The airships seem to be the major weapon, becoming the terrors of the sky, huge monster craft that carry death to the cities of Earth. Why airships? The book was published in 1907. While airplanes were just being invented and designs played with, blimps and dirigibles were already flying about in good numbers. By the time World War One cames about, German airships are bombing London. Airplanes started off during the Great War totally unarmed, used for scouting out enemy movements and checking out the landscape. So, for him to suggest that airships would become the wave of the future in combat is not a great leap of logic. One scene has German airplanes and airships destroying an American fleet of warships, a chilling vision of things to come. As each nation designs and builds it own aircraft things get out of hand. While the air fleets can bomb the cities, they can't TAKE them (not being able to carry any troops) and they can't DEFEND them (as they carry many bombs, but few weapons to fight other aircraft), so soon the world is nothing but burnt out buildings and thousands of airships attacking anything on the ground that even LOOKS dangerous. Will Bert survive? Will he get back to England? Will mankind ever learn to live together?