It was marred by hatred and atrocities, and many were the crossroads on the path that were fraught with danger of global conflagration.

The "Big One"- the global volcanic conflagration Venus experienced every half-billion years or so- had indeed come, thanks to the internal stresses Project Ishtar had unleashed.

"You have more amenities, more of us are visiting, and that global conflagration you've all been dreading for the last half century or so seems less likely than ever."

For the past few months, there has been a real danger that the European Union's failure to get a handle on the debt worries that are now afflicting numerous countries could set off a 2008-style global financial conflagration.

This is how a real-estate crisis in Thailand in 1997 touched off one of the biggest global conflagrations since the Depression.

To survive these global conflagrations, every fourteen seconds, they must be pretty rudimentary, however-probably no more advanced than lichen.

Overnight, new enemies have emerged and joined forces to attack U.S. and European shipping lanes, setting off a global conflagration raging in deadly earnest.

But even he might not be prepared to unleash a global nuclear conflagration on the expectation that a better order would emerge once many millions of Muslims and infidels died.

With remarkable erudition, wit and irony, Weinberg shows how dozens of seemingly unconnected wars in Europe, North Africa, the Pacific, China and Russia coalesced into one global conflagration.

"But this was very dangerous" and came close to igniting a global conflagration.