Ex-government civil contingencies officer, author and journalist Michael D. Carroll takes us through a stark WW3 reality few are brave enough to face.

Kim Jong Un

North Korea's megalomaniac leader Kim Jong Un is developing nuclear-powered submarines (Image: AFP)

The world is a dangerous place. As we fix our gaze on apocalyptic international headlines - from Iran's anti-government uprisings  to Trump's Greenland power grab - a haunting scenario slips under the radar, keeping nuclear experts up at night.

North Korea's megalomaniac leader, Kim Jong Un, is no stranger to headlines. The Supreme Leader makes news testing nuclear-capable cruise missiles near Japan, clashing with South Korea, or purging top generals Stalin-style. But it's what's happening beneath the surface of Kim's communist hermit kingdom that should concern us most.

In her Sunday Times bestselling book "Nuclear War: A Scenario," investigative journalist Annie Jacobsen reveals the horrific aftermath of a nuclear exchange between the world's most well-armed powers: the United States and Russia. With Dr. Strangelove-esque inevitability, Jacobsen shows how Cold War paranoia, inept communication failures, and trillions of pounds of nuclear infrastructure propel our species towards mutually assured destruction.

The catalyst for this apocalypse? The 42-year-old tin-pot dictator himself, Kim Jong Un.

Since receiving Soviet assistance in the 1950s, North Korea has poured resources, enslaved its people, and defied enemies to develop a nuclear programme. Who would dare attack a nuclear-armed nation ruled by someone as unpredictable as Kim, who has executed 160 officials, imprisoned 200,000 political prisoners, and launched 300 missiles?

But what if Kim's objective is no longer survival? In Jacobsen's scenario, Kim orders a single war machine with deadly cargo towards the California coast. Why? As an unhinged autocrat, anything could tip his hand - a sensed threat to his rule, an emotional blow, terminal illness. The reason matters less than his capability to unleash annihilation.

Using an antiquated Soviet-era diesel submarine, Kim sends submariners on an audacious Pacific mission to reach the US coast, dodging America's defences. Once in range, the sub's nuclear-tipped cruise missile is too close to its target for the interceptors to reach it in time and it strikes in just 24 minutes from launch.

Incredibly, for all its 21st-century technology and Cold War expertise, America is powerless against this mid-20th-century delivery method. A coastal strike on the Diablo Canyon nuclear plant vaporises the radioactive core, raining fallout and rendering an area the size of two New Jerseys uninhabitable. This "Devil's Scenario" propels the US and Russia into full-scale nuclear war.

Sub

North Korean leader Kim Jong Un visiting the site of an 8,700-tonnage nuclear-powered submarine (Image: AFP)

But recent real-world news is even more horrifying: Kim is close to developing the nuclear-powered subs that Western nations, and Putin, of course, already rely on for ultimate deterrence.

Once launched, these doomsday subs could stay submerged for months, undetected, ready to fire from any part of the globe at any time.

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On Christmas Day, North Korea announced completion of such a sub's hull. Experts say Kim is months away from being able to launch nuclear submarines globally at will.

If this horrific programme succeeds, we'll all be seconds closer to nuclear midnight. We cannot tolerate this risk from Kim's potential insanity. The world must act now, before it's too late.