This article was originally published by Michael Snyder at The End of the American Dream. 

Most people don’t realize this, but all of our lives are about to change.  We are moving into a time of global war, and the death and destruction that we will witness will be off the charts.  World War I was supposed to be “the war to end all wars”, and it resulted in approximately 20 million deaths.

It was a truly nightmarish conflict, and those living at the time thought that we would never see anything like it again.  But then World War II erupted, and it resulted in approximately 75 million deaths.  Sadly, global leaders seem to have forgotten the lessons of World War II, because now the stage is being set for the biggest war in human history so far.  During World War III, billions of people could die.  Unfortunately, it appears that there will be no turning back now.

It is my personal opinion that the war in the Middle East will be the first conflict to rise to an apocalyptic level.

On Wednesday, Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant warned the media that he feels that there is “an obligation to change the situation in the north”…

Israeli officials on Wednesday escalated threats against Lebanon’s Hezbollah amidst escalating cross-border exchanges of fire between the two sides.

“We are completing the land and air preparedness, strengthening the intelligence systems, and preparing for any possibility,” Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant told the press before meeting with military chief Herzi Halevi and senior commanders in the Northern Command headquarters in the city of Safed.

“We have an obligation to change the situation in the north,” he stressed.

In other words, Gallant fully intends to push Hezbollah back so that approximately 100,000 Israeli citizens can safely return to their homes in northern Israel.

Another Israeli official has issued an even more ominous warning…

Meanwhile, the Israeli Ynet news site reported that an anonymous “senior Israeli government official” told the news outlet that “if Hezbollah continues to attack Israel, southern Lebanon will look like Gaza. Beirut will not be immune.”

Those are very strong words.

This week the Biden administration has been trying desperately to find a diplomatic solution that will satisfy both sides, but that endeavor was never going to succeed.

Meanwhile, Israeli officials have been making preparations for a ground invasion of southern Lebanon, and it is being reported that “operational plans for an offensive in Lebanon” have been officially approved…

The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) on Tuesday announced that plans to launch an offensive in Lebanon against Hezbollah have been formally approved.

The IDF statement further said it is preparing to “accelerate readiness in the field” at a moment the situation is deteriorating, given the Lebanese paramilitary group backed by Iran has in the last days sent hundreds of drones and missiles into northern Israel. The statement spelled out that “operational plans for an offensive in Lebanon were approved.”

I was stunned when I read that.

I knew that this was coming, but I didn’t think it was coming quite so quickly.

When the IDF enters southern Lebanon, it will mean an all-out war.

On Wednesday, the leader of Hezbollah warned vaguely of “new weapons and intelligence capabilities” that his organization now possesses…

Lebanon’s Hezbollah has new weapons and intelligence capabilities that could help it target more critical positions deeper inside Israel in case of an all-out war, the militant group’s leader warned on Wednesday.

Hassan Nasrallah’s comments came as the monthslong cross-border conflict simmering between Hezbollah and Israel appears to be reaching a boiling point and a day after a top U.S. envoy met Lebanese officials in his latest attempt to ease tensions.

And this week Hezbollah also released some very alarming footage…

The Hezbollah terror group published footage on Tuesday from what it said was one of its reconnaissance drones flying over northern Israel, including the Haifa port, as Israel said it struck down more suspected drones over the Western Galilee.

It was unclear when the roughly 10 minutes of footage released by Hezbollah were captured, and the Israel Defense Forces did not immediately comment on the video.

Iran has provided Hezbollah with a vast arsenal of very sophisticated missiles, and once an all-out war erupts tens of thousands of those missiles will rain down on Israeli cities.

There will not be a single city in all of Israel that will be out of range.

How do you think Israel might choose to respond in such a scenario?

You might want to start thinking about that.

Elsewhere, it looks like any chance for peace in Ukraine is gone.

Apparently the Russians are now saying that the next proposal that they will offer to Ukraine will be an offer to surrender…

The Kremlin now says that the next formal proposal on the horizon will be a document of the Ukrainian government’s surrender. This was stated by Russia’s chief delegate to the Vienna talks on military security and arms control, Konstantin Gavrilov, in a Rossiya-24 television interview.

“There are points of no return. The next thing that Russia will have to offer will be the document about [the Kiev government’s] surrender,” he said. He called last week’s proposals by Putin “realistic” and said they could end the war if they were embraced.

The Russians are steadily gaining ground, and so they feel like they have all the leverage that they need.

But Western leaders are absolutely obsessed with winning this conflict, and they insist that they will keep ramping up their efforts for as long as it takes.

In the end, it appears that both sides are willing to keep escalating matters until someone pushes things a little bit too far.

Let us hope that day does not arrive any time soon.

Unfortunately, when we do find ourselves in a direct war with Russia we could also find ourselves in a direct war with North Korea at the same time because those two nations just signed a mutual defense pact…

Russian President Vladimir Putin and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un signed a new pact Wednesday that includes a pledge of mutual defense if either is attacked.

The agreement was sealed at a summit in Pyongyang during a rare visit by Putin to the reclusive nuclear-armed state as both countries face growing confrontations with the West.

This is really big news.

I don’t know why it isn’t getting more coverage by the Western media.

