We call it Day 1 when the US ambassador to Saudi Arabia was assassinated by a bomb inside the embassy at Jeddah. This act of terror came as part of a wave of violence in the Middle East following the collapse of three major US banks brought down by Argentina, Brazil and Chile defaulting on their loans five days before.

While the White House urged the Saudi government to find and punish those involved, it also responded to a $3 billion dollar bank run closing all US banks and halting all US financial transactions plunging global markets into chaos. Gulf oil-producing countries were particularly badly hit.

Oman lost $700 million and fell to a Soviet-backed coup sparking fears of a similar uprising in Saudi Arabia. The White House issued a statement warning that “the Persian Gulf and its oil reserves were vital to the Western world and to its allies in Europe and the Pacific.”

Day 2: At the request of King Fahd after an attempted coup in Mecca, the largest US military expedition since World War 2 began landing in Saudi Arabia. The US expected that the Soviet Union would respect its resolve of many years that it would ensure “the unmolested flow of oil refineries and tankers” through the Persian Gulf.

Day 4: Oman closed the Strait of Hormuz imposing a toll on inbound shipping. The White House called it “the darkest day” in US-Soviet relations.

Day 5: An unarmed US reconnaissance AWACS aircraft was shot down over Saudi Arabia by two jets thought to be from Iran or Kuwait.

Day 6: Western oil reserves began declining. The US Navy ordered a Carrier Battle Group centred on the USS Nimitz into the Persian Gulf. In an address to the nation, the President of the United Sates announced that this battle group would take whatever measures it deemed necessary to re-open the Strait of Hormuz.

Day 8: The US ordered the closure of all continental nuclear power plants. Soviet forces began massing on the Iranian border. Egypt and Sudan offered to mediate talks between Saudi Arabia, Oman and the US.

Day 9: The Nimitz Battle Group sailed 10 miles into the Persian Gulf which Oman claimed as its territorial waters. An Omani gunboat set ablaze a Dutch supertanker that had attempted to break the blockade. Another attacked a US warship. Rumour spread from the Nimitz Battle Group that it had lost contact with a Soviet hunter-killer submarine during the gunboat actions.

In two ferocious explosions, a US nuclear depth charge sank the Soviet submarine, and a Soviet nuclear torpedo blew up the Nimitz.

TV news reported that the President had boarded his Airborne Command Post. The Emergency Broadcast System took over the US airwaves.

World War 3 had begun. It took nine days to start and it likely didn’t last that long after.

The preceding account came from the telemovie Countdown to Looking Glass first screened in October 1984, one of the most plausible Armageddon scenarios I have ever studied and it uncannily represents today.

Indeed, does anything in it stand out at present?

Replace South American debt defaults and a global market crisis with rising inflation and an AI tech bubble that’s about to burst.

Replace the Soviet Union with the Islamic Republic of Iran.

Add the belligerent Muslim Brotherhood of Egypt, Turkey, Pakistan and Qatar to Oman.

Replace the Cold War of 1984 with the rise of China and the spread of communist ideology through the West since 2014.

Replace Soviet-backed coups with a global jihad infiltrating the West.

Replace the spectre of nuclear war in the 1980s with the pictures we’ve seen this week propagandising nuclear bombs exploding over Tel Aviv both from Iran’s IRGC and Israel’s Benjamin Netanyahu.

Replace the Omani closure of Hormuz with the Iranian one.

The closure of US nuclear power plants, the massing of troops along the Iranian border, the fiasco of Muslim-to-Muslim peace talks, the warlike insurgency of Russia, the presence of the US Navy in the Gulf of Oman and we’re basically at the same place in history now.

Is this the end my friend?

It certainly seems that way. Never in my lifetime have I witnessed a world so corrupt, infested by narcissism and by violent hate. By this I mean:

The continued tensions in Gaza as the new Board of Peace struggles to achieve the disarmament and total surrender of Hamas.

Tensions in the West Bank as Hamas tries to open a second public relations front goading Israel into a fresh war.

Regime change in Iran put off time and again by the US while the Islamic Republic’s overthrow should have already been achieved.

Ukraine giving Russia a beating while efforts by the US seek to secure a negotiated peace to save Russia’s face and fortune.

The United Kingdom, France and Western Europe being overrun by illegal military-age jihadists, with Canada and Australia opening their doors wider, giving no explanation why Arab and Muslim states haven’t taken in these Islamists first.

The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia with Turkey (a NATO country) and the Islamic Republic of Pakistan forming a military alliance.

If you think that nothing here makes sense, ask yourself who today in this group holds nuclear weapons? We get Israel, Russia, UK, France, Pakistan and the United States. Sitting on the sidelines are India, China and North Korea each with animosities and allegiances to all.

We can’t deny that the most complex, multifaceted era of global diplomacy is underway to prevent them from destroying civilisation, but we’re dealing with megalomania here and a belief that legacies can be carved with uranium.

