The bio warfare beginning of World War III, and the genetically engineered dinosaur arms race.

The recent creation of “dire wolf” pups is the unclassified public introduction to a far more advanced military genetic engineering programme.

American and Chinese war planners face the same daunting problem; the prospective full-scale conventional war between the two nations requires an incredible number of troops. Millions of troops would be needed for either country to invade the other. For China to invade just Taiwan, some estimates suggest they would require a force of over a million men.

Through their wargames, both sides have concluded that war would quickly reach stalemate or go nuclear. Both have also concluded that the only way to avoid these outcomes is to attrit the enemy first by means of carnivorous hybrid monsters.

The US military is pursuing the development of hybrid dire wolves and sabre tooth cats to unleash upon the Chinese in the event of war. These hybrids are created by extracting fragments of ancient DNA from fossil remains of extinct animals, and using gene editing to modify that animal's closest extant relative, so creating a hybrid animal with the desired anti-personnel traits.

The Chinese are taking a similar approach, but have managed to extract viable velociraptor DNA fragments which they have then used to modify genetically similar chickens.

The outbreak of World War III

In early 2016 the CIA received alarming intelligence on the Chinese chickenraptor programme, suggesting that China was only two years away from creating a deployable hybrid. The Chinese had managed to create a velociraptor-like creature, but it was still only chicken sized (the Americans had the advantage that they were trying to modify leopards and wolves, which are already quite big).

Pentagon war planners speculated that before a Chinese invasion of Taiwan, Chinese submarines could surface off the US coast and launch incubator carrying drones containing velociraptor eggs. These incubators would be landed in areas of wilderness to hatch their eggs and give the chickenraptors time to grow. The ensuing chaos would cause the US to substantially draw back its military to defend the homeland, leaving China to act in the Indo-Pacific region without opposition.

Later in 2016 President Barack Obama ordered a targeted biological warfare attack on the Chinese chickenraptor facilities. Being chicken based, the Chinese programme was vulnerable to avian influenza. A lab-modified strain of H5N6 virus was successfully used to decimate the Chinese chickenraptors.

Unfortunately the H5N6 virus spread to humans and Chinese commercial chicken farms by the end of the year. The virus quickly spread regionally and then globally. By 2020, natural reassortment (genetic swapping) between the CIA's H5 virus and other strains of avian influenza led to the emergence of a more deadly H5N1 strain.

The Chinese counterstrike

In 2019, China responded to the American biological warfare attack with its own biological counterattack. The Chinese used a weaponised SARS virus created in a Wuhan laboratory (ironically, the virus was created in China with funding from the US following Obama's moratorium on gain-of-function research in the States). The virus was deployed in powder form throughout the US and Europe, being spread by agents and through commercial trade.

The 2020 pandemic was the combined effect of a H5N1 strain carrying a gene from the H5N6 virus used in the 2016 American attack on China, and a weaponised SARS virus used in the late 2019 Chinese counterattack on the US and Europe.

Albert Einstein once famously said, “I don't know with what weapons World War III will be fought, but World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones”.

World War III will of course be fought with genetically engineered dire wolves, sabretooth cats, and velociraptors, and may already have begun.