The Russians have been making all sorts of unusual moves lately.  For example, it is being reported that Vladimir Putin just picked his niece to be Deputy Minister of Defense of the Russian Federation…

Putin’s niece Anna Tsivileva has been appointed as Deputy Minister of Defense of the Russian Federation, as stated in the official decree published on Russia’s legal acts portal. Pavel Fradkov, the youngest son of Mikhail Fradkov, Director of the Russian Institute for Strategic Studies and former Prime Minister and chief of foreign intelligence, has also been appointed as Deputy Minister of Defense.

Anna Tsivileva is married to Sergey Tsivilyev, Russia’s Minister of Energy, who assumed office in May after leading the Kemerovo Region. Tsivileva, formerly Anna Putina, has been previously reported by Agentstvo to be President Putin’s second cousin.

Even for Putin, I thought that this was a rather bizarre thing to do.

But I guess they do things differently over there.

Before I close this article, I also wanted to discuss a couple of new developments regarding China.

A new weapons package for Taiwan that is worth approximately 360 million dollars has been approved, and this isn’t going to make the Chinese happy at all…

The US State Department has approved a new weapons sale to Taiwan involving hundreds of armed drones and missiles worth $360 million, the Pentagon’s Defense Security Cooperation Agency (DSCA) has said.

Under the deal that was concluded on Tuesday, Taiwan will receive Altius-600M systems, which are unmanned aerial vehicles equipped with warheads, and related equipment at an estimated cost of $300 million, the agency said.

Of course, the Chinese have been preparing for war as well, and those preparations have included expanding the size of their nuclear arsenal faster than anyone else…

China is expanding its nuclear arsenal faster than any other major superpower, and is in command of 500, a top European think tank has warned.

The Stockholm International Peace Research Institute wrote in a report published on Monday that Xi Xinping has increased his nation’s nuclear stockpile from 410 to 500 in a single year.

The increase in nuclear weapons meant ‘China is expanding its nuclear arsenal faster than any other country’ in absolute terms, WMD expert Hans M Kristensen told Insider.

Most people don’t like to think about nuclear war, because it will mean the end of our society as we know it today.

Someday when the U.S. finds itself in such a conflict, it will be relying on an ICBM fleet that first went into service many decades ago and that is constantly needing to be repaired.  The following is a brief excerpt from an excellent Time Magazine article…

If a piece of equipment breaks inside Captain Kaz “Dexter” Moffett’s underground command center at the Alpha-01 Missile Alert Facility, it’s marked with a paper tag that reads either “warning” or “danger.” A few of those are hanging in this cramped capsule buried about 70 ft. below the high plains of eastern Wyoming. One is stuck to the shut-off valves that control water flow in the event of an emergency. There’s another one on a ventilation hatch. The entire command capsule itself is jury-rigged on top of steel stilts because the shock-absorber system, which was first installed in 1963 to survive a thermonuclear blast, is now inoperative. So there’s a tag for Air Force maintenance teams to fix that too.

Then there are malfunctions that aren’t marked. Moffett’s computer monitor—the one that enables him to keep watch on a fleet of 10 nuclear-tipped intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs)—has a flashing glitch on the bottom of the screen. His classified phone line has such a weak connection that he can barely hear fellow Air Force officers who are commanding more than 100 other nuclear missiles spread across 9,600 sq. mi. “You can hear them pretty clearly if you stand on an angle, on one leg, and jump up and down,” Moffett says, smiling. “It’s all part of the job. We spend a lot of time saying to ourselves, ‘Hey, how are we going to make this work today?’”

Most Americans don’t realize that our strategic nuclear forces are in horrendous shape.

In many cases, those running the system are forced to use rotary phones and 8 inch floppy disks.

Meanwhile, the Russians have introduced a new line of ultra-advanced intercontinental ballistic missiles, and the S-500 is the best anti-missile system on the entire planet by a very wide margin.

I have written about all of this a lot, but I don’t think that it is sinking in for most people.

Over the past decade or so, the balance of power has shifted dramatically.

I would highly recommend that our leaders pursue peace while they still can, because we are simply not prepared for the type of war that is now staring us in the face.

Michael’s new book entitled “Chaos” is available in paperback and for the Kindle on Amazon.com, and you can subscribe to his Substack newsletter at michaeltsnyder.substack.com.

About the Author: Michael Snyder’s new book entitled “Chaos” is available in paperback and for the Kindle on Amazon.com. He has also written seven other books that are available on Amazon.com including “End Times”, “7 Year Apocalypse”, “Lost Prophecies Of The Future Of America”, “The Beginning Of The End”, and “Living A Life That Really Matters”.  When you purchase any of Michael’s books you help to support the work that he is doing.  You can also get his articles by email as soon as he publishes them by subscribing to his Substack newsletter.  Michael has published thousands of articles on The Economic Collapse Blog, End Of The American Dream, and The Most Important News, and he always freely and happily allows others to republish those articles on their own websites.  These are such troubled times, and people need hope.  John 3:16 tells us about the hope that God has given us through Jesus Christ: “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.”  If you have not already done so, we strongly urge you to invite Jesus Christ to be your Lord and Savior today.