# Why are chemical weapons worse than explosives or guns? **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [October 14, 2014, 6:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-chemical-weapons-worse-than-explosives-or-guns/701323 "2014-10-14T18:05:47Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 14\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Shalmanese](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/45deac/32.png) [@Shalmanese](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Shalmanese)\ **Post date:** [October 14, 2014, 9:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-chemical-weapons-worse-than-explosives-or-guns/701323/21 "2014-10-14T21:59:36Z")
IMHO, it’s less about the properties of the weapon and more about when they were invented. Guns and bombs have been used in warfare for a long time and have become “normalized”. Chemical weapons were only widely deployed in WWI and there was sufficient political will to nip them in the bud before they got established. Weapon usage in a war resembles the prisoner’s dilemma. As long as both sides promise not to use a weapon, the war is less damaging for all involved. ---
**Author:** ![Kobal2](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kobal2/32/20_2.png) [@Kobal2](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kobal2)\ **Post date:** [October 14, 2014, 10:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-chemical-weapons-worse-than-explosives-or-guns/701323/22 "2014-10-14T22:57:39Z")
> [@marshmallow](#): > > Speaking of persistence, every once in awhile an unexploded WWI shell kills someone. [Yup](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iron_harvest), and gas shells are the absolute worst of the lot in this regards. A rusty old shell might blow up in your face should you run your tractor over it, but at least it’s a binary system : either you’re blown up or you ain’t. Gas shells can leak into the soil to poison crops or water tables; or throw up a plume of old gas that’ll drift over to the next village (and give 'em a lot of lung cancer, pulmonary infections, chemical burns…) and as the old Country Joe song went, they might have killed you and you don’t even know. [QUOTE=Shaimanese] Weapon usage in a war resembles the prisoner’s dilemma. As long as both sides promise not to use a weapon, the war is less damaging for all involved. [/QUOTE] That’s pretty much the reason nerve agents weren’t used in WW2 Europe. Churchill was sanguine about the idea of using them on German towns, but his commanders were concerned it might lead to retaliatory attacks in kind. Same goes for the German side - but there it was the reverse for some reason. Some commanders asked the Führer a bunch of times to authorize the use of poison gas, but he always said no. Possibly because he’d been gassed in the trenches himself. So we were spared that particular horror at least. Instead German towns were doused in white phosphorus. See ? Much better ! :o ---
**Author:** ![Dissonance](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/85f322/32.png) [@Dissonance](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dissonance)\ **Post date:** [October 14, 2014, 11:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-chemical-weapons-worse-than-explosives-or-guns/701323/23 "2014-10-14T23:53:21Z")
> [@Hector\_St\_Clare](#): > > I don’t think the mass-scale civilian bombings in WWII (Dresden, Tokyo, etc.) were really considered ‘acceptable’. They were considered evil, but a necessary evil. I don’t think any of the allied powers- American, French, British or even Soviet- felt exactly _good_ about what they had done to win the war, in the aftermath. It had been an existential struggle for civilization, though, so they’d made moral compromises. You’re looking at the past through rose colored glasses. There was no great moral struggle about the acceptability of bombing civilians, nor any feeling that the members of Bomber Command or the Eight Air Force were moral pariahs who had committed a great but necessary evil in our name. Bombing civilians was not in any way considered a compromise, it was the logical conclusion of total war, attempts were made at it in WW1 but the technology was clearly lacking but the theory of how to carry it out in future wars was written about extensively in the inter-war era by proponents of air power such as [Giulio Douhet](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Giulio_Douhet). To give an idea about public perceptions regarding bombing civilians, whether it was considered ‘evil’ or if any of the Allied powers felt exactly _good_ about what had been done to win the war, consider [this](http://www.amazon.com/War-Without-Mercy-Power-Pacific/dp/0394751728#reader_0394751728): > [@](#): > > A poll conducted by _Fortune_ in December 1945 found that 22.7 percent of respondents wished the United States had had the opportunity to use “many more of them” [atomic bombs] before Japan had the chance to surrender." The entire argument that chemical weapons are banned because of either their potential use against civilians or their potential persistent nature is a dodge. Chemical weapons don’t have to be used