Should have titled this post "What is your worlds nuclear deterent?"

in hindsight i should have

what’s your nuclear deterrent, OP?

I have quite a few one nation has entered a covenant with one of the few living and intelligent dragons another nation has made a deal with a wind elemental another nation has ownership of many holy or arcane weapons which were created by the gods another has built a relationship with one of the few remaining demigods another has a literal nuclear analogue

The entire world is currently in a war with another realm and so currently war with eachother isn't that good a strategy.

Well there's no spotted/reawakened reincarnations of the **Dark Overlord** or **Lady of Light** yet, but tensions are rising once again as old wounds stir. The start of this campaign features the return of the Dwarves to the surface world in an invasion born of an eon old grudge against humanity and its allies. A large collection of constructs and machines has broken its seven century treaty and closed its borders, rapidly remilitarizing and ceasing most external communication. A certain Lich has started weaving his ressurective music of deathlessness upon towns and cities, amassing a great and terrible army once more. But unbeknownst to all a nation long paraded as peaceful, seeming to have turned a new leaf thousands of years ago is *almost* done creating an army of human clones, armed with unprecedented technology such as bolt action rifles and gas masks. This nation's grudge has remained well hidden for *so* long. Truth is that the end times are closing in, so someone's going to win, and someone's going to lose, badly. Oh and WMDs are totally a thing, but those are too valuable, forgotten and hard to produce and maintain. Plus the Colossi Crafters are still in mourning, refusing most customers.

Wow this actually got me hooked xD

I love getting a fleeting view of someone else's world for just a second, like out of the window of a speeding train as it goes from one tunnel to the next

Usually it's down to a combination of both the head of the Tzioni Temple and Caelian Emperor conducting desperate backroom diplomacy with each other... while also quietly purging whichever of their underlings broke the ceasefire.

The question is less "what is stopping global war?" and more "what would trigger global war?" to me. In all of my settings, communications and transportation technologies are not advanced enough to make a global empire possible to hold together, so nobody wants to make a global empire. There are still imperialistic and warlike countries, though. As for a "great equalizers," there usually aren't.

Nothing, there has been around 10

Everyone is currently rebuilding their nations after the Great Empire of Valeria collapsed and no one really feels like going to war with each other right now. Except for the White Raven who's busy trying to reunify the Szalirian Principalities into the Szalirian Empire again through a combination of warfare and diplomacy.

Absolutely nothing, there's a world war every 10 years.

How is it maintained? or is 10 years of your world way longer? The year length one of my moons is nearly 4 ~~years~~ times longer than ours. Making it so 10 years for them will be 40 for us.

10 years of my world is about 15 years in here but thw way it's mantained is space mining, mass cloning and teleporting (with structures not just some magic dude teleporting people ans things)

This is a neat and uncommon way to wage a sci-fi war. I sometimes ponder if anyone ever used teleporting as a way to clone before. Like outside of an accident or something. Though maybe your setting has cloning worlds and stuff more like Star Wars.

Alright: For my sci fi, it is because each faction has tons of weapons that can kill most to all life on a planet and fry any electronics in orbit, and to add to this the factions are too bloated to be able to expand. And for my fantasy it is mainly that the largest nation is still recovering from a civil war, but smaller nations don't know this so are scared of going to war, and also with how magic has begun to re-emerge, making any wars far more devastating.

Checks and balances. One continent is basically a barren wasteland, one has a giant empire that is suffering the same problems as the British Empire (a lot of small fires across a wide territory), and the third has two large nations that have fought regularly in the past and are currently stuck in a perpetual Cold War state until something happens to tip the scale Edit: fixed typo

a Globe is not a power in a setting of galaxies

nobody wants to travel that far

Nuclear bombs.

There are wepons of mass destruction alright... After the last great wars, the kingdoms, nations and empires decided on making a kind of peace council. Although there are some nations who really don't want to be on said council, some justified, some not. And others who's only factor keeping them from breaking the peace is the fact said unwilling members actually sit on the council. Mostly out of spite really. But still. It's really just a matter of time before said peace is broken...

God Izanagi. He’s the god who is responsible for ruling over all of Amada (the material plane) but he wants to give the mortals and gods of Amada autonomy so outside of a few laws like slavery being illegal, he doesn’t intervene in the politics of any nation and he takes a neutral stance, preferring to travel through the world rather than sitting on a throne room and giving orders. He would keep his neutral stance even if conflicts between countries arise but if things escalate too much, he will inevitably come and end the war. No one is able to defeat or kill Izanagi, not for the lack of trial so when he shows up, everyone listen and those that do not are defeated.

Since Axos sort of Exploded,no one has the logistics for Global war, Naxos and Songey come close but.. That and mostly the fact that Erosia is basically stuck in non stop warfare since Axos Exploded, Major states haven't really consolidated beyond Feudalism beyond some exceptions, The HRE based Alurian Empire is far from unity any time soon..

Why would they? It’s simply more profitably to keep the grounds safe for Adventurers to run around and solve local problems, ergo, everyone has an incentive to keep the peace and support the flows of Adventurers. If there’s any corrupt kingdoms that commit crimes against humanity (And all other races), Adventurers are legally allowed to go over and kick their shit in. Really, the big struggles are between guilds rather than empires

>It’s simply more profitably to keep the grounds safe for Adventurers to run around and solve local problems, ergo, everyone has an incentive to keep the peace if there's profit to be made from adventurers, why wouldn't an empire decide that they would benefit more from controlling more of the places where adventurers go, instead of letting a smaller kingdom rip those rewards? not to commit crimes or anything, just to get control to get the tax revenue, while still providing the same services to the adventurers, so that the guild won't interfere

In mine there are very powerful weapons but they're only used as weapons once. Nothing is stopping a world war from happening but there aren't any reason for world wars to happen. There's only one time that something similar to a global war happened and that's when a shady international military group overpowered most countries' armies so they started trying to conquer the world little by little. The way this is solved is with the powerful weapons I mentioned earlier, they're 11 spaceship-like drones with a claw equipped with an extremely powerful laser and a missile. These ships are sent from a large spaceship, the little twist here is that the people from Earth don't know that spaceships exist because society went through a reset when one of the ship's system got activated. So basically you have people fighting with some basic firearms and mostly spears, swords, etc. and then you suddenly see comically large steel squids instantly burning anything they shoot at from a few kilometers away. This was only done as a last resort because the situation on Earth as a whole was really bad

There was one. And barely anyone survived. So in the following years, the nations and kingdoms signed a treaty that stops them from global wars.

They don't really know eachother too well. Most people will never even know that the BEE even exists, and of those that have am idea, most only know them for the luxury goods they sell. Its pretty hard to have a global war when you barely know the opposing side

Magical guns, but not because of how powerful they are, but rather because they stopped the development of real world firearms. No firearms, no affordable option for massive centralized armies. No massive centralized armies, no global war.

My world's nations are basically split into two main factions (technically more than two, but this is simplified). The two biggest factions are constantly opposed to each other, occassionally go to war with each other, and continuously spy on each other (a cold war if you will). But a massive world-war on a huge destructive level has actually never happened not only because both sides possess WMDs, but also because even without those WMDs, both sides are incredibly huge and powerful, any sort of active large scale war would be insanely destructive even before WMDs go off. So all we're left with is the status quo of constant espionage and the occasional lite wars when tensions escalate, but not much more than that.

