In the case of a global conflict where the lives of millions are at risk, including you and your own family, any notion you have of an orderly, regulated mass migration of people across borders will 100% get tossed out of the window. Even legal migration causes untold difficulties when thinking of housing, job markets, sociocultural integration, etc., like in the United Kingdom where 1.2 million migrants emigrated to the commonwealth in 2023, per the U.K. Parliament. In the 2023 fiscal year, the United States saw 2.5 million try and enter the country illegally via the Mexican border, per the Wilson Center. So what would happen during World War III when havoc reigns, border enforcement measures are weakened, and nations have basic survival on the mind?
This is a good time to point out that all of the problems listed in this article are interconnected. Imagine a worst-case scenario starting with millions fleeing from a war zone in terror. Military, government, and infrastructure are in disarray on all sides. People are starving along the journey to a country whose economy and trade are crippled, where food riots have broken out and escalated the damage of war. No one has anything to spare, everyone's looking out for themselves, and AI-controlled drones streak across the sky auto-deciding what targets present threats. And if refugees make it to where they're trying to get, who's to say they won't be shot on sight? Or taken and tossed in camps without any due process at all?