against civilians, and there are plenty of chemical agents that are non-persistent. If those were the real objections, those would be the types and means of usage of chemical weapons that would be subject to international treaties, and no one would have been disturbed by the use of chemical weapons in WW1 where the agents used were neither persistent nor used against civilians. Yet international laws forbidding their use in warfare, which already existed at the time of WW1, became even more explicit and restrictive against their use, and their use during the war against soldiers using non-persistent agents was considered a great horror, worse of a horror than tens of thousands of soldiers a day being cut down by machine gun fire or obliterated by artillery shells while charging across no-man’s land. The simple fact is that there is something viscerally horrific about using chemical weapons, so much so that their use is considered wrong. Again, persistence and potential usage against civilians aren’t the reasons chemical weapons are banned. As it stands the use of CS gas (tear gas) in warfare is a war crime. ---
**Author:** ![bump](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/7c8e57/32.png) [@bump](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bump)\ **Post date:** [October 16, 2014, 3:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-chemical-weapons-worse-than-explosives-or-guns/701323/24 "2014-10-16T15:24:10Z")
That may be, but the OP was questioning the emphasis on WMD vs. regular weapons, when wars can be fought strictly with small arms and still have horrific death tolls. Another issue, that was stated by **JesterX** but not really elaborated on, is that WMD can kill HUGE numbers of people without a correspondingly large effort on the part of the attacker. Let’s use the hypothetical example of a packed football stadium- 100,000 people. How many men with guns would it take to kill the vast majority of the people in the stadium? Probably hundreds. How many 500 lb bombs? Dozens, most likely, and they’d have to be accurately placed. How many nukes? 1 small one dropped nearby, and that would likely kill a large number outside the stadium as well. How many nerve gas bombs? Probably a small handful would do the trick. A biological weapon could easily infect a huge number… and they could go on to infect many many more people- so it could potentially kill even more than the original 100,000. That’s why WMDs are considered bad- for the same effort to deliver the payload, the effects are FAR greater, and in most cases much more horrific and terrifying. ---
**Author:** ![Dissonance](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/85f322/32.png) [@Dissonance](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dissonance)\ **Post date:** [October 16, 2014, 7:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-chemical-weapons-worse-than-explosives-or-guns/701323/25 "2014-10-16T19:57:49Z")
> [@bump](#): > > That may be, but the OP was questioning the emphasis on WMD vs. regular weapons, when wars can be fought strictly with small arms and still have horrific death tolls. The question in the OP was concerned exclusively with chemical weapons: > [@Velocity](#): > > But let’s just address chemical weapons alone in and of themselves, for a moment. > > So why exactly are chemical weapons condemned almost universally while almost every kind of conventional weapon gets a free pass? > [@bump](#): > > Another issue, that was stated by **JesterX** but not really elaborated on, is that WMD can kill HUGE numbers of people without a correspondingly large effort on the part of the attacker. This is something people often say without thinking about it; just because the end delivery platform may be small does not mean that it didn’t require a correspondingly large effort on the part of the attacker. Two atomic bombs dropped by two bombers devastated two cities at the end of WW2, but the effort required to be able to do it in the form of the Manhattan Project was $2 billion, quite a hefty sum in 1941. The 5 Nuclear Weapon States as defined by the NNPT have spent trillions of dollars on nuclear weapons, and the cost of developing a nuclear weapons program even with the theoretic groundwork already having been laid out by the Manhattan program isn’t trivial as South Africa, Israel, India, Pakistan, et al can attest. > [@bump](#): > > That’s why WMDs are considered bad- for the same effort to deliver the payload, the effects are FAR greater, and in most cases much more horrific and terrifying. This isn’t why WMDs are considered ‘bad’; damage relative to the size of the warhead isn’t what makes nuclear weapons scary. You could make the size of a 200kT warhead 10 times larger or 10 times smaller and it will remain equally as scary; what makes it scary is the fact that a 200kT warhead will destroy the major metropolitan area of a city, not how small of a volume you can squeeze a bang into. All of this is irrelevant to the OP though, modern civilian terrors about WMDs and the fact that chemical weapons fall into the category of WMDs have nothing to do with the reason why chemical weapons are and have always been considered