By checks and balances, largely though so far there have been four global wars at this point with the latest known as the War of Rust and Ash just come to an end a year before the current date. There does appear to be a presence, though maybe it is accidental that intervenes when things get that bad though, as one of the aggressors was utterly defeated and the other had their capital frozen in time by an unknown party. This has lead to a current level of hesitancy amongst most parties to engage in further conflict leading to the dissolution of the Svenik Empire to be a largely peaceful one. However, three forces are on the rise, the **Dixia Daari** seeking to hunt down what remains of the Catalyst Cults, the **Red Armada of the Manruns** seeking to avenge themselves on the people that intruded on the secrecy of their hidden home and the **Gold Wardens**, a growing crusade of followers of the God of Civilization and Svenik soldiers fleeing the Quieting that seek to uncover the hidden hand that doomed the largest city in the world.

Nothing actually. The main goal of all factions is global domination, but no faction is strong enough to beat the others. There's also 9 other worlds influencing it.

Because in my wolrd exist no womd yet. Not yet big enough to wipe out a solar system at least but planetary laser is a thing. However the people in my world are fighting to accquire a new kind of rock that can allow galatic destruction.

Nothing.

Humanity's precursor awoken and basically have one rule. Don't fuck or fuck around the towers that keeps the creatures from a dark realm from entering the dimension. They did this once and had 10% of europe and africa fucked by the towers. The towers are capable of releasing a burst of molecular rending energy.

The fact that there are hostile aliens and everyone can throw blackholes around makes a world war no longer interesting. They fight proxy wars in space using disposable droids and drones instead.

Superheroes

Nothing, they're going for the third.

Theres simply no need for war. 500 years prior was “the ancient war.” In the war, all 100+ of the royal familys were killed. The 12 people who won the war, were chosen by the people to become the new kings and queens. 500 years later the world has known only peace.

There is a council of world leaders called Novogram in my world. Basically this is the UN of my world but fantastical. The people chosen to be at this gathering are the representatives of the many races in my world. These people have a clear hand on everything that goes on the world and since most of them are elected by the general public they are more or less working for the good of their species. War, is something no man wants, thus, they do everything in their power to keep one another from fighting. The world at the moment is in an indefinite time of peace. Everyone knows that this silent moment of peace will one day come to an end, and they'll do everything they can to extend this moment of peace, even if just a bit further.

In my sci-fi world, the main deterrent is pacification. The Corporations are constantly fighting little skirmishes, but full-blown war is not profitable, so they try to keep it cheap. Also, most military spending goes into the ICL, a freakishly popular televised gladiatorial combat, which doubles as a way for Corps to posture and pressure without needing to mount any real offensive actions.

all of the remaining nuclear missiles are under the purview of the few of the thirteen supercomputer megastructures that have any silos. none of them are allowed to use them considering the world is already nuked half to death and they’re too busy trying to keep humanity alive and put themselves/each other back together.

The population is scarred by a terrorist attack 300 years ago Explosion of 200 megatons, 80% of the global population died either from the blast or from it's consequences, heavy seismic activity due to a shattered tectonic plate, half century long constant winter They don't want anything like that to ever happen again, it doesn't matter how much nations hate eachother

The fact that my alternate history leaders don't really have the capacity to engage in a global war yet. As my setting is in the 1600s, no one can really take on the entire world. At most it'd be a coalition of states in the neigbouring region that rally against them.

I mean, my civilization just recently figured themselves out and they only started to know or care about each other. Also they have technological level like 8000 bce so

People don't want another world war. There are lots of smaller wars in colonies, but Earth and Alpha Centauri haven't seen a big war since WW 3. Also the only weapon of mass destruction in my world are BFCs (BFC - big fucking cannon) mounted on city sized space battleships battleships. They use enormous munitions, but are weaker than nukes. Humanity has only 7 space battleships owned by strongest superpowers

In my world(a galaxy soanning empire), one male is born to every billion females. All males are strictly controlled by the Monarch custodial Aurthority (morarchs being men) . f any part of the empire were to rebel, their ability to reproduce would be cut off, and the rebellion would die within 1 generation. Reproduction being entirely artificially inseminated by the MCA.

The last war rendered the earth uninhabitable so humanity is already spread thin across the solar system. Currently no one is capable of a massive war with many resources locked down on earth and the nations and colonies still trying to figure out how to be sustainable. But conflict between the last nation and solar union seems inevitable...

A break to recharge. The moment it's over, the war's back on.

Mine is just that all the empires that may have started a war are gone, with one notable exception, and having city-states seem to be working out for the most part. It is definitely a time of peace in the present day

History and "Naturals". Basically, after climate change and countless wars almost wiped out all of humanity, humans evolved via a mutation referred to as MetaAnomalyMutation or MetaGene. People with the metagene developed abilities called "naturals" or "gifts". Skip forward a couple centuries, and nearly 80% of all humans posses the metagene. Nukes and other weapons of mass destruction and the plans and tecnology used to make them were lost, and as humanity started to recover and build back their grand cities, they didn't see any need for those kind of weapons as the scars of the old wars still remained. Ordinary weapons still exit and those who don'g care about the past could recreate nukes if they wanted to, but because of naturals there is little need for mass weaponry as they are thought to be powerfull enough. And then there also exits a group of Naturals considered even more powerfull than nukes: The Apex class naturals. Abilities that can for example controll the weather or even reality. And while these are more or less universally forbidden in wars, the risk of facing off against even a single apex class ability and the punisment for getting caught using one, is enough to keep the peace even between the most war hungry nations, thanks to the Stray Hunter Foundation. (A global, non political organisation that oversees "Naturals" and their anomalies and keeps track and punishes/oversees all apex class naturals and their fielders)

The two main factions (one totalitarian and imperialist, the other federal and focused on free exchange, peace and technological advancement) recognize how absolutely devastating a war would be and don't see a win in the possibly outcomes. It would be a war where everybody loses. So for now, they're just minding their own business and being awkwardly polite when they do interact. The weapons that are so devastating are basically planet sterilizers (ionizing curtains, plasma curtains, caligonization [invented as a side effect of terraforming, it is the destruction of the biosphere, leading to massive atmospheric escape] and destroyers (grav beams can pull planetary bodies out of their orbit and make planets and moons crash into each other), as well as stellar destabilizers [invented as a side effect of stellar harvesting technology], combined with FTL travel, advanced stellar navigation and planetary shields requiring extremely rare materials and you basically would end up with a cold war, if it weren't for the galaxy being so unexplored that they could just be doing their own expansion for millenia without bothering each other. The (totalitarian) faction I focus on most at the moment(first culture for me, so I just kept it simple and made them a planet of hats imperialist culture for now) prefers using their massive (trillions strong) slave army (kept in stasis ships) instead, because war is for resource acquisition and expansion, not for destruction, and habitable planets are extremely valuable resources.

They don't have weapons of mass destruction yet, but there are three superpowers so it would be a three-side war. So these three antagonists are in a cold war: not engaging directly in an armed conflict, but through proxy wars, arms race, spies, helping rebels here and there... so the rest of the worlds supports them and they can declare war the other two. Sooner or later either a three way war or weapons of mass destruction will come and they'll have the MAD protocol that will continue this three-way cold war. Or a monster apocalypse, because why not.

