The greater appearance of Russia on the world political stage combined with the Sino-American trade war, worsening relationships between European Union and the United States, the strange Russian-American “alliance”, and China’s growing and highly effective cyberwarfare force has led to the eventuality that is the current military conflict between Russia and Europe.

EU’s internal instability with Brexit still fresh in the minds of European leaders didn’t help face the unexpected and swift Russian attacks on the Eastern European front and the Eastern Alliance naval attack in Baltic Sea and Western European waters.

The military strength alone, however, was not what brought on an effective attack. The coordinated multi-tiered attacks on European and American infrastructure crippled the response that could have been mustered by EU and the US. The internet cabling and the satellite communications were the first to be targeted. Local communication was limited to radio communication through the few command centers afloat in the European skies, which wasn’t nearly enough to launch a counter-attack. Power went out next. All it took was manipulating the power markets to cause all the automated algorithms to release the water from the hydrobatteries all over Europe. To the power trading algorithms, power was in very high demand and scarce. Naturally, the algorithms decided to drain all the batteries to meet the high demand and make a large profit for their owners. The batteries drained faster than anyone could figure out what was happening. Power surged through Europe’s grids despite there being no need for it. Once drained, there were no reserves of power left. Diesel power plants were a thing of the past and the few that were operational could only support the small remote towns they were built to support. Power was only as reliable as the sources producing the power. There was little good to be done.

A nuclear war doesn’t seem far from the horizon. All it will take now is a trigger-happy general, a militaristic leader, or a scared public pushing its representatives to take action.

Disclaimer: This is fiction.