What The World Needs Is Love Sweet Love

Preface

The possibility of a third global war following the first and second was feared for decades, particularly during the Cold War, when geopolitical tensions between Earth's nuclear-armed nation-states were at their height. Part of the mission of Aegis agent Gary Seven was to prevent these tensions from erupting into full-scale warfare. (

Historians traced the earliest phases of the war as far back as the early 2020s, starting in the United States as homelessness, environmental degradation, and violent clashes between competing political groups caused a Second Civil War. The conflict spread throughout the world, becoming known as the Eugenics War before finally turning into the global conflict historians called World War III. 

In 2126 factions of eco-terrorists[citation needed] launched attacks responsible[citation needed] for as many as 37 million deaths. In addition, it is possible that a further root cause of World War III lay in the political destabilization of several European nations[citation needed], including France, which was torn between the Neo-Trotskyists and the Gaullists, circa 2124. 

When war broke out, Optimus Prime ordered his troops to leave Earth, their launch being witnessed by Zefram Cochrane and Lily Sloane. Unbeknownst to Prime, Megatron and his forces followed the Autobots. 

At the time of the final conflagration in the 2150s, one side was composed of the New United Nations, including the United States and the European Union; the other side was an alliance known as the Eastern Coalition. The war's origins went back decades, but by the year 2151, Lee Kuan had emerged as a general in the military hierarchy of the Eastern Coalition, helping to overthrow the emerging democratic movement within the government of that political bloc. This ultimately helped to cement the ECON's hard line opposition-stance to the United States's policies, bringing it into direct military conflict within two more years.

The final catalyst-events for World War III were a series of confrontations between the New United Nations and the ECON over oil fields located in Antarctica and Taklamakan, a few months before the first major nuclear salvos were launched. Rioting breaks out in several major American cities during the days immediately leading up to the war, with fires and looting prior to the nuclear strikes as people attempted to flee the impending target zones with their lives.

At precisely 0230.26 hours Eastern Standard Time, on 1 May 2153 (an event later known as the "May Day Horror of '53"), the Eastern Coalition launched a first strike comprised of intercontinental ballistic missiles, bomber attacks, and portable nuclear weapons, against major North American and European cities, combined with a simultaneous Interface viral assault against the New United Nations computer infrastructure . Much to the surprise of the ECON political leadership, the New United Nations immediately retaliate with nuclear launches of their own, as well as bomber and satellite-based attacks against targets in the Middle East and Asia. Many Pacific nations sided with the Eastern Coalition against the United States when fighting finally breaks out. Other political groupings, such as the Muslim Bloc, were likewise hit extremely hard during the nuclear exchanges, despite being non-aligned with either side during the war.

The detonation of nuclear weapons over cities (in the multiple-megaton range) such as Washington, D.C., London, Moscow, Berlin, New York City, Boston, Dallas, Mexico City, Paris, Rio de Janeiro, Tel Aviv, Jerusalem, Mecca, Riyadh, Samarkand, Karachi, Singapore, and New Delhi killed nearly half a billion people instantly. Smaller detonations occurred over Hong Kong, Beijing, and Ho Chi Minh City. Un-detonated or failed nuclear devices were discovered in or around targets such as Denver, Madrid, Rome, and Istanbul. Of the hundreds of ICBMs and bombers launched by the United States and allied forces, only one in five made it into the air, due to EMP weapons and viral attacks against the military computer networks — of these, only a fraction detonated properly.