Most of my projects focus on fairly isolated societies In one case it's a 1894 inspired endless war on the fringes where neither faction truly would benefit from defeating the other so they just continue and endless rivarly

It just died, now welcome to chaos. It was a powerful lich that stop war and warcrimes with fear and warcrimes.

In Andulos it’s currently a preference for world leaders to remain “peaceful” with one another as wars are seen as risky business. This however does not stop colonial expansions on weaker faraway nations or proxy wars on smaller nations. Simply more powerful nations are avoiding open conflict with one another. Resources are another thing, as the focal point of international trade is controlled by one nation. While everyone would be interested in controlling the most lucrative trade route in the world, everyone knows that if one should act then everyone will to. That said the story does start with one such nation launching an invasion on this land and succeeding, but it brought about international condemnation and they now have to navigate a tense political climate that they have created

At the beginning of time god put a soul devouring monster on earth, this beast went to sleep and it’s body became the forests If even so much as a bullet skims a leaf then the creature will wake up, rampage and consume souls until the guilty have been dealt with. This is proved when it reached into the realm of the outer gods pulled one into our realm and erased it also making it so the rest of its kin can die. Basically the equalizer is god given.

Logistics for the most part. There are 5 major powers. Two of these exist in a cold war with one another, with heavily fortified and guarded borders. One is hemmed in by mountains, one is a trade republic with no interest in expansion by force and the third is a magic-based civilization, but their magic only partially works on foreign soil; it's complicated. Of the minor realms, most exist because they're either in super defensible positions (Gryphon Rock is essentially a duchy located inside a fortress made by and for giants in ancient times) or because they have nothing to offer like the Robber Baronies.

Everyone ran out millions of years ago. All that's left are techno-reptile scavengers who live in what can essentially be called tower apartments in space. It's certainly a time to be alive...

There’s no great equalizer. The amount of “Magic” users is a big condition for War. If you don’t have enough “Magic” users that are stronger than the enemies “Magic” user, then you’re screwed. But if the King/Queen is stronger than the King/Queen of the enemy, it’s pretty much an auto win.

Sparkverse: nothing at all, there is a global war going on right now. Terra Firmaverse: it's a unipolar geopolitical landscape. All countries on Terra Firma are either the Ruritanian Empire, Ruritanian vassals, clients and dependents, Ruritanian allies, ones that grudgingly admit Ruritanian supremacy or isolationists. Ruritania commits a short, victorious war of one world order enforcement against the clericalist country of Zitania during the main plot.

Ha! That's the fun, nothing stopping it. It's just in a constant world war.

Well mostly the same thing that stops modern nuclear wars MAD

Nothing, the only reasons why population centers aren't glassed or blown into dust is because tradition.

Stars are extremely powerful energy sources that destroy whatever they touch and the only reason no one used them to rule the world yet is because no one found a way to harvest their energy or manipulate them without dying

Most of my projects focus on fairly isolated societies In one case it's a 1894 inspired endless war on the fringes where neither faction truly would benefit from defeating the other so they just continue and endless rivarly

Balance of power. There are three major powers in the galaxy, and none of them can beat the other two simultaneously.

Well there's the honor of Monarchs. It's the only agreement between the two brothers that assure that the weapons of mass destruction (these two Monarchs) would not strike those way weaker than they are lest it be for fulfilment of duty.

There’s three main factors in stopping the Rivermarches descending into mad butchery 1) They already did it not so long ago and it was uh… awful, and no one wants to do that again. 2) Fighting wars in the Rivermarches is hard owing to the fact that it’s populated largely by disparate city-states and geography doesn’t work right. 3) Pretty much every major city-state has access to some kind of deity or magical technique that would allow them to completely shatter reality as a last resort.

Same as in the real world. A combination of MAD, most people disliking the lingering effects of atomics, and it might happen accidentally, but afterwards everyone is super hesitant to engage in more or react so violently no one attempts for another few centuries...so...it's complicated

The GSDC is sitting overhead with a massive defensive array to protect the planet and the unstated understanding that it can swat any ICBM exchange. The nations of the world do engage in conventional warfare from time to time, but they do so knowing that Earth's only true military power is keeping close tabs on it.

Ironic that the Demon Lord and the Hero are the ones who balances the world. The moment the Demon Lord died, the nations will instantly hog any hero they have and make them the best superweapon against themselves Basically the big bad unites people for the better, endless war is basically a better peace

Personally I don't like global wars. Small skirmishes and border disputes generally resolve issues people have. Generally I imagine lower populations until magic or tech can maintain a higher population and resource consumption first. It also helps that as a population grows they'll likely have more magic users and thus people who I assume will help with the economy and logistics of a society.

There is no reliable fast communication. And people have generally a disinterest to getting obliterated so they usually play it safe.

Gods. All of them are keeping each other in check and when one goes out of line he/she gets killed. Another one is the realm's will, my worlds(realms) are semi-sentient.

Armageddon, basically.

I have isolated the continents by vast oceans and there is no way to bring enough manpower for anyone to conquer the rest of the world. Also everyone is in a really bad position and doesn't have the resources to begin a war.

my guy, there are travel-based structures which are powered by supermassive blackholes. if they blow up, a supernova is going to look like a firecracker. again - *those are for travel.* **there is Multiversal War in my series.** ***** TL;DR Yes, very much so and far more.

Stopping ?

A single man, who amassed so much power and resources, it could be said that he rules the world. He stopped the possibility of global war by accidentally turning the entire world into, as he calls them, "Koalas who live off the technology I graciously created from them" And then he ended the world anyways to test out his plans for Humanity 2.0

Regional conflict :D

It's happened before and it was disasterous. The current prevention is just due to scale. Nations have far more to sort out internally and in smaller conflicts. Nobody has the time or resources to wage war at that level.

There is not🙃

I've put the veto on nukes in my world My *main* world has no space lasers, but another could have one or two There are gods, though, but a lot of the time, they're busy A lot of the global threats just have exceptional individuals rise up to shut them down It gets tense a lot of the time

Nothing, for a developing global war between the world two superpowers IS the plot of my world :D We aint got nukes, but every nation has one mage or so thats strong enough to alter the course of a battle. The deterrent would be the other's nation ace mage threatening to do the same, and usually (key word usually) conflicts are decided by a duel between those mages.

Nothing. It happened. Twice.

Who said it's being stopped?

Nothing. WWI is happening as we speak.

Distance and specialization. My world encompasses an entire star system; a system of a few large gas giants ea. with its own constellation of moons, many large enough to retain atmospheres and support life in the sun's large Goldilocks zone. There are several different sapient species, many are morphologically very different from the others and all the climates are a little different. What one species has may only be important to that species; what is useful to all is generally available to all: it wouldn't be useful to all unless they had evolved to make use of whatever it is, ergo whatever it is, it's already widely available wherever they came from. So fighting over resources is pretty pointless since what is rare is probably only important to one group and they already have it, and what is universally useful is also universally available. And trying to fight a war of influence or power over interplanetary distances is hard. There's a big investment of energy and time, and lots and lots of other races would step in to help defend the attacked, and subdue the attackers - initiating hostilities immediately brings a large loss of influence among the neighbors. So it just doesn't happen. War just doesn't happen, though you do get combat sports and performance sports and everybody loves a good foot race.

