Are we heading for World War Three?

On the other hand, Ukraine feels different to me for some reason and seems tied to broader territorial ambitions, which wasn't exactly the case before because the territory was put in place in WWII. There was Afghanistan etc but that didn't have the domino implications of NATO.

The Soviet state also seemed more stable to me than the current megalomaniac plutocracy.

China also didn't have the same presence it does now. There's more big players in some ways.

On the other hand, for awhile there in the past there were nuclear drills in classrooms, and it was for a reason.

I don't really see WWIII happening soon but if things continue to escalate everywhere it seems reasonable to wonder about it. People wondered then too.

What about the Perimeter/Dead Hand system from the Soviet Union/Russia? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dead_Hand

The risks are primarily of 3 scenarios spiraling out of control:

A. India attacks Pakistan. Like Likud, India's government is full of crazy BJP war hawks.

B. Putin's power were threatened. His view is that Ukrainian aid is waning and the Hamas attack takes attention away, so he feels pretty safe for now.

C. China attacks Taiwan. Xi is an arrogant autocrat, expanding neocolonial with Belt and Road Initiative, and believe they own the South China Sea. I don't see how this could end without either China obliterating Taiwan manufacturing base or a wider exchange.

Furthermore, it's far more relatively "tolerable" by the international order to diffusely level areas by continual conventional munitions accomplishing similar end results of nuclear detonations: widespread destruction. So why broach an unthinkable red line when there's an equivalent substitute?

I have belief in MAD and self-preservation are the ultimate deterrents when leaders aren't suicidal.

I also believe MAD serves a purpose to prevent future conventional World Wars. Denuclearization, while aspirationally wonderful, would counterintuitively make the world less safe because the average person doesn't understand what actually keeps them safe: a strong military.

The US could get by on 1/3 the amount of defense spending. It's spending way, way too much on boondoggles, pork projects, and the MIC's revolving door of generals and defense contractors.

I don't have high confidence that what the situation feels like based on the media that is readily available to me accurately reflects reality. Especially when it comes to international relations. There's always news about how the sky is falling.

I honestly haven't followed the various conflicts around the world closely enough over the years to trust any gut evaluation I could make of the current situation vs, say, the conflicts in Syria, Afganistan, Iraq, and Yugoslavia, just to make a few, from the last few decades.

These conflicts are terrible, but what that actually means to the international community on the order of years is non-trivial and far from self evident AFAICT