Well that's that, I guess

Oldest child asked last night about World War III, prompted by a friend whose parents are moving them to Canada next school year at least in part to avoid it. Where would I move to be safe?*

The premise was rejected by me, and child in question was reminded of my credentials on matters of international politics. For those taking odds at home:

1. Serious shooting war with tactical nuke usage in India-Pakistan. Not impossible (odds of, say, 30%), but nuke usage yet lower, and no countries gain any advantage in getting involved in that war.

2. China-Taiwan. But China has been offered the rare chance to win over its Asian economic powerhouse neighbors, and the gain of the territory probably isn't worth the reputational damage. "Win a non-shooting war in 15 years" seems most likely.

3. Russia has no military capacity to do more than it is already doing, which is to say pointedly not win a ground war against a significantly weaker state it already controlled significant parts of.

4. Though the liberal international trade order is threatened, every other country has still learned the correct lesson from the Great Depression. Not saying economic ties cannot be overcome in the name of war, but it does rule out some instances where there would be a baseline desire to fight.

...so there are plenty of reasons to be pessimistic, but no reasons yet to catastrophize. This was not deemed an acceptable answer.

Pointed out that political and social stability is the exception, not the rule, and the worst-case short-term scenario is being like a lot of countries that have dealt with unrest and survived just fine. This was also not an acceptable answer.

Pointed out that in large-scale conflicts it's still the case that most people live their lives like normal and are, within tolerable limits, just fine. This was also not acceptable.

So then we got down to it: this is the place that I live, I love it. I acknowledge that it does many things wrong, and has, but I would rather work to make it better than abandon it. I recognize and can give examples of the heroism of people who stick around when things are bad, and that's who I want to be. And for better or worse, who I will be. So we're not going anywhere, even if things get very bad.

So: I guess we're not moving.

* The answer the child is not quite ready for is that if the situation is sufficiently bad, the place you go to is "anywhere you can go", and it's foolish to think you know where will be safe before anything has even happened.