War between great powers with WMD now seems possible.

[Lancer]

Would anyone ever use them? The US in the '70s said they would if the Sovs defeated NATO, but I now doubt it. So did the Germans btw...

Who knows, maybe they are useless.

[Urban Ranger]

Only nuclear weapons are useful.

[BeBMan]

I don´t think it is more possible than during the Cold War. When you use them, both sides lose....

[Lancer]

UR, how so? Remember MAD...

BeBro, that's right. That's what makes conventional war possible. It's always been assumed that if one side started losing realy bad that they would push the button. Seems not to be the case...

OT, when do we have to change the clocks?

[Sava]

Other WMD are useful in non-conventional attacks. Such as using biological weapons to destroy the livestock population of a country and starve them. During the Cold War, evil men on both sides were very good at coming up with creative ways of killing billions.

[Urban Ranger]

That is silly. If you can do that, you might as well use high explosives to do the same thing.

[Lancer]

UR, he's not entirely wrong, amazingly. I had a chat with someone I consider reliable about something of this sort. Used, but not used against livestock though. Don't really want to get into it any further.

[Sava]

I saw a special on the History Channel about how many biological weapons were developed to poison Soviet livestock.

[raghar]

In Space you should have high effictivity/kg. This means if not just pure U bombs, then tritium + levitating core.

One man vs one army. Well it's more interesting with nuclear weapons.


MAD? Do you believe MAD? MAD never worked, nuclear weapons wasn't used for different reasons.

BTW East Timor citizens would be happy if they had NW. I listened: One citisien one enemy soldier, at least in their capital.

[Sava]

[raghar]

Well I said it simply, shortly, becose I didn't want to get in details like TAARPS study, gold bombs, Fairy tales about bunker busters, how many NW has NK, or why pre - Russia didn't use NW.
Lancer asked if anyone use them, so I wrote about two possible uses.

[Lancer]

U bomb? Uranium?

[GePap]

Wars for limited objectives are still possible. Sates won't nuke each other over some fight for some god-forsaken peace of dirt. They will used WMD if either side thinksa victory for the other means the end for them.
Well, the salient ground for this notion is South Asia. If Pak and India go to full scale war, well then, as the Chinese say:
"interesting times"

[Zero]

MAD works. Nuclear weapon obsoletes itself because of MAD.

[Kirnwaffen]

I don't think it plausible that any "great power" would use WMD now or in the forseeable future. Most have simply been rendered ineffective or have such a huge risk of backfiring that their use is strategically unjustifiable.

The MAD principal still applies to nukes. I don't believe the western (and major eastern) powers that possess them would be irresponsible enough to actually put them to use.

The threat of WMD comes mostly from fundamentalist terrorist groups who don't seem to share our understandable reluctance to die.