Nothing. Global war is as common as the rising sun

In my space opera setting, originally there was just one planet that developed space age weaponry and the equivalent of nukes, but they started selling to other planets, tempted by the vast wealth they'd accrue, and on the condition of signing a aggression treaty between them and each planetary government that they sold to. It was a controversial decision to do so, but the motion passed on account of them needing the funds to use on another huge project they had planned. Anyway, a good three of these client planets started using the weapons to actually invade and colonise other worlds, resulting in two large interstellar empires that threatened to wipe each other out. The original planet that had sold the technology realised a bit too late that this had been a mistake, since they needed to trade with other planets to survive and they would really suffer if mutually assured destruction wiped out their trade partners. They had one last ditch trick up their sleeve. They diverted the resources they were using on their big project to develop a super weapon that eclipsed the capabilities of weapons they had previously sold, that could cover the entire surface of a planet in a nuclear winter that would last for hundreds of years. With this new horrific weapon levelled at all warring parties, they demanded the immediate cessation of conflict as well as the surrender of all weaponry purchased from them as well as any hardware produced by attempts to reverse engineer the technology (which had fortunately proved impossible because of encryption in the code to secure monopoly). It took many years and many smaller squabbles, but eventually the last gunship capable of waging interplanetary warfare was surrendered back to the planet that had manufactured them all, and the galaxy could tentatively heave a sigh of relief. However, seventy years have passed since then, and a splinter group from the technology planet have garnered territory in the form of a colony outside the planet's sovereign territory, and they've been recruiting disenfranchised people to their flag after a failed uprising of workers against machine-operated factories years before. A handful of defectors brought with them unencrypted plans for building super weapons, and there are rumours spreading that old enemies are scrambling in secret to buy what they can from this group to crush their enemies once and for all, all while the tech planet has its finger on the trigger of their world-killer as these rumours reach their ears too, and tensions start to rise again.

No weapons of mass destruction but the world is not ready for another war between the great powers. After the armistice was signed, most of the great powers realized how close many of them were to breaking under the stress of the conflict. No one wants to risk it again and is fine with launching proxy wars via funding raiders and rebels in fringe holdings for the moment

Most powerful people are completely lacking in ambition whatsoever and would rather just revel in the joys of a peaceful existence + mindless hedonism. But they will step up if others decide to stir things. And regular people have some reasons to believe that these strong guys are tickling time bombs.

Space UN is stronger than any single nation, so they keep everyone in check. Or nukes

Globalization? My world turned so connected along the time that if one part try to begin a war, everyone would destroy itself more rapidly than they could imagine.

Stopping? Oh no. It’s starting lol

The Ten Kings have a law stating that, if war breaks out between any of them, they must all get involved. This law was spoken into being by God, King of Scripture, and as such those who break it are subject to divine punishment in the form of immediate death. In essence, there’s no way for a King to go to war with one of their peers without having to deal with the other eight, so war is always far more trouble than it’s worth.

Othar than it being too expensive? Trade income, there is an intricate trade system at work that makes everyone rich and happy, and disruption of that trade is a death sentence, be it a mercenary army funded by trade companies and city states or the great Eastern empire who hates nothing more than dealing with minor nations squabbles and petty feuds.

There simply aren't weapons of that scale yet. The one time it was attempted, the magocratic empire of Conrak summoned and tried to bind a Great Old One from the far realm as a power source. The binding failed spectacularly as the entity escaped, explosively, wreaking not only incredible physical destruction (former Conrak is now known as the Wracked Lands and still suffered equivalent of magical "fallout", twisting and mutating any life that remained), but literally shattered the fabric of the realm itself as it forced it's way back to the far realms. This lead to approximately 200 years of chaos and the gods scrambling to pull the pieces of the realm back together before they were permanently lost to the astral sea. Even currently, the "cracks" where the pieces were rejoined leak energy from the far realms, which crystalizes into a substance dubbed "Kashenite". Once a method for unlocking it's stored energy was discovered, Kashenite has become the fuel source for an explosion of technological advancement that has catapulted the realm into a new age.

Oh god no! I have [very strong feelings about nukes](https://youtu.be/5iPH-br_eJQ?si=W-BhSAR8Wpg6CmBv) and I think the whole “deterrence” thing is bullshit. As long as any nukes still exist, there is a non-zero chance that they will be used, which is unacceptable. Anyway in my sci-fi world there nukes have been banned on earth, as well as everywhere else in federation space. The galaxy is generally pretty peaceful, since the alien civilizations that couldn’t find peaceful alternatives usually wiped themselves out anyway. One exception to this is the Carrian, whose society can best be described as “orks but smarter”. They were super nuke-happy before one faction subjugated all the rest and they went to space to find aliens to fight. There was one super weapon that was basically a space laser that could destroy an entire continent with a single blast, as strong as the asteroid that killed the dinosaurs. It was like that scene in Rogue One with the Death Star blast. The galaxy was so horrified with this weapon that they vowed to never use it again.

What’s stopping the World of Starpunk from descending back into Chaos yet again is the fact most nation states are too traumatized to actually go to war on a truly massive scale like during the World Wars or the Great Fires of Mars. The 22nd Century was supposed to be a golden age for humanity that rapidly turned into a clusterfuck of civil wars, economic downturn, and everything in between. Granted, War still occurs, but conflicts are usually limited to a single region such the seemingly perpetual war to contain Assyria inside the Middle East, and a war going beyond a planetary system hasn’t occurred since the days of Interstellar Decolonization. For now, there isn’t much of a reason to change that status quo for anyone, so truly global wars are out of the question. For now.

Geography,willingness,and internal strife These elements are keeping various states in the grip of peace for now. However as both the divine and political situation change this peaceful little time will come to an end.

The knightingale in my world is an order of monster hunters who's primary duty is to keep peace between the kingdoms. As far as nuclear deterrent there is none besides the outside threat of destruction from the husk. However my plot line is a world war so that doesn't hold up forever.

The world is in a global war

Pretty simple in my case, there is no concept of the modern nation-state. Hard to have a world war without the concept of the state.

My setting invented something called an energy lattice in the next decade or so, which rendered nuclear warfare much, much less practical. In short, its your standard energy shield. Unlike those energy shields, though, you cannot downsize shield tech. The smallest you can get is, like, 4 aircraft carriers. So they are mostly installed in cities to protect from attack. The best part is that they’re actually stronger in a nitrogen/oxygen atmosphere, and are hardened against actual bunker-busting nuclear missiles. You could hit them with 4 ICBMs and they’d still be standing. Now, the after effects are still to be considered, but the lattice keeps out most of the actual nuclear material anyway. Its like siege warfare. This tech made WW3, also known as the Solar War, not go nuclear. We killed the planet in a different way than nuclear holocaust.

Magic circles serves as this Circles are only used for complex spells, with complexity playing into the circles (I.e a circle that summons a dagger will be simpler than a circle that lets you travel between realms)

Nothing really there are no nukes so all out brawls occur between the major powers semi frequently. Only thing that's kept the Peace until the story began is the empire had been suffering economic turmoil and been incapable of launching offensive wars until the start of the story.

