concerned about the dangers of World War 3. While there have been plenty of conflicts since World War II ended in 1945, we've somehow managed to avoid a full-blown conflict on that scale.
Doomsayers think it's only a matter of time until we're pulled back into a global dogfight, and with technology having advanced so quickly in just a few years, it's set to be a very different kind of war.
Optimists think we won't get that far, but as things continue to bubble over between Russia and Ukraine, and the Doomsday Clock is pushed closer to midnight than ever before, even President Donald Trump has admitted we could be on the cusp of World War III.
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After using AI to predict the most dangerous countries to be in if WWIII breaks out and what could trigger the next global conflict, we've now asked what the death toll could be.
The current world population sits at around 8.2 billion, but according to ChatGPT, those numbers could tumble if WWIII is just around the corner.
The artificial intelligence chatbot takes several things into account, including whether it'll be a 'traditional' war without nukes or a modern one that makes the most of today's technology.
Considering World War II's death toll sat between 70 and 85 million, a no-nuke World War III could lead to between 50 to 100 million deaths.
Then again, considering the majority of WWII deaths were civilian casualties, that best-case scenario isn't exactly a rosy one.
Assuming that nukes are used on a regional scale like the USA vs China in the Pacific, the WWIII death toll could be anywhere between 100 million and a billion depending on how many nukes are used.
That's quite a big difference, but the idea of losing an eighth of the world's population is a terrifying one.
Things only get worse from here, and if we go for the worst-case scenario of a full-scale nuclear war where the USA, Russia, China, NATO, and the other states with nuclear arms launch their 13,000+ warheads, we could be looking at anywhere between four and six billion deaths.
The horrors don't end there, with up to three billion expected to die from the blasts, radiation, and firestorms.
That leaves another three billion to perish in the subsequent nuclear winter where global temperatures drop and we have to deal with the likes of mass starvation.
ChatGPT goes on to add: "If AI-controlled warfare, bioweapons, or cyber-attacks lead to food and power shortages, pandemics, or economic collapse, death tolls could range from millions to billions without traditional warfare."
It concludes by saying that a nuke-filled WWIII could (unsurprisingly) be the deadliest event in history and possibly lead to the collapse of humanity. If you're looking for some form of silver lining, it even says that small-scale wars will likely lead to economic collapse and climate disasters that would also boast humungous death tolls.
As Donald Trump, Vladimir Putin, and Volodymyr Zelensky continue struggling to navigate a potential ceasefire, let's hope this is one of those incidents where AI gets it wrong.
