What makes the use of chemical weapons worse than using explosive weapons?

In My Humble Opinion
1

I understand that chemical weapons are horrifying. But I’m curious why the world considers them more horrifying than explosives.

Both are designed to kill human beings. But nerve gas, specifically :

a. If you survive it, there probably is not any permanent damage. There are edge cases where you receive so much gas that lack of oxygen from being unable to breathe causes brain damage, but apparently, VX and sarin aren’t carcinogens. They have antidotes. Your nerves stop being overstimulated and go back into normal operation.

Contrast this with flying pieces of shrapnel from a bomb, where if they hit a part of your body that won’t regenerate (eyes, brain, spine, most internal organs) you’re going to be damaged or disabled for life if you survive.

Also, if you do manage to get out of the nerve gas cloud alive and get the antidote, you apparently can recover more or less untreated. You will need surgery or you will die slowly and painfully from infection or worse if you are hit by bomb fragments.

b. Leave infrastructure intact instead of turning a city into a moonscape

c. Can be completely protected against with the right gear

Anyways, Assad has been merrily dumping thousands of tons of explosives on civilians out of planes and helicopters and from artillery fire for years now. And for the most part, the West has pretty much wagged it’s finger at him and done little to stop it. Why should chemical warfare be treated differently?

2

I would argue that this is because dying from a gas attack involves prolonged suffering. A victim of conventional bombing could be dead before they know what hit them, but sarin takes hours to kill.

3

There’s also the idea that, with proper training & equipment, bombs explode where you intend them to, so if you’re planning to blow up the airport, and you do your job right, you only blow up the airport. If you’re using a chemical or biological agent, you can’t account for wind and might end up affecting noncombatants, which is generally considered uncool.

4

I don’t know. Ever been in a bombed out hospital, trapped under mounds of rubble? Can’t move? Barely breath? Maybe hear the sounds of rescuers moving rocks that may shift and crush you? Hours? Days? Maybe a week before your life ebbs away? Me neither. Something better than…what?

5

I completely get the asking of the question. Especially since it really isn’t true that death by explosives is less painful or more “humane” than death by other means.

I think the best we can do to explain it, doesn’t have anything to do with objective facts. It’s all about common human sensibilities.

There was a time when it was considered reprehensible to target individual leaders during wars. Even now, for example, when we went to war against Saddam, we never even tried once to specifically kill HIM.

And then there’s the use of snipers. At least up to the end of the Civil War, soldiers who specialized in sniping were thought of as despicable cowards, even by their own side.

Lots of people today, decry it when a foe attacks civilians. But during WW2, the wonderful allies PURPOSELY firebombed cities in Germany and Japan, in order to “bring the horrors of war directly to the people of the enemy nation,” and nowadays, the bulk of people who hear about that, accept it completely.

 I myself, still wonder why ALL use of chemicals is forbidden.  In the time of the Viet Nam war, and when our people were in Afghanistan and Iraq, going down into caves full of booby traps, I was and am frustrated that our people weren't allowed to roll some sort of sleeping gas down into the pits, and then go in and haul out the unconscious enemies.

Hell, as an Historian, I know that there has always been an evolution of ever changing complete nonsense, regarding sensibilities about what constitutes “honorable warfare.” When explosives were new, lots of people said that you were a jerk, if you sat back and destroyed your enemies with cannons, and if you wanted to be respected as a soldier, you needed to go out and directly shoot them in the belly on the battlefield.

Not saying even remotely that I would excuse or approve of the use of these weapons, just equally confused as the OP about why one kind of murder is okay but another is considered vile.

6

I follow the money and power in this one. Perhaps because it would upset the balance of power too much, cause a radical and unpredictable shift in war tactics which could dethrone the powerful nations and make their pricy military arsenal obsolete.

7

You don’t need to have any tactical expertise to use chemical weapons. The rules of war are about fairness. The big powers don’t want riffraff upsetting their gamesmanship, like a streaker running on the field.

