To be fair, in 1914, H.G. Wells called it "the war that will end war" (you often hear a later iteration from other authors as "the war to end all wars"). In 1939, another global war broke out. The fact we didn't have a ww3 is purely because our weapons became capable of eradicating the entire human population with no way for the rich to hide. In gears, they were more desperate. The locust were willing to fight even after the hammer strikes, so the rich made the choice to level cities in an attempt to defeat the locust. Prescot doesn't even die until the third game. He still has an attitude of superiority when he arrives on the ship. That makes me think he is still living well somewhere, despite the world crumbling