Are We Closer To Nuclear War Than Ever Before?

August 16, 2026

It appears that most of the population has become way too apathetic about the threat of nuclear war. There are people on social media that cheer as both sides continue to escalate the conflict in Ukraine, and there are people on social media that are openly advocating for nuclear weapons to be used in the Middle East. I don’t think that such people actually understand the immense destructive power of modern nuclear weapons. Even a limited nuclear exchange would kill millions, and an all-out nuclear war would cause a nuclear winter that could kill billions. Unfortunately, it appears that we are now closer to nuclear war than ever before.

In recent months, Russia and Ukraine have been absolutely pummeling each other with long-range strikes.
The escalations that we have been witnessing have been absolutely shocking, but the mainstream media in the western world hasn’t been giving these escalations the attention that they deserve.
On Saturday, hundreds of long-range Ukrainian drones hit targets in the Moscow region…
Hundreds of drones have targeted the Moscow region in a sustained overnight assault that wounded killed at least six people, according to the Russian capital’s mayor, as Ukraine steps up long-range attacks deep inside Russia.
Mayor Sergei Sobyanin said 600 drones had been flying toward the Moscow region between Saturday evening and 6:30 a.m. local time (0330 UTC) on Sunday, adding that 201 were destroyed over the region.
If someone was hitting Washington D.C. or New York City with long-range drones every night, what would we do to them?

Just think about that for a moment.
We should be very thankful that the Russians have been showing a great deal of restraint so far.
But they are clearly running out of patience.
In a desperate attempt to provoke the Russians into doing something really stupid so that NATO will be forced to enter the war, the Ukrainians have been striking “four key categories of targets”…
Many of its strikes have focused on four key categories of targets, according to an Associated Press analysis of hundreds of Ukrainian attacks this year — compiled from statements by Russian officials and state media and the Ukrainian military.

As the Iran war pushed up energy prices, leading the U.S. to ease sanctions on Russian oil, Kyiv ramped up strikes on oil infrastructure to deny the Kremlin revenue from fuel exports and force shortages on ordinary Russians. It is also striking defense manufacturing to damage Russia’s long-term ability to produce weapons, targeting air defenses to clear a path for its own arms, and hitting retail warehouses to bring the effects to ordinary Russians.
Hitting retail warehouses is a recent development.
Just within the past few months, Ukraine has striking one Wildberries warehouse after another.

Last night, it was a warehouse in the Moscow area that got hit…
New footage shows the moment an apocalyptic fire engulfed a ‘Russian Amazon’ warehouse near Moscow after a Ukrainian drone attack.
The huge inferno blew up the Wildberries online marketplace complex at Koledino, just 25 miles south of the Kremlin, in the early hours of this morning.
Wildberries, the largest Russian online retailer, stores and houses military equipment for Putin, according to Ukraine.
Can you imagine how angry the American people would be if Amazon warehouses were getting destroyed by drones?

This is a really big deal, and the Russian people are furious.
At this point, well over a dozen Wildberries warehouses have been destroyed…



That graphic totally floored me when I first saw it.

