It would be a disaster for anyone who is responsible for planning things, but ordinary people would find a way to cope. Since they have magical abilities, they can defend themselves. I imagine there will be a fair bit of "street level" violence, but they dont live in the same sort of places we do, nor subsist on the same sort of "food". Most of them would probably migrate to under-developed areas.
I think there’s a global conspiracy to see who can get the most clicks on the worst lies
roaming, lurking, arguing
Depends on how a public would receive them. Discriminating against orcs would be way easier, than the visually appealing elves. Not to mention, cultural influences like Naga's in Indonesia or Oni in Japan. I can see several countries reacting a lot more positive to some groups than others.
Big question will be what more influential nations like US or China would do/react. Not to mention the impact on political landscape, as officials will make this their new pet-peeve/cause.
Not to mention, what kind of sub-cultures would develop. Would some adjust better to social life than others? Where would marginalization start or end?
But the biggest question will always be logistics. How house and administrate suddenly several hundred thousand otherworldly refugees, who do not speak your language or share your values. That will be the true powderkeg, since less developed or oganized nations will severely falter on that challenge.
They call me.... Prophet
I mean the mere fact that people arrive in portals suddenly would rewrite all existing military in an instant. Magic would re-rewrite it. All the militaries in the world would be super nervous as people are figuring out where this comes from and why. Considering nukes can hit within 30 minutes and at best the commander-in-chief has about 5 to make a decision, that's going to be one hell of a tense standoff as people are figuring out who's attacking from where.
Anyway, the best chance is for the intelligent magic-using races who can probably use some sort of communication magic for first contact. They would also be the best-suited to exploit this for the maximum. With magic they could quickly assure local lords protection from other magic-users and existing political structures would not survive this. We must then hope that such people aren't the stereotypical evil overlord (even though fantasy basically dictates the most powerful ones are evil overlords), but honestly we'd be lucky if none of the newcomers had any existing grudges. It would be one hell of a thing for an Arch Demon to learn of nukes. Not to mention, fantasy races would still come with earthly prejudice, so Warcraft orcs may be hard-pressed to convince people they're the good guys against the Warhammer Elves.
It all also depends of course on what kind of fantasy races come. Tolkien Elves wouldn't bother themselves with the human world, Elder Scrolls elves would go on a world conquest. Tolkien Orcs would be a plague, Warcraft Orcs would simply want their own place and nation, and would be well-adjusted, multi-cultural and open. Not to mention what would happen if something like anything Warhammer coming to Earth, in which case everything would be bad everywhere.
But on the whole, by far the most difficult and fraught time will be that initial contact, where nothing is certain and the more nervous nations would be willing to lob nukes. North Korea, anyone? Iran?
Edited by devak on Jan 6th 2020 at 9:11:33 PM
Well, what would this so-called Apocalypse look like? I would rule out something truly horrific like WW3 out or any continent-spanning wars.
If anything major social and political upheaval like the Great Migration at the end of the Roman Empire would sound more likely. Cultural and ethnic groups settling into new lands, upsetting social order there. Chaos and massive changes, before everything settles into a new Status Quo.