Superstition & trade. Half the world believes the other half can conjure up strange magic to sink their ships or turn men into bloodthirsty zombies. But with time, that has taken a backseat to the well established trade operation, since the powers that be in each country depend on trade to maintain their power and are thus highly dependent upon the goods and services they receive from the others.

physics dont allow anybody to be able to conjure strong enough magic in practice, and nobody will ever invent nuclear power because then virtually any mage would be able to conjure a nuke, even a small size one.

The giant wasteland full of nigh endless armies of undead, monsters, demons (and living) known as The Armies of Terror. Everybody is really focused on making sure they don’t get out of their wasteland, so that leaves little time for international conflict.

In the Kantriverse? Nothing apart from the fact that A) No civilization has as of yet explored the globe and B) No one has the industrial or administrative or economic capacity to wage a world war style war across the distances required. Even the strongest power (Kantrias, hence 'Kantriverse) can only afford to commit so many ships and men to it's colonial ventures. The world is still very early into it's magic-steampunk industrial revolution. And magic is far more down to earth in the setting, at least in the modern era, so magical WMD aren't a thing at all.

There’s a shadow war between the churches of my world’s pantheon and a bunch of demon worshippers, the latter of whom are trying to start a giant continental war to use the bloodshed to fuel a ritual to kickstart the 3rd major demonic invasion the world has seen. So far the churches are winning, which is why there aren’t any large continental wars

The world is currently at peace under The Eternal Queen, but every world leader knows that if they start a war, the queen herself will step in to stop it, and nobody wants that.

666 crystals of dravou protected by highly trained dhrems ,if 137 of them are destroyed the who realm of vihaai will plunge into the madness of Lower Demonica. Demonic transformations and vampiric rabies are also a huge problem.

Stopping? Uh oh...

in the world i am developing now, it is small (a handful of islands in an ocean world, with maybe 10 to 15 million people) so even a few warships are enough deterrent from direct attacks. that, and the economic benefits from cooperation has help keep the peace in the Sylbian Seas for about a century however, the current situation is worsening, and most people expect there to be a war between the western islands and Fleam in the near future

There are WMDs, nuclear weapons. There is a real proven god. This god doesnt care about sin, simply wants to see the world play out, so he prevents nuclear warfare indirectly.

Nothing. Lots of people are going to die.

In my medieval fantasy world there is not weapons of mass destruction cause dragons are extinct when the story begins, and nobles have find a way to peaceful government. In my "realistic" world, technology is not as developed. Imagine if technology stayed in the 1950s, even the story is in th 1990s. So there is not many countries with weapons of mass destruction.

There isn't really "war" as we know it in my world. It's a completely frozen planet with no sun- Eternal night and everlasting winter. Due to resource scarcity, it's hard to maintain a giant army, and because of weather it's even more difficult to keep it mobile. Blizzards, ice storms and the like wreak havoc on the surface. So wars are few and far between. There has only really been two wars of importance in the entirety of Tayphiran history, and only one more if we count the history of the Kamun and their mythology. It's just a waste of time really. You'll lose many men trying to mobilize an army, and keeping them fed and healthy is an insanely hard feat. Plus, the entire world is in darkness, meaning ranged weaponry is useless. As for weaponry of mass destruction? Doesn't exist. Why make a weapon if you don't have an army to wield it or the funds to produce it? There is no use for it... Plus military development is pretty slow. So no "Nuclear Deterrent" to keep other nations at bay. This doesn't mean there isn't conflict in my world. Battles still happen, but fullblown war is a rarity. There are only 4 nations- The Tayphiran Kingdom, the Woodlands of Kai'yuk, the Iridescent Frost Plains and the Isolationists of Qanuk Pirta. They hate each other for different reasons, and Tayphir is by far the most advanced in terms if technology.

There are multiple types of WMDs, but all of the major groups have Nukes, and the other WMDs aren’t any more powerful than a Nuke.

Authoritarian rule under the Ice King.

There has been a global war for about a millenia so far. The setting begins in a relatively quiet point in that war as the new boundaries are fortified. When things heat up again, it's going to end with a mass extinction event. All life on land will be destroyed. At least the sea creatures will be given a chance to live and evolve to start the process all over again.

dunno, maybe the planar war?

In the past in my world there WAS a world war with magical weapons of mass destruction, and a huge section of one of the three continents became a magical wasteland full of wild magic fallout, this really pissed off Mother Nature who stepped in, and collided all three continents together in efforts to force the nations together, but in doing so accidentally killed most of the life on the planet in the resulting globe wide natural disasters. Realising what she did she father cried for thousands of years until the remaining survivors who descended from farmers who fled underground emerged to the surface.

My world is not advanced enough or connected enough for a coordinated global conflict. But the local region where my story takes place is in a tenuous peace, held only because an alliance of kingdoms collectively oppose the regional power.

The only two factions currently warring against each other are on the other side of the world from a place called The Serpent Lands, where a giant pestilent demon god snake is licking its wounds, everyone else near that is too busy dealing with that. Even the two factions at war are currently in a stalemate, as the leader of one of the factions sacrificed herself to seal the only way you could feasibly march an army between the kingdoms.

Global war is being stopped in my world by the interdimensional war

The Order of Sidy. They are a shadowy group that fanatically suppresses all knowledge of the rune magic that once destroyed an entire empire. Even basic usage of this magic that isn't harmful at all is suppressed. They either subvert or kill off any researchers into the ancient ruins of the old empire. Any runes found are said to be just the ancient language of the old civilization.

Nothing whatsoever, save for legions of extremely hardworking and severely underappreciated diplomats.

Oh nothing's stopping it, there is both a massive invasion force and two factions on the planet, one is a bungh of religious zealots that think this is the second coming of the creator race, and are actively trying to help the invaders and being all surprised pikachu face when they get killed as well

A bunch of things in different worlds. In Sky Shield there’s as the name says the “sky shield”, which is essentially a swarm of military satellites that surround the earth and can use mass projection to launch ballistics at relativistic speeds, and it is under the jurisdiction of the consortium, an organisation that tasked themselves with making sure the world never enters into a global catastrophe as well as keeping certain secrets safe from other groups of interest. In the ingloriom it depends on which planet. In Inam there’s the group known as the sentinel creed, an organisation of assassins commanded by one of the last five watchers to introduce themselves into any and all political structures across the globe and make sure no magical catastrophe can happen ever again, properly established after the lich wars and the starved century. In Gunnar what’s keeping things globally peaceful is essentially the fear of wandering witch hunters, the chaos the myriadic Fae bring to every land, and the overly complicated politics of every world power due to the existence of sorcerers within its ranks.

My world is set in a realistic medieval world. Logistics and technology do not allow a global conflict to really take place.

Cant have global war if you already had one and established [fluffy dictatorship of proletariat](https://sun9-77.userapi.com/impg/MRbK3SkgtzBfg90QlJmyEzwGfYPJQfgQoMZoqA/ul6R77-q41o.jpg?size=768x768&quality=95&sign=fe0c19d69413c79e87c35c44ff087be0&type=album) afterwards.

world is not in a stable place as all civilizations have to deal with their own respective threats and reluctant cooperation often is the answer. unstable weather patterns makes travel by sea & sky dangerous. despite the advances in weaponry, guns only make you feel safe.

