"Cold War armageddon/ WWIII/ Modern world conflict fiction" Topic

I have Just completed Dragonstrike about a fictional conflict between China and The West, am currenlty finishing off Clancy's Red Storm Rising.

Can anyone suggest other such fictional books covering possible world war three type scenarios of similar high quality?

Thanks

Arc Light by E.. Harry. A great read that includes a NATO attack into Eastern Europe:
link

Thanks aegiscg47 !
Already trawling Ebay!

Try Larry Bond's Vortex (South Africa) and Red Phoenix (Korea), and Harold Coyle's The Ten Thousand

Must read Ralph Peter's Red Army

and Hackett's Third World War (both books)

Good choices, most of them I have on my book shelf.

This a pretty good book. The author (Steven J.Zaloga) has a chapter and it is divided between a fictional account. Then an analysis of the fictional account.

link

If you're going to recommend Coyle, I would recommend "Team Yankee." Great at the tank company/team level.

I've read a lot of WW3 books, many of them mentioned above. For a fairly serious treatment then the novel of the film 'The Wargame' is very good if a bit gritty.

One completely nuts one is 'The Blue Ants' – written in the 50s it is about the yellow peril overunning the world and features among other things tactical nuclear trench mortars! Another interesting one is from the late 70s called 'Indoctrinaire' – hard to describe it is just very disturbing, not standard cold war paranoia stuff at all.

You can also try "The Zone" series by James Rouch. Completely insane, but good fun. Also, not exactly meeting your criteria of "similar high quality."

If you can find it, "The Chinese Ultimatum". Sino=Soviet war.

"Systemic Shock" by Dean Ing. Sino-India vs Russo-American alliance.

Another vote for Peter's Red Army. It is a great read.

Ralph Peters, "Red Army." Much, much better than Tom Clancy. "The Perfect Soldier" is Peters' best, although it has nothing to do with WWIII. He writes a lot of non-fiction as well, much of it appearing in the Army War College's journal "Parameters."

Also check out Kenneth Macksey's "First Clash." It was written for the Canadian Army as a training tool. It's fiction, but there are study questions at the end of each chapter. By far the most professional of the genre, in the sense of "written by, and intended for, professionals."

Also by Harold Coyle:
Sword Point
Bright Star
Trial by Fire

Goldstar,

Though I did not enjoy Dragon Strike, the author, Humphrey Hawkseley wrote another book that was nothing short of incredible "The Third World War".

The Cold War Gaming group has a database of several fictional Cold War books and film (including most of those listed in the above posts):

link

Would also echo many of the above suggestions, especially anything by Larry Bond, Ralph Peters "Red Army","Arc Light" by Eric Harry, much of Coyle's work, Hackett's "Third World War" books, also find a book called "Feast of Bones" by Daniel Bolger, great fictional story about a Soviet VDV unit in Afghanistan.

For more China v The West large scale conflict you could try Jeff Head's "Dragon's Fury", Scott Malensek's "The X-mas War" and Eric L Harry's "Protect and Defend".

For NATO v WarPact try Michael A Palmer's "The War that never was" or Bob Forrest-Webb's "Chieftains".

How about Team Yankee? I think that this was an early book by Harold Coyle.

I've read many of the above books, but one that is still around and very unusual was I believe called "A Passing Advantage". It postulated a U.S. general in NATO during exercises crossing the border and hitting the Soviets/Warsaw Pact while all of their armor were still in tank parks(which is how they stored them in the 80s). By the time his forces had withdrawn a good deal of the enemy armor was toast, so when they did invade Germany they were more easily dealt with. An interesting concept although the writing as I remember it was not as good as many of the above mentioned books.

Another interesting and unusual read is called Thunder of Erebus where the Soviets and the U.S. slug it out in Antarctica and it included some naval battles.

Allow me to second Ralph Peters' 'Red Army'. It's probably one of the best 'WW3/Central Front' books out there. It's told entirely from the Soviet point of view, and is very interesting, if not enlightening. It sparked my interest in 'modern' Soviet military thought. All that aside, though, it's a cracking good modern combat read.

For sheer scope, Red Storm Rising still can't be beat as an all out, no holds barred WWIII novel of conflict between NATO and the Warsaw Pact. Larry Bond's Red Phoenix, Vortex and Cauldron aren't far behind, but are limited geographically to the 'hot zones' of Korea, S. Africa and Europe, respectively.

I absolutely loved Ralph Peters' Red Army. A book purely from the perspective of Soviets was very innovative for its time. Sober and depressing, this story packs quite a punch.

I liked Coyle's first three novels, Team Yankee, Sword Point and Bright Star. If you like tank warfare you'll like these since Harold Coyle was an ex-tanker in the army and knows armored warfare.

If you like aerial warfare, Dale Brown's first three or four novels are pretty good. A former USAF bombardier-navigator in the FB-111, he wrote 'Flight of the Old Dog,' about a souped-up B-52 Stratofortress bomber on a suicide mission deep in the Soviet Union. His later stuff aren't very good though.