Portsmouth has been ranked the second most dangerous place to live in the UK if World War 3 breaks out, after a doomsday postcode checker graded the city F and gave it a risk score of 65. The interactive map looks at council areas and turns nearby strategic targets into an A-to-F rating.
Serhii Kashevko, who built the checker, said: "It looks for the strategic targets nearby, like Ministry of Defence, any targets that we learned in war that had become strategic targets to h". In the same map, Gosport topped the list with a score of 67, leaving Portsmouth just behind it.
HM Naval Base Portsmouth
Portsmouth and Gosport were both marked down because of HM Naval Base Portsmouth and the defence infrastructure around it. That is the mechanism behind the score: the checker does not measure everyday inconvenience, but how exposed a place would be if conflict reached strategic sites nearby.
For Residents of Portsmouth, that means the city’s position near HM Naval Base Portsmouth is the feature driving the F rating. The map places geography, not reputation, at the centre of the ranking.
Portsmouth and Gosport contrast
The result sits alongside a separate 2026 analysis from Anker, which ranked Portsmouth fifth in its list of the 10 worst places to live in England. That report used crime statistics, ONS deprivation scores, economic hardship, and resident feedback, and it put Portsmouth at 124 offences per 1,000 people.
That creates a split view of the city. Portsmouth is described as a densely populated island city with narrow streets, heavy traffic, rising house prices, and neighbourhoods worn down by economic pressure, yet one resident said the city has "so much going for it" and is "clean & tidy", while local voices also say "don't come here". Kim Woodburn, who was born in Portsmouth, is among the better-known names linked to the city.
The doomsday postcode checker offers a blunt warning rather than a full security assessment. It grades council areas from A to F, and Portsmouth’s F grade, with its 65 risk score, leaves the city near the top of the map’s danger list without saying how much of that exposure comes from each individual site.
That unanswered method question is the main limit of the map: it shows the ranking, but not the full weighting behind it. For now, the clearest reading is simple enough — Portsmouth sits high on a theoretical conflict map because strategic defence infrastructure is close enough to move it into the danger zone.