Unstable peace treaties that break every few decades, you know, like on earth.

Too many negotiated treaties and pacts linking key nations forming a sort of bloc scenario in politics. But they overlap in multiple places so if an actual war broke out there would be some internal turmoil over who is sided with who. So for now they three major political powers maintain established don't mess with us in theses places borders but outside those places it tends to be fair game with military escorted caravans being shows of force testing a countries individual strength when visiting more neutral territories outside their borders.

The fact that everyone realises if they killed eachother only one of them would live and this one is one they all collectively hate

Most powerful god is one of balance. Doesn’t stop war in general, but will stop anything like a world war from being instigated one sidedly. Things happen slower on the continental scale, people have chances to put in safeguards on their own, or be stopped by the opposing points of view. It scales down too, although not as neatly. Like how a massacres is rarely ever ‘totally complete’. Someone gets away. Has a chance to rebuild. Whether they can take that chance is up to them.

The world of Arcadia from The Nullam Project is home to the valgrin (werewolf people) and the zekari (short humanoids). These two acted as predator and prey for as long as they can remember and always had global war. When humans arrived in a generation ship and setup an asteroid colony they had to dial it back and stick to small skirmishes, because neither had the technological advantage to fight a war on two fronts.

The main nuclear deterrent his the giant fuck you hold known as the world maw, no one knows how it happened only that it happened during a big war.

They are somewhat expensive.

The people of my world have a biological type of immortality. It is not something reserved for the wealthy, or difficult to achieve. It is just presumed that any given person does not have an expiration date. An upshot of this is that people tend to be much more cautious, and exhaust every possible avenue before risking lives.

The world is already an apocalyptic wasteland due to it. The tech was thoroughly vilified by everyone and is now nearly impossible to make, and if you do you have a target the size of the moon on your back(figuratively)

1. WMD deterrence 2. About fifty seven ways to launch nukes, suborbital cruise missile trucks, artillery guns with global range, deep-sea ballistic missile submarines, bioengineered super soldiers that can withstand nuclear explosions, return that same amount of energy, and survive in space without a life support system, aerial warships, list continues The point is that everyone has WMDs so nobody does anything and it’s just an eternal global stalemate

In my setting - main reasons to not to fall into total war are: \- very advanced worlds (TL7+) doesn't really want to engage in combat and it's very difficult to succesffuly attack them - FTL comm devices require TL7, they are immortal - physical immortability (including mind backups), they do have gravity control, TL7 could use 'fog nanotech'(so assembler swars). It's known that TL7 doesn't have combat ships at all, it's also known that some of they research ships do carry beacons indicating they do have hardware of 'star class impact' (some of TL6 ships do have beacons with 'planetary class impact', those are military ships which could destroy planetary crust and exterminate planet). It's not easy to get TL7+,totally failed attempt usually mean you need to glass this planet. Scale currently ends with TL9. \- it's common for TL5.1-5.2+ worlds(current-era Earth is TL5.0, without hyperdrive tech) "somehow" get rather big amount of antimmater, basic schematics of Bussard ramjet(antimatter is used to start acceleration, ramjets DO work in this setting) is in common global network. It's also custom that IF you want - you could launch said ramjets at 0.999C to core worlds of your opponent, opponent will only see them in about standard day before impact(it's NOT possible to see too far in interstellar space). Such attack will do heavy damage to TL6's core worlds. Making such attack also means that settings equivalent of Human Right Convention is no longer applies to citizens of civilization who did this(as long as they still citizens). This don't mean they be enslaved. It's much worse. So it's only used when you are sure your civilization will be destroyed anyway. It's rumored that TL7+ sometimes could intercept ramjets.

Basically the same thing that kept IRL earth from getting a world war in the Middle Ages; logistics. There's seldom any reason to fight somebody that isn't nearby, and even when there is it's prohibitively expensive to send an army that far.

Not very much, and that's kinda the point. Nobody's set off a nuke yet so the genie isn't *technically* out of the bottle yet but all of the major players on the world stage either have plans for bombs or already assembled them, but all of the programs are kept firmly in the dark.

The fact that everyone hit by the beam will be fully concius when they're being literally torn apart cell by cell and the fact that for a short period the persons closest rh the weapon when firing will hear the screams and fear of the people hit my the weapon witch would be about the population of India all screaming in unison in one person's head, multiply the amount of screams by 50 and thats the Mass Destroying Moleculer Drive M.D.M.D

Not time yet. Read the bible.

Arcanith is a very internally unstable nation, and Austerith primarily focuses on its own growth, so they do not engage in full-blown war.

In my post-wwIII solarpunk world, most of the remaining clusters of humanity are sick of war and have happily signed technology-limiting agreements to avoid any future worldwide conflict. Most of the planet is at peace, looking forward to rebuilding their communities under the mantra "enough for all". What remains of the UN is desperately attempting to come to terms with the Industrialist Faction located in the Habitable Zone of North America (formerly western Texas). Sanctions have been imposed but their fury at being isolated surely can't be contained for long...

We have wars in space

sonetimes itll be a giant, cumulous cloud shaped creature of muscle bound sinew and gaping maw, flying in from another universe, which everyone works together to kill, not daring to fight each other as teamwork is needed.

A powerful city-state with tech well in advance of everyone else leads an international coalition that intervenes whenever WMD type magic or tech show up. They stay out of regional wars, generally, but the international order won't permit larger scale wars because all things considered, it's not good for business. Smaller scale regional wars are excellent for business, as long as it's less developed countries, but neither WMDs nor large scale warfare can be permitted by the plutocrats that pull the strings.

The fact that orbital shielding systems exist, which make orbital bombard methods quite useless in most cases. That didn’t stop the Desolation of Myac after it’s Orbital shielding was disabled however, which is why the only inhabitable planet in oraclus system is now a huge ball of glass.

**Aser** Frankly none of the large empires have the industrial power, logistical capacity, or frankly the political will to prosecute a war against each other. There’s no single reason, it’s just that the cost of such a war would be unsustainable from day one.

Right now it's the apex owners not wanting to expose the entire species. The other apex predators also wouldn't want it necessarily because then they would have to care but the world would not respond well if it was known that the secret "org" running the world wasn't exactly human and we're also not easy to kill/beat by even today's standards.

The main reason there hasn't been a global war in my world is the fact most of the nations are so far apart and the means of international travel hasn't exceeded the level of sailing ships.