8

OK, so - Not only the egregious suffering (weapons that by design cause egregious suffering are specifically prohibited by various conventions), but there’s this: Chemical weapons do not only injur at the point of impact, but they threaten the medics that come to assist the casualties. They threaten anyone who rides in a vehicle after a chemical casualty has been there. They contaminate the medical facilities to which they are taken. They threaten the injured already at the casualty station. They threaten the doctors and medics at the casuaty clearing station.

In short, not only are they horrible ways to die, they keep on killing and wounding until successfully neutralized. Show me the explosive that keeps on blowing up and fragmenting… Oh, no, wait - there aren’t any.

9

Land mines and cluster bombs are both like that. It’s quite possible for the cluster bombs/mines to contaminate an area medics must enter to pick up patients. Sometimes, such projectiles can get stuck in patients, creating trauma and the risk of an explosion for the surgeons who must remove it.

In active warzones, doctors and nurses get exposed to fire from missed explosive rounds all the time. (or rounds deliberately aimed at the base they are working out of)

10

That is the reality but not so much the perception. People think that with bombs you are either dead, wounded, or escape instantly while with chemical and biologicals you can be tugged back and forth never fully sure which you are. Personally, to me an attack is an attack and a weapon is a weapon but I think I may be very much the exception in that.

11

No, cluster bombs and land mines do not contaminate. They do deny an area, but they don’t follow you back to the casualty clearing station. They don’t leave the patient and go attack another patient. they don’t hange out in the vehicle used to transport the patients… And live fire does not keep attacking, and re-attacking, until neutralized.

Yes, shrapnel can nick the fingers of the medics. Those nicks aren’t going to kill the medic.

For conventional weapons to do what chemicals do, they’d have to go into orbit the area of the attack, repeatedly striking anyone whom enters the area, and then follow anyone and anything that leaves the area, attacking anyone whom comes into proximity to those, too.

The only comparable weapon or effect is radioactive contamination.

12

Nations that do the attacking are adamantly opposed to the principle of weak nations defending themselves, and putting the brave attackers at risk of retaliation. So any means that enables the defense of a nation that has undeveloped conventional military, is guilty of war crimes for doing so with cheap but effective tactics.

If a weak and underdeveloped nation has chemical weapons, there is a very effective defense against being targeted by them. Keep your troops at home and don’t invade them.

13

Strongly disagree. Chemical contamination by enough nerve gas to notice is something you can trivially feel. There’s a burning sensation, your nose gets runny, etc. It only spreads between patients or to medics if they aren’t careful and don’t use protective gear, which protects completely.

Radioactive contamination is a completely different tier. No longer can you not directly detect it without instruments (except at dose levels that will kill you in hours or minutes), but it is not possible to protect yourself completely - gamma rays will slice right through any protective suit. Small doses that don’t kill you right away can kill you months later, unlike nerve gas which works by preventing you from breathing - if you don’t pick up enough to die now, you will probably be fine later.

It’s just not remotely the same thing.

14

Chemical weapons are not a regular part of modern war and it’s probably best to keep it that way. Yes, there is hypocrisy given some nations use or have used depleted uranium shells, cluster bombs, or white phosphorus. So it goes.

I was under the impression that exposure to certain gas weapons can cause long term neurological damage. True of conventional weapons too, of course.

15

I’ve been saying this for a long time. The pundits who say “We must intervene because of chemical weapons because of the suffering the nerve gas causes (but AK-47s, machetes and bombs are OK)” are nonsensical. As if shrapnel, bullets, etc. don’t cause agony, or as if there’s a specific Pain Index you can measure sarin nerve gas against, and say “Yup the sarin surpasses the Pain Threshold of International Intervention but the AK-47 bullets don’t!”

16

Ok, fair enough. It says here : "
Research on long term health effects is inconclusive. Individuals who are exposed to high levels of sarin (for example, levels that results in acute symptoms) may experience long term neurological side effects. These include headaches, fatigue, visual disturbances, memory difficulties, and symptoms of PTSD. At this time, there is insufficient evidence to conclude that individuals who are exposed to low levels of sarin (for example, levels that do not result in acute symptoms) will experience long term health effects."

I’m not sure about VX. This is more of less what I’ve been saying, though I suppose the people who were in the middle band of exposure between “dead” and “have a runny nose” certainly will be injured for life.