In addition, the Ukrainians just used long-range missiles to hit a number of other very sensitive targets that are located hundreds of kilometers inside Russian territory. The following comes from a social media post by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy…
Today, there are new significant results from our deep strikes. In Russia’s Samara region, one of the key enterprises within Roscosmos – the Progress Center, which was involved, among other things, in electronics production – was hit. Flamingo missiles were used. A good achievement. The distance from our border is about 900 kilometers. Our long-range sanctions also reached the Savasleyka airbase, where the carriers of Russian missiles that strike our cities and villages are based – about 700 kilometers from Ukraine. We also have confirmation of the damage we were aiming to inflict at an oil facility in Ust-Luga – more than 800 kilometers from our border.
He is so thrilled about these strikes.
But pundits on Russian television are regularly talking about the need to use tactical nuclear weapons in Ukraine.
If the Russians actually did this, the joint chiefs would likely recommend using tactical nuclear weapons against Russian forces in the Donbas.
It is hard to say what President Trump would do in such a scenario.
There is also a risk that the conflict in Ukraine could spark an all-out nuclear exchange between the United States and Russia.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov is publicly accusing the United States of being deeply involved in Ukraine’s long-range strikes deep inside Russian territory…
Russia believes that US is playing a far deeper role in Ukrainian attacks on Russian territory than Washington has publicly acknowledged, including by providing intelligence to Kyiv, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said on Friday.
Lavrov said Moscow had formally raised the issue with US officials and was awaiting an explanation over Washington’s alleged involvement in strikes carried out deep inside Russia.
“We have submitted a series of questions to the State Department requesting comment, including on the matter of intelligence data and the fact that the US is far more deeply involved in organizing and executing strikes deep within Russian territory against civilian targets. We await a response,” Reuters quoted Lavrov as telling Russian state television.
Unfortunately, Lavrov is not wrong about this.
We are helping the Ukrainians conduct these strikes, and that has been well documented.
We desperately need the conflict in Ukraine to end, because the longer it goes on the more likely it will be that nuclear weapons will get used.
According to one report, the Chinese are highly concerned about the possibility that the Russians might lose patience and decide to use nukes against Ukraine…
China has again told Russia not to even consider using a nuclear weapon against Ukraine, according to President Volodymyr Zelenskyy.
Russian nuclear saber rattling has accelerated in 2026, with officials and major Russian outlets making the case for tactical nukes more forcefully and unambiguously than any time since Vladimir Putin ordered the 2022 full-scale invasion of Ukraine.
In response, China, a vital enabler of Moscow’s assault, has told Russia it must avoid any atomic attacks, Zelenskyy said — reiterating Beijing’s long-stated opposition to nuclear strikes.
Reading that should deeply alarm all of us.
Meanwhile, Marjorie Taylor Greene is claiming that she knows with 100 percent certainty that the potential use of nuclear weapons against Iran is being discussed in high-level strategy meetings in Washington…
Former US Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene claimed Sunday that high-level strategy meetings are underway to discuss the potential use of nuclear weapons against Iran.
“I’m not speculating, I know. And it’s pure evil,” Greene wrote on US social media platform X. She did not provide evidence to substantiate the claim.
Greene alleged that the US government was considering lowering the threshold for nuclear weapons use despite President Donald Trump’s repeated claims of victory in the war and assertions that Washington has control over the Strait of Hormuz.
That is quite a claim.
Hopefully President Trump would not ever consider doing such a thing.
But the U.S. wouldn’t even have to be involved for nuclear weapons to be used in the Middle East.
A senior IRGC official is warning that the Iranians may soon go on the “offensive” and that they have some “strategic surprises” up their sleeves…
A senior Revolutionary Guards official said Iran’s military actions, which he described as defensive so far, could become “offensive” in the future and warned adversaries to expect “strategic surprises.”
“The enemy should know that it cannot carry out surprise actions against us and should expect strategic surprises,” Yadollah Javani, the IRGC’s political deputy, told state broadcaster IRIB.
Javani said Iran’s armed forces would take whatever measures they deemed necessary to defend the country, ensure security and counter threats at what they considered the appropriate time.
If the Iranians were to launch even a single unconventional warhead at Israel, it is likely that Israel would respond with nuclear weapons.
Israel has more than enough nuclear warheads to destroy all of Iran’s largest cities, and all it would take is a single wrong move to unleash such a scenario.
And let us not forget about China.
The Chinese have been building up their strategic nuclear arsenal faster than anyone else in the world, and they have also been making preparations for a military move against Taiwan.
Last week, Taiwan began a series of military exercises that were intended to simulate what a Chinese invasion would look like…
China on Friday condemned Taiwan’s annual Han Kuang military exercises as a “wasteful charade”, accusing Taipei of stoking fears of war as the island conducts 10 days of drills simulating a potential Chinese attack.
The comments were China’s first official response since the exercises began last week. Taiwan, a democratically governed island that rejects Beijing’s sovereignty claims, launched the drills as Chinese military activity around the island continues to increase.
The moment that China attempts to take control of Taiwan, we will be at war with China.
Most Americans do not realize this.
And once we are at war with China, things could go nuclear very rapidly.
Of course using nuclear weapons should be absolutely unthinkable.
In a full-blown nuclear war between the United States and Russia, tens of millions would die within the first few hours…
34.1 million people could die, and another 57.4 million could be injured, within the first few hours of the start of a nuclear war between Russia and the United States triggered by one low-yield nuclear weapon, according to a new simulation by researcher’s at Princeton‘s Science and Global Security programme.
Tens of millions more would quickly die from radiation exposure, but the real killer would be the nuclear winter that would follow.
It has been estimated that the nuclear winter that we would experience would kill over 5 billion people…
More than 5 billion people would die of hunger following a full-scale nuclear war between the U.S. and Russia, according to a global study led by Rutgers climate scientists that estimates post-conflict crop production.
“The data tell us one thing: We must prevent a nuclear war from ever happening,” said Alan Robock, a Distinguished Professor of Climate Science in the Department of Environmental Sciences at Rutgers-New Brunswick and co-author of the study. Lili Xia, an assistant research professor in the School of Environmental and Biological Sciences, is lead author of the study published in the journal Nature Food.
This is not a game.
Engaging in brinksmanship with the Russians or the Iranians or the Chinese is a really, really bad idea.
We should seek to end the wars in the Middle East and Ukraine as soon as possible.
But that isn’t going to happen, is it?
We are playing with fire, and if we aren’t very careful our entire society is going to get burned.
Michael’s new book entitled “10 Prophetic Events That Are Coming Next” is available in paperback and for the Kindle on Amazon.com, and you can subscribe to his Substack newsletter at michaeltsnyder.substack.com.

Are We Closer To Nuclear War Than Ever Before?