We’re witnessing a madness that will make the succession wars of Alexander the Great, the sack of Rome by the Visigoths and the pillaging by Genghis Khan of Central Europe and Iran look like playtime. Let me put it into perspective for you.

One multi-warhead intercontinental ballistic nuclear missile can kill more people than murdered in the entire Holocaust of World War 2. There are over 12,000 nuclear warheads in the world now.

More signs that have crossed the horizon

Last week, UK defence secretary Wes Streeting launched a national “Be Ready” campaign using the BBC to tell Britons to stock up on tinned food, water, cash and batteries for three days given the “dangerous and turbulent world” they’re now in.

He mirrored France, that likewise released a similar program that week; while next week Japan will launch its Disaster Prevention Agency with the same three-day hoarding advice.

On 30 September 2026, US defense secretary Pete Hesgeth ordered all US military bases to ensure a 90-day self-reliance living off the civilian grid as part of a larger long-term Operation Fortress. It made the headlines last week too.

At least 19 countries have similar hunker down instructions in the event of a disaster. While Australia doesn’t yet, its Red Cross recommends the contents of an Aussie survival pack too.

Australia remains the most curious case of all. Out of the blue on 27 July 2026 Aussies prepared for a test of a new AusAlert emergency message system across the country’s mobile phone services. Phones screeched everywhere that day. Four years prior, coming out of a Royal Commission into National Disaster Arrangements, Australia’s National Emergency Management Agency was born. AusAlert was its venture.

The Australian government sold it as a warning system for bushfires and the like. This was weird given the size of Australia and that other state alert mechanisms for both disasters and terrorism existed.

While long-planned, AusAlert comes into full operation today.

Isn’t there anyone honest who can tell us what’s going on?

Yes, there is someone honest, though she likely doesn’t realise why. This is Australian foreign minister Penny Wong who faced a grilling in a Foreign Affairs and Trade Senate Estimates hearing on 28 October 2026 over Gaza.

It wasn’t just her words but her body language that gave the truth away.

Wong runs the Australian Labor government’s push for a Free Palestine. A Far Left politician, she led Australia’s recognition of a Palestinian State in the UN on 21 September 2025 taking the lead from Canada and the UK.

Part of that recognition was the guaranteed holding of Palestinian elections this year. This was a done deal, and again little did Wong understand that with it she had gambled Australia’s social cohesion.

But all knew what would happen next.

President of the Palestinian Authority, Mahmoud Abbas, now in his 21st year of an eight-year term, called off those elections three weeks ago, postponing them until September 2027, claiming operational challenges.

Asked whether this fraud, that has since sent millions of Australian dollars to Abbas, meant that Australia should now withdraw its recognition of Palestine, Wong gave a nonsensical word salad in reply. She said:

“No we have recognised the state of Palestine and that is a contribution to peace in the Middle East because there is no peace without two states. What I have done is where we are able, and we are not the central player, we are not the key player here, but where we are able to make a contribution to that reform, we are doing so, and I’ve made it clear the number of the steps on recognition, in relation to recognition, we are linked to the delivery of or the observance of the delivery of those commitments.”

Asked whether she understood, then, that she was being taken advantage of by a Palestine that knew Australia would never revoke its recognition, she shook her head slowly, gave a laugh of exasperation, closed her eyes and said:

“The Palestinian people want a state let’s be clear.” She shook her head again as if to say that the details don’t matter. “And you know we want to see those commitments delivered, and we want to see them delivered because we want to see the progress towards two states, which is also why we have taken the view we have about the actions of the Netanyahu government in the West Bank.”

Finally, we had a politician who told the truth. What was that truth? Let me translate:

I went to university and got involved in student union politics, but it was only on joining the trade union Labor movement, that I got to believe in the Palestinian cause. I now run it here. Free Palestine! They want a state, who cares if they can’t vote for it. What is the Two State Solution I keep mentioning? I don’t know. It’s likely the end of Israel to be honest, it’s their fault.

That’s because Wong has never clearly defined what her Two State Solution is, though her government reversed Australia’s recognition of West Jerusalem as the capital of Israel in 2022.

Therefore, should she ever take her lead from the UK, Europe, Canada or a Democrat-run US Congress, I guarantee that as soon as she declares that Jerusalem must be the exclusive capital of Palestine, the jihadist violence that she will unleash will send AusAlert screaming.

The countdown to World War 3 will have begun.

That is the end.

POSTSCRIPT

If curious, Australia does have an official procedure for surviving a nuclear war. Written by ARPANSA (don’t ask), if you don’t want to read its 74 pages here’s the gist.

In the event of a nuclear attack in Australia near you take off your clothes and wash them, but do this running into a basement while bringing sealed food to eat, then take a shower too. Listen to the radio. Wait 24 hours, then get on with life. Yes, it’s called the “24 Hour Rule”. Though the folks of Chernobyl will certainly disagree.

© 2026 Adam Parker.