worse than conventional weapons, regardless of if it makes any logical sense or not. The prohibition on the use of chemical weapons goes back to the first international conventions on war, the 1899 Hague Convention on the Laws and Customs of War on Land, [Article 23](http://avalon.law.yale.edu/19th_century/hague02.asp#art23) > [@](#): > > Besides the prohibitions provided by special Conventions, it is especially prohibited:– > > To employ poison or poisoned arms; > > To kill or wound treacherously individuals belonging to the hostile nation or army; > > To kill or wound an enemy who, having laid down arms, or having no longer means of defence, has surrendered at discretion; > > To declare that no quarter will be given; > > To employ arms, projectiles, or material of a nature to cause superfluous injury; > > To make improper use of a flag of truce, the national flag, or military ensigns and the enemy’s uniform, as well as the distinctive badges of the Geneva Convention; > > To destroy or seize the enemy’s property, unless such destruction or seizure be imperatively demanded by the necessities of war. Notably the prohibition on employing poison or poisoned arms is the first listed. The widespread horror and disgust at the use of chemical weapon in WW1, where again it was used exclusively on the battlefield against combatants, not civilians, and the agents used were all non-persistent in nature led to the much more explicit [Protocol for the Prohibition of the Use in War of Asphyxiating, Poisonous or other Gases, and of Bacteriological Methods of Warfare](http://avalon.law.yale.edu/20th_century/geneva01.asp) signed at Geneva in 1928 and reading in part: > [@](#): > > Whereas the use in war of asphyxiating, poisonous or other gases, and of all analogous liquids, materials or devices, has been justly condemned by the general opinion of the civilised world; and > > Whereas the prohibition of such use has been declared in Treaties to which the majority of Powers of the world are Parties; and > > To the end that this prohibition shall be universally accepted as a part of International Law, binding alike the conscience and the practice of nations; > > Declare: > > That the High Contracting Parties, so far as they are not already Parties to Treaties prohibiting such use, accept this prohibition, agree to extend this prohibition to the use of bacteriological methods of warfare and agree to be bound as between themselves according to the terms of this declaration. Notably missing is any concern about their use on civilians or persistent agents, it is a flat prohibition on _the use in war of asphyxiating, poisonous or other gases, and of all analogous liquids, materials or devices_. The indiscriminant use of _any_ kind of weapon on civilians was already prohibited, and persistent chemical agents hadn’t been invented yet. ---
**Author:** ![coffeecat](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/coffeecat/32/3405_2.png) [@coffeecat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/coffeecat)\ **Post date:** [October 16, 2014, 9:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-chemical-weapons-worse-than-explosives-or-guns/701323/26 "2014-10-16T21:28:16Z")
> [@](#): > > They cannot be bandaged or touched. We cover them with a tent of propped-up sheets. Gas burns must be agonizing because usually the other cases do not complain, even with the worst wounds, but gas cases are invariably beyond endurance and they cannot help crying out. Mustard gas, and probably chlorine too, sound like a much more agonizing way to go than a bullet. I imagine that after WWI there was a great public outcry–especially from returning soldiers, who were _our boys; war heroes, goddamnit_–against this strange new weapon that killed by torture. For more fun info, check out the “Physiological effects” section in Wikipedia’s article on [Sulfur mustard.](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sulfur_mustard) ---
**Author:** ![bump](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/7c8e57/32.png) [@bump](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bump)\ **Post date:** [October 17, 2014, 3:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-chemical-weapons-worse-than-explosives-or-guns/701323/27 "2014-10-17T15:52:01Z")
> [@Dissonance](#): > > This isn’t why WMDs are considered ‘bad’; damage relative to the size of the warhead isn’t what makes nuclear weapons scary. You could make the size of a 200kT warhead 10 times larger or 10 times smaller and it will remain equally as scary; what makes it scary is the fact that a 200kT warhead will destroy the major metropolitan area of a city, not how small of a volume you can squeeze a bang into. The point I was trying to make is that the destructive capacity of nuclear weapons is completely of another order when compared to conventional weapons. Pointing out that a say… 20kt nuke could be a relatively small bomb, while 20,000 tons of TNT is a colossally huge amount of explosives isn’t an unreasonable comparison. ---
