They only way that that could conceivably happen is if terrorists gain hold of either nuclear weapons or biological weapons.<p>The scariest link there - I&#x27;ve said this before, but there is no harm in repeating it - is that Pakistan probably has both, we&#x27;re sure about their nukes and we strongly suspect they have a BW unit.<p>IS gaining a foothold in Pakistan gives them potential access to weapons of a totally different grade than the ones that they have today.<p>If that should happen and these weapons would be brought to a readiness level associated with an imminent attack or if - which I hope we&#x27;ll be able to avoid but which you can&#x27;t rule out entirely - an attack with such weapons would be carried out the degree and scope of response will be such that the map of the regions involved will be totally redrawn.<p>As soon as terrorists cross the line where all-out war against them is justified and the cost to society is one we are willing to bear (and we&#x27;re far from that, right now the most people can be seen to support is to drop some bombs from a high altitude) it will be &#x27;game over&#x27; in a relatively short time with respect to the first level of confrontation and after that we will have a repeat of the aftermath of the Iraq war but on a much larger chunk of the globe.<p>The world is a tinderbox and way too many idiots have matches.