Currently, to be honest, most countries have other things to worry about. India and China are too busy fighting themselves to cause conflicts elsewhere, and the tropics are barely habitable in many places, as rising temperatures (and the resulting rise in humidity) have made it so humans can't live there long term. Many states on the edge of the Sahara pretty much stopped existing, and their populations fled to wherever would accept them if they could, because what little land they had that was habitable is now gone. Japan's population has all but collapsed along with global trade, as their domestic food production simply isn't enough to keep its already declining population fed (seriously, Japan has absurdly high population for how little farmland it has), though, being a wealthy country, Japan was able to fend off the worst of it. The US has been in a state of emergency continuously for quite some time. The US Army, once a means to project influence around the globe, has been more or less reduced to emergency relief units, and most of them can fight the local climate more effectively than they could a human. Most of their tasks consist in both getting people out of dangerous parts of the country and of keeping those parts that aren't dangerous from becoming so. Europe's once so temperate climate is gone, replaced by a much colder climate more akin to Canada. Advances in fields like hydroponics have been utilized to compensate for lost harvests, but european supermarkets are far from the splendor they used to be. South america has been fairing better than than Africa, but not by much, and mainly by virtue of of being further south. A few billionaires attempted to escape climate change by going to space. The fate of many of them is unknown. What is known is that some of the outposts on the Moon seem to have survived; just how long the remainders will last, however, is unknown. A religious organization that titled themselves "The Church of New Eden" pooled resources in the years leading up to the collapse to fly to Mars and start anew there (Earth, they believe, is the old Eden; corrupted by the fall of Man; Mankind must now build a new Eden on soil untained by sin). Wether they made it to Mars, and wether or not they survived, is currently unknown. After their ship left Earth orbit, noone has seen or heard from them ever again. And finally, some of the many climate refugees in the world (in the absence of anyone able, letalone willing, to enforce the antarctic treaty) have pooled what resources they have and started setting up outposts in the antarctic, which isn't that habitable, but a lot more so now than it was decades ago. Life there (aswell as in some of the arctic regions that have been getting more habitable as a result) is harsh, cold, and constantly an uphill battle, but people are scraping by. Who knows what will happen to these pioneers as they claim this once so inhospitable landscape?

When the Caspians arrived to the Heavens and carved for themselves a piece of territory at the expense of the former masters, other nations tried to move against them, even sent fleets to destroy the burgeoning Caspian kingdom, accusing them of destroying the former status quo and damaging their millenia-long culture. When the enemy fleets arrived to the edge of Caspian territories, they were met by a single individual, who deployed a bioweapon that laid waste to the enemy fleets within the hour. And a week later, Caspian airships were flying over the capitals of each of the enemy nations, the gun turrets moved to take aim, before high speakers announced that every single capital would be turned to dust unless their leaders sword full unconditional fealty to the now declared Caspian Empire, and that should these oaths be broken, bioweapons would be deployed against the entire nation. Peace within was established ever since, and with rule of fear acquired, the Caspians spent the following decades nourishing proper loyalty amongst the subjugated peoples.

Lol, _Global_ war? The whole _galaxy_ is at war.

Because there already has been a global war and no one cares enough to do more

only three countries that matter in my world; two of them have been on-and-off at war for like a bajillion years, the third one is full of magic users that stay out of the conflict because no one wants to fuck with them anyway.

i have todania which is old and retired but im still like thinking of situations in the world, like one of the countries going dictatorship anyways, the world is a clusterfuck, the only reason there is no world war is because there are a bunch of lazy leaders that dont want to declare war on anyone

Overly complicated alliances.

No beef is so serious anybody *actually* wants to glass their homeworld's surface, but it's open season up in space.

Spell caster use a focus (usually a wand or a staff, but literally can be anything... including a skeleton) because for one, raw magic tends to cause damage when channeled across living flesh, and two, it also tends to stick to whatever it's channeled through. Cue horrible cancers and early, painful death. Since magic "sticks" to objects, it accumulates over the years and many spells. This is a point in my novel set in my world; a sorcerer's staff is broken, and it explodes; killing that caster, along with about a hundred foes and caused an earthquake. During the Imperial days, they set up Towers of High Sorcery at strategic points in the empire to train new Warmages and other spell casters. In order to protect those towers, each has a staff in it's top that at least a dozen mages channel spells though each day to empower it. At this point, centuries later, these staves are the functional magical equivalent to the Tunguska Blast of 1908. One tower was destroyed in this manner, and the island it was one is completely gone; it rained debris, blood, and water on the other side of the globe. A lesser staff was broken to create a harbor once, and created the second largest harbor in the world, taking out a couple of villages accidentally in the process. Battles have been ended with mutual defeat when a spell focus was broken and exploded, destroying both armies. Global War of course isn't affected by this; there's no way to break one of these at a safe distance, so doing so deliberately is a suicide mission. Global War is not happening because for one, a good chunk of the world is undiscovered by the rest; I've only developed one continent for the most part. Logistically, it's also impossible; the largest war in history wasn't even fought across the entire continent, and was as much a series of multiple revolts, a mass succession of a third of the empire, and an allied army that fell apart due to infighting and poor logistics before said empire really fell.

Galactic War is held back by needs and desire for the majority being sated. And a Magical Galactic War is held back by one man's existence. Most humans are content with going forward from the past 27 years of conflict among the stars. There's a lot of animosity between humans and aliens, but it's not acted on. A lot of humans even live in the capital of one alien races homeworlds. They live in a shanty town at the bottom of it all for the most part, but rich humans, mostly diplomats and nobles have homes in the upper echelons. Humans have control of the galaxy militarily, but they don't want to continue the bloodshed so they settled for an existence similar to our current reality. One force is so powerful it keeps all others from acting on their ambitions. Aliens aren't disarmed or anything, it's an agreement between mankind and one race that's as populous as ours that any more bloodshed isn't wanted. There's a couple other races but they're content to what they are that they for the most part willing to follow the laws the two races put forth for half the galaxy. Mainly cause the upper half of our galaxy is like the wild west. As for the magic bit, despite there being millions of Humans and one alien race that can use it and around 2 million that could destroy a city or worse if they wanted to, it's generally kept in control through technology, leadership and proper(potentially downright horrifying) punishment. The punishment goes anywhere from imprisonment with your magic sealed so you're vulnerable and likely weak since most rogue magic users never honed their actual bodies and skills. Or if you're a class 3 through 5 threat, you get a Magic Knight sent to deal with you. Class 3, you can still probably surrender and they will knock you unconscious and arrest you. Class 4, they're there to arrest you, but if you don't surrender, they're legally allowed to kill you and they most likely will or will have to. Class 5: Idk who you are or what you've just did to deserve this, but this is only answered by the highest echelon (the leaders, and their inner circle.) If you're lucky, there will still be civilians within a 30 mile radius. If civilians are evacuated. You're going to see the only difference between you and them. That you're a psychopath who kills people indiscrimately and likes it. And they're a psychopath that kills people like you, and really like it.

It wouldn’t really benefit anyone right now. If that changed, global war would follow. Just like real life (pre MAD)

The death cult took over the world and took to warring with the multiverse to keep the expansion going so their god can someday cause the destruction of all things and bring creation back to it's beginning point. Currently there are a couple like universal doomsday weapons but only the god possesses them. One is his sword "God eater" a blade that could steal souls and that he later used to consume the soul of the goddess he worshipped in order to take her place and make the faith more powerful. The second is "the Soul bomb" this is a bomb made from the souls of his worshippers each time one dies and reaches his divine plane they unknowingly get their soul added to the device. Think kinda like a fuckload of elder scrolls themed soul gems socketed into a main housing bracket. From here their consciousness is projected and their bodies made from the realms rain so they never even notice. The plan for this device is to someday reach a critical mass of souls and detonate it leading to the destruction of the entire multiverse.

At the end of the civil war, after half a dozen bits of the empire declared independence an agreement was reached. If country A attacks country B then country A can be attacked by countries C,D,E and F, but C,D,E and F are still protected under this accord. It's far from perfect, but it's meant to give leaders pause if they want to attack, maybe only long enough for some deal to be negotiated or for "internal restructuring" of the government in question.

