Say They Threw A World War

      ...And everyone was invited.  There's nothing more inclusive than a world war, after all.  At least unless you're Swiss.

      Then what?

      The first fork is conventional or nuclear.  Nuke's worst; a "limited nuclear exchange" costs everyone an important city or two, the nations of the world freak out and stop fighting, and we all lay off milk for awhile.  Some governments may topple, but don't bet any big money on it.  Cancer cases will start to ramp up and it might even cure Global Warming -- but not in a good way.  All the actuarial tables will be out of date and if you thought the pandemic fouled up supply chains, you ain't seen nothin' yet.  Conversely, if it's an all-out slugfest, forget it.  We're dead.  (Indianapolis is the home of the Army's check-writing accountants.  I figure we're a second- or third-tier target if worse comes to worst.)

      So forget that fork.  If it's bad, it will be bad all around, think late 1929 - 34 only with more fallout.  If it's worse, nobody worries for long because the dead have no worries.

      Conventional war?  This is looking more like 1914 than 1939: one thread gets pulled and the whole garment unravels.  It will ramp up slowly; Gospodin Putin's Russia has pulled the "gradual warfare" trick before, a slow escalation that boils the frog without blitzkrieg, and it has worked so far.  This time, it might not.  Will the conflict stabilize along a new set of trenchlines or become a war of movement?  I don't know.

      Even if the war grows, pulling in European nations and NATO (and thus the U.S. and UK), I think the growth will be gradual.  We're probably not going to be saving grease and scrap metal for the war effort.*  But if it continues for long, things like cyber attacks will increase and can make a mess, adding to supply-chain problems that will probably also increase, just as slowly (or, dammit, quickly) as the war spreads.  Throw in a few larcenous hackers making use of whatever new things they can learn, and that sphere of battle can spread to places far from the contested territory.

      The pandemic may have given us some useful habits.  I keep a month's supply of paper goods on hand these days, and about six weeks worth of coffee, a month or more of canned good, weeks of meat in the freezer, and so on.  There is no coffee grown in the continental U.S. and very little tea, so if it is a necessity for you (it is for me), keeping extra on hand is a good precaution.

      Russia can no more be shamed world by opinion into doing the right thing than a tiger can be shamed into not eating meat.  Ukraine can't afford to back down unless they are willing to give up being a country (and if they go, the Baltic states had better worry).  Chess players and military historians may be able to visualize the game from there but it doesn't go in any good direction.

      There's a lot of BS circulating.  If you want to know who's really pushing for war, check to see who's doing the most active and numerous movement of troops, weapons and materiel to the contested border.  It's not the United States -- but we have been the free world's Plan B since the second decade of the Twentieth Century and I don't think that's going to change, no matter who is scuffing the White House carpets.

      Whatever happens, I am damned well unwilling to face it without coffee.  First World problems?  You bet.
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* I hate to break this to you, but it now appears that WW II scrap drives were mostly a morale effort; saved grease was a useful source of glycerin, and scrap iron and steel was helpful, but the rest?  Not so much.