Von Neumann's apparent advocacy of a preemptive strike on the Soviet Union ('if you say bomb them tomorrow I say why not today') was a rational response to context: he had successfully predicted WWII and the Holocaust years in advance and was convinced a nuclear third world war was inevitable within a decade, so weighing 100,000 immediate deaths against millions of future deaths and the end of civilization could appear coldly rational—and this preemptive-strike view was surprisingly common in late-1940s America, even shared by pacifist Bertrand Russell.