But if you set off an artillery shell or 2000 lb bomb in a group of civilians, it’s the same thing. Near the center of the blast, everyone is dead. At the edges, just minor injuries from flying debris. And in the middle band, lots of people with penetrating shrapnel injury, burst eardrums, blindness, brain damage, and all the rest. At least with nerve agents it’s just nerve damage, and the described symptoms do not sound as catastrophic as, say, being paralyzed or unable to speak at all. (if I had to guess, I’d say that some neurons using pathways affected by the agent (I think it’s acetylcholine) were sometimes damaged or killed, but nearly all of the brain is still present and functioning. Contrasted with whole lobes that can be ripped up by a fragment passing through your brain)

17

This is big part of it.

Weapons of war are, according to the laws of war we mostly agree upon, are intended to target legitimate targets - soldiers, their equipment, their bases, and the like. The intentional targeting of non-combatants is generally frowned upon.

And now you have a class of weapon that is, as you point out, basically useless against properly prepared soldiers, but very effective against unprepared civilians. There’s essentially no legitimate military use of these weapons any more, and as such, they’re seen as deliberately, cynically targeted solely against civilian non-combatants.

Stop and think about it for a minute: when was the last time you heard about anyone using chemical weapons against actual soldiers, instead of civilians?

You have to go back to the Iran-Iraq war, and even then, a lot of the attacks were against civilians.

18

I’ll disagree with your disagreement. Chemical weapons cling to clothing and gear as well as flesh, and microscopic levels can be wounding, if not fatal. The same levels of controls as apply to controlling radiological contamination apprly to chemcical contamination - indeed, many of them are exactly the same. Truthfully, low levels of contamination are ignorable - but just as exposure to radioactive contamination can come back to haunt you much later, so does chemical weapons have a similar effect, with increases in various cancers and other debilitating chronic diseases.

There’s a reason Chemical, Biological, and Radiological warfare are lumped together.

19

Anyone saying that chemical protective gear is 100% effective is kidding themselves. If in perfect working order and already being worn properly it *might *be 100% at the moment of an attack nearby. But you need to get out of it sometime. You need to eat and poop eventually. The filters and absorbtive layers need to be replaced and the contaminated gear disposed of without creating another round of hazard.

Yes, there is a practical difference between VX and a high rate gamma emitter with the consistency of talcum powder. I’d rather deal with the VX. But that’s far more a matter of degree than kind. Both are very nasty business.
If there is a logic to which weapons are good and which are bad I’d argue that a rational basis is the degree of uncontrollable side effects. Side effects in terms of space, time, and consequences. A mace to the head or a sword through the gizzard is real low in side effects. Nobody else is going to be injured except by getting flying blood in their eyes. By contrast, machine gunners blasting at massed foot soldiers have lots of opportunity to hit who/what they’re not aiming at. All the more so if the fight is in a city, not an open field. Now consider aerial bombardment of a city. etc.

The upper limit case with current tech is probably a wholesale nuclear exchange that really did trigger a “nuclear winter” scenario that badly disturbs the planetary ecosystem for a couple decades or more. Admittedly “nuclear winter” is itself an arguable phenomenon. But assuming *arguendo * that we could pull it off, that’d be highly immoral because of all the extra *uncontrollable *damage it did.

Using this measuring stick it’s clear ordinary chemical weapons (e.g. VX bombs and artillery) are a bigger deal than HE, but a lesser deal than an equivalent number of nukes.

Once we have a comparative measuring stick, then we can decide how far is too far. Having been in the biz, IMO the line is in about the right place: conventional on one side & CBR on the other.

I’ll leave you all with a happy thought:
As a couple people said above, mankind has always recoiled at the latest creative ways we invent to kill one another. Which eventually become humdrum. Which makes me wonder what depravities we’ll be debating in 2317 :eek:

20

True observation, but note that 100 years after its invention, chemical warfare remains taboo - yes, a few folks have violated that taboo, but that has led to near-universal condemnation, rather than to a lessening of the taboo.
No other means of warfare can claim that.*
*Nuclear and bio may yet make similar claims, but they’re too young yet.