World War III Themes In Contemporary Pop Culture Part III

Over the last decade, Hollywood has shown an increasing reluctance to make any films that might portray the People’s Republic of China in a bad light. The reasons for this are simple. The international market is of great importance for the major studios. China makes up a large chunk of that market, so appeasing the …

Lariat Advance D-3 (6 July, 1987)

It was just past 0200 hours in the Federal Republic of Germany on 6 July, 1987 when President Reagan began his address to an increasingly anxious nation and world. Despite the early hour, Reagan’s speech was being watched closely by thousands of troops, officers and dependents in US Army kasernes and other US military bases …

World War III Themes In Contemporary Pop Culture Part II

In the later half of the 00s, at a time when WWIII-themes in fiction, television and cinema were scarce, a handful of notable books and television shows were released. Together, they managed to keep the WWIII genre afloat through some difficult times. The 2006 TV series Jericho was one of those life rafts. The show …

World War III Themes In Contemporary Pop Culture Part I

The portrayal of World War III in contemporary works of fiction and movies is notably different from those works produced in the last decade of the Cold War. The fall of the Soviet Union 1991 ushered in a quiet period on the WWIII front that lasted through the next fifteen years with a handful of …

Gaming World War III: The Future For NATO-WP Games Is Bright Part III

In 1984 Game Designers Workshop released The Third World War: Battle for Germany. This was the first installment in what would become the Third World War series of wargames. Over the next two years, another three titles would be released with each one focusing on a likely theater of operations in a future NATO-Warsaw Pact …

Gaming World War III: The Future For NATO-WP Games Is Bright Part II

Specific wargame genres all reach a point in time where they run home to mama, so to speak. The classic titles of yesteryear are embraced by old heads like me who played those games as kids when they were relatively new titles. Nostalgia, coupled with a creativity shortage in the minds of some game designers, …

Gaming World War III: The Future For NATO-WP Games Is Bright Part I

A couple of weeks back I made an observation on Twitter that 30 years from now wargame companies will likely still be churning out new games based on a NATO-Warsaw Pact conflict in Europe set in the 1980s. At present, we are a shade past 30 years since the fall of the Berlin Wall. New …

A Peek Ahead Into Late June

It’s hard to believe we’re one week into June already but the calendar does not lie. Summer has arrived here in the Northeastern US and we’re struggling to break out of an early season heat wave. Heat indexes have soared beyond 100 degrees for the last few days in New Jersey and Pennsylvania and air …

The Western Pacific D+16 (25 July, 1987)

Western Pacific D+16 0020- Four F-117A stealth fighters arrive at Misawa Airbase in northern Japan. The aircraft are placed in two heavily guarded hangars as the pilots go into their post-flight debriefings. 0400- Like clockwork, the pre-dawn convoy of trucks containing ammunition, fuel and other war material arrives at the Soviet-North Korean frontier. The Russian …

Novel Update 3 June, 2023

Evening, folks. As usual I over-estimated the amount of free time I expected to have today. As a result, I decided to go with updating the status of the novel. Tomorrow or more likely on Saturday, I will put up the final D+16 post and then we’ll move ahead. There’s been considerable activity on the …