Published , by Josh Hawkins
Published , by Josh Hawkins
Since the release of Warzone Season 2, many have been speculating that the game’s current map, Verdansk, could see a nuclear event kicking off the start of a new time for the Call of Duty based battle royale. With Season 3 set to start on April 22, could we see a nuke hitting Verdansk soon? There’s a lot to unpack here, so let’s jump in.
The speculation that a Warzone nuke event could happen soon has been building for weeks now, and now things happening with the game appear to be building up to something big.
The first clue in the puzzle of Verdansk’s future comes in the form of a nuclear warhead that was found back in May of 2020. This nuke was found inside of Bunker 11, which appeared on the map around that same time. This was the first time that the idea of a nuke coming into play was tossed around, but it wouldn't be until 2021 that we'd finally start to see things put into motion.
From here, speculation continued to grow as Black Ops Cold War was announced and subsequently released. A big refresh for Warzone was expected to happen with the launch of Cold war, but the map never changed all that much aside from some new points of interest.
Fast forward a bit, though, to just a few weeks ago, when zombies suddenly began to appear in Verdansk. Alongside the zombies came several new missile silos, all of which include an old computer terminal with a zombies symbol and what looks like a progress bar. The zombies camped out around the shipwreck situated on the southeastern coast of Verdansk, at least until recently.
It looks like a new update to Warzone has caused the zombies to move, resulting in them now being situated at the prison just to the east of the shipwreck. This lines up with many users’ speculation that the zombies would start moving across the map, thereby infecting other regions of Verdansk. The belief is that this spreading of zombies will then cause the map to be nuked, wiping it out completely to make room for a Cold War themed map that feels more inline with Black Ops Cold War.
Many are also using the game’s lack of celebration as a point of evidence that the nuke could be coming, as Warzone players logged in on March 10, 2021 to find that nothing was happening to celebrate the battle royale’s birthday. "And now, during Warzone’s one-year anniversary, we find ourselves in Season Two, where Verdansk is primed for a reckoning," a blog post on the official Call of Duty blog reads. The post continues, "It seems that after a year of smooth sailing, Warzone may have to prepare for a threat never before seen in Verdansk, and any Operators who wish to survive might need to save the celebration for another time and get back in the fight before it’s too late."
These remarks have led many to dig deeper into the belief that Verdansk will see a nuke event hitting at the end of Season 2, which would be the perfect time to usher in a new map for the game.
Of course, Warzone wouldn’t be the first game to use in-game events to replace its map. Other games like Fortnite have done similarly in the past, even completely destroying the original map to replace it at the start of Fortnite Chapter 2—the latter of which actually took the game offline for a fairly lengthy amount of time.
For now, all we have is speculation. Will a nuke even happen in Warzone? It seems likely based on what we’re seeing so far. However, we won’t know for sure until the zombies start moving around more and we start to see more evidence coming to fruition. We’ll continue to update this article as new evidence is found. For now, though, keep it right here at Shacknews for all your Warzone news.