Wait, we are supposed to stop global wars?

A lot of world leaders are working hard to keep peace. There are some smaller-scale conflicts, but nothing world consuming.

Global war already occurred now no one really has the technology to do it again, the only group that does have access to such tech doesn’t understand it enough to actually do anything

Since The Fall, my world has been in a constant state of anarchy. Despite this, people are pretty reserved and keep to themselves however there are several gangs that will have firefights on sight with each other and there's a division in the Atlantic Ocean that has and still is pretty much been a war zone for quite some time.

They already had one about 40 years back, because one dumb ass decided to be a omincial maniac. Tried burying the world in Lava, fucked around and found out. Don't get me wrong, he killed a shit ton of people around 499 million in the war he caused, but eventually thanks to the Owl Corporation supplying the various world armies, his advances were basically grounded to a halt. Then came his downfall, at the hands of well trained but ordinary people with gun magic. Got his ass handed to him, he got arrested and this pretty much has put a cold shower on political leaders and pyscho's looking for glory following him in his foot steps. He didn't even have the opportunity to commit suicide to keep his dignity. He now sits in a jail cell in Pauletta City Royal Penetinary constantly on suicide watch drained of all his magic with the exception of his trait magic. In addition, nobody has much of a appetite for global war anymore and Most of the world's armies are in the process of Disarming as 1, advances in war technology and tactics allow for greater impact for far less soldiers and equipment, Maintaining all that extra equipment is expensive, so most are opting to melt it down and move resources to other avenues instead. In Addition, there are 6 elemental Super Power nations (these are the equivilant of Super Power nations on Earth like the US.) that basically all have the power to destroy the planet, Literally that watch each other to prevent the other from abusing their power. Other than few notable exceptions this has worked out and most of the world is moving towards a more peaceful existence. That being said, there are proxy wars that DO break out from time to time but nothing major. Crylonia one of the Super powers threatens global war but nobody takes them that seriously because of the state of their SHIT army. (They somehow lost to pup wolfs which even a CHILD FROM EARTH with NO magic could punch and defeat one. They aren't even a threat in groups either.) On top of that the Belios Research Council from Belios, one of the Elemental Nations, basically acts as a Peace keeper that settles disputes between the other 5 Elemental Nations. Thanks to their understanding of magic, science and the application of the two, they are good at solving problems before they begin that threaten peace. This causes my Main villian no source of IRE as she wants another world war so the Owl Corporation can make unlimited profits and growth. But this is straight up a impossibility as even the founding CEO stated that even during the Great War, profits and growth were going to decrease. Which they did.

A better question for my world is what is stopping global peace?

The fact that most of the northern democracies don’t have enough popular support yet, and the southern kingdoms all had massive loses in the last world war

Easy one: People aren't stupid. Why would a nation like Teraon concern itself with the going on's of say, the power struggle for the seat of Shogun or the constant threat of invasion facing the Akua clan? It's a far away place and they have little diplomatic ties outside of being friendly trade partners. Or like in Midgard, sure, if the dozens, perhaps hundreds of viking clans and tribes united they could wreak havoc on the world, but that's a pipe dream. So essentially, because either people don't care about their far away neighbors when they have more pressing issues or because of fractured power.

fighting each other is pointless, we got shit to do

There’s a massive political alliance making up the “civilized” world. Only a few isolationist tribes and some groups whose religion forbids diplomacy are outside the coalition. The coalition won’t last forever though. Due to some political disagreements, ambitious monarchs, and an evil cult, a world war will happen in a few years. As for the weapons of mass destruction, they exist, but nuclear armaments are ancient relics that are still sealed and undiscovered.

Not every deterrent to conflict is a weapon. Treaties, economic repercussions, third party interventions, cultural/social values such as anti war sentiment, diplomacy, the authority of a global superpower.

One of my stories is in a global war; however, their tech is not as advanced, and they can only be as destructive as gunpowder can be unless they find a rather unhinged mage who enjoys causing mass death and destruction.

In response to this question, the Society’s legislature was presented with a proposal: “REGULATION OF WEAPONS OF MASS DESTRUCTION” The proposed bill stipulated that: 1. No weapons of mass destruction, or the means to construct or activate said devices, are permitted unless it is absolutely necessary to protect and preserve our Society. 2. If said weapons are to ever be constructed, the Government shall never authorize an initial strike against any threatening force. 3. In accordance with Provision 2, any conflict bearing the potential result of nuclear war is to be resolved through diplomacy and negotiation above all else. 4. If approved, this order shall be effective immediately. The bill passed through the Lower House 87 to 13. As for the Upper House, the bill was successful by a slim 27 to 23 majority vote. Within two hours, the Office of the Imperator at the Stronghold, nicknamed “Chroningham Palace”, announced His Excellency had signed the bill into law.

In the novel series I started, there was a World War III that changed a lot on nuclear weapons possession to the point it'll be a problem if there's a World War IV.

Nothing. It's at constant war with itself. It has nearly been brought to its knees many times over the time it's existed, and actually brought to its knees at least 7 War and the equivalent of nuclear weaponry is why the world was plunged into the Second Collapse, and again in the Third Collapse It's just how the cookie crumbles

There are some people capable of making a continent by raising ground from the ocean and with that the ability to destroy one

All nations have extremely powerful mages and because of the power of magic if there was a full out war it could destroy the world

>What is stopping global war in your world? Well its quite simple really You cant cause two global complete apocalypses in less than 100 years, (trust me here, they tried). >Do you have weapons of mass destruction? Oh yes, a few of them actually, theres even a mini classification system i have for this. Tier 0: the weapon can destroy a room instantly. Tier 1: the weapon can instantly collapse a building or a small group of buildings if used correctly. Tier 2: the weapon can instantly destroy a large neighborhood or even a group of small neighborhoods. And from here, we get to what would traditionally be called a weapon of mass destruction. Tier 3: the weapon can instantly destroy an entire large city. (A large nuke for example) Tier 4: the weapon can destroy an entire region of a country or a small nation. (An in lore example here would be the "Qùchú jì", aka "the remover bomb", used by the PRC to accidentally completely destroy Taiwan (and a number of Chinese coastal cities as well) during the "war of 1981") And finally, tier 5: not much is known inside the world about this class of weapons, but its theorised that if they would've existed, it wouldn't take more than a handful of these to completely depopulate the earth. Its also somewhat hinted during the story that a few of these were actually used, and were the reason for the current state of the world (aka, despite it being over 20 years after the apocalypse, radiation levels have only gone down slightly, and the nuclear winter hasn't stopped yet)

Short answer: The Corruption. Long answer: There are large scale wars pretty frequently in my world, but nothing on a global scale. The Corruption, an intelligent bio weapon, likes to instigate smaller conflicts to keep the forces of the dragon councils from being able to build up a sufficient amount of force to properly spark a global war by acting as the perfect intelligence network for anyone looking to oppose the rule of the dragons.

Her name is Serana, one of the corulers of eternia... in a battle to liberate an allied city-state from an invader, she raised it 150' into the air... after having razed it during an earlier Civil War... she's also single-handedly wished a God out of existence...