German media outlets Süddeutsche Zeitung, WDR, and NDR also cite the report, noting that Russian President Vladimir Putin appears intent on testing NATO’s Article 5 guarantees. The alliance’s mutual defence clause obliges member states to come to one another’s aid if attacked. The assessment suggests Putin may seek to challenge how seriously that commitment would be honoured.
A war between the US and Europe would drag in the rest of the world, nowadays that would end in planetary annihilation
If we keep it conventional, we could bring about a new dark age. It would have to go nuclear before we start wondering if the deep sea tube worms will survive. We can definitely end humanity unilaterally, we might need Russia’s help to boil the oceans.
Nuclear war would actually cool the oceans. All nuclear bombs combined contain about the same energy as Hurricane Katrina or a small supervolcano eruption. There would be a small fraction of a degree of temporary increase in global atmospheric temperatures, quickly overwhelmed by the nuclear winter as ash and dust in the upper atmosphere reduce global temperatures by several degrees for several years.
The only way I see humanity boiling the oceans is by deliberately releasing global-industrial quantities of super-effective greenhouse gases, actively designed to make the Earth as well-insulated as possible.