**Author:** ![swampspruce](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/swampspruce/32/261_2.png) [@swampspruce](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/swampspruce)\ **Post date:** [October 17, 2014, 8:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-chemical-weapons-worse-than-explosives-or-guns/701323/28 "2014-10-17T20:34:12Z")
**Velocity** it’s about undue suffering, not death. Your not allowed to use AP or expanding rounds because they cause wounding, and fragments. Ball rounds usually leave a clean wound so if you don’t die from it, you can have first aid administered with minimal suffering. Chemical weapons almost universally cause undue suffering. Your example of 10k people being gunned down vs gassing is a case in point. While some of those civilians who were shot undoubtedly would have experienced a prolonged death, most would have died relatively quickly. If they were exposed to VX, Tabun or Sarin they would all have died an agonizing , nasty death or suffered immensely for the rest of their lives. The idea is that professional soldiers who fall under the aegis of the Hague and Geneva conventions will follow them because their opponents will, too. Civilians are not supposed to be targeted, nor are others who may be exempt from combat like medical personnel carrying out their duties. Make no mistake, you are absolutely right that dead is dead no matter the cause. The bans are an attempt to minimize the use of weapons to maim, vice kill outright with directed intentionality. ---
**Author:** ![Velocity](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/velocity/32/18006_2.png) [@Velocity](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Velocity)\ **Post date:** [October 17, 2014, 11:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-chemical-weapons-worse-than-explosives-or-guns/701323/29 "2014-10-17T23:54:47Z")
> [@swampspruce](#): > > If they were exposed to VX, Tabun or Sarin they would all have died an agonizing, nasty death or suffered immensely for the rest of their lives. Without getting subjective - “which death hurts more” can be a debate that leads nowhere - explosives can set fuel in vehicles on fire, and burns are agonizing. If a bomb results in both your legs gone, that’s agonizing. If 30 big pieces of shrapnel embed deep in your body, including some in your eyes, that’s agonizing. If you get shot a dozen times in your arms and legs, that’s agonizing. Getting hacked up with a machete has to be agonizing. My point: I’m not convinced a death by nerve gas is necessarily more painful than a death by conventional means. And even if a nerve gas were invented that killed relatively painlessly, I think it would still be banned as a WMD. ---
**Author:** ![Ravenman](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ravenman/32/2929_2.png) [@Ravenman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ravenman)\ **Post date:** [October 18, 2014, 12:31am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-chemical-weapons-worse-than-explosives-or-guns/701323/30 "2014-10-18T00:31:54Z")
Yes. Because it’s inherently indiscriminate. Unlike bullets, knives or many other weapons, which are perfectly able to be used discriminately. ---
**Author:** ![Dissonance](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/85f322/32.png) [@Dissonance](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dissonance)\ **Post date:** [October 18, 2014, 7:19am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-chemical-weapons-worse-than-explosives-or-guns/701323/31 "2014-10-18T07:19:07Z")
> [@Ravenman](#): > > Yes. Because it’s inherently indiscriminate. Unlike bullets, knives or many other weapons, which are perfectly able to be used discriminately. Which is again untrue and has nothing to do with why chemical weapons have long been prohibited as a weapon of war. The only major war which saw widespread use of chemical weapons and led to the 1928 Geneva Protocol was WWI, where the use of chemical weapons was restricted to the battlefield which had become a long series of trench lines running from the Alps to the Channel long devoid of civilians. Chemical weapons are also in and of themselves not indiscriminate. Because it is heavier than air, CN and CS tear gases were used widely by US forces in [Vietnam](http://www.wood.army.mil/chmdsd/images/pdfs/Jan-June_2007/Lindberg-Final.pdf) (warning, pdf) to flush Viet Cong and NVA forces from tunnels as well as from normal, but congested areas. As I stated earlier, this is in fact a war crime per the 1928 Geneva Protocol, and even officially acknowledged as such by the US in 1975: > [@](#): > > An estimated 18 million pounds of RCAs [Riot Control Agents] were sent to Vietnam between 1962 and 1972, most in the form of CS1 and CS2. When used effectively, they forced enemy personnel into the open and created disorder in enemy assaults, but some factors of successful dispersal (such as wind and weather) were out of the commander’s control. > > Throughout the Vietnam War, CS was used to clear enemy personnel from congested areas, no doubt preventing civilian casualties and unnecessary property destruction. But the use of RCAs in Vietnam remained controversial. Although most of America’s military presence was withdrawn from Vietnam in 1973, ARVN forces continued to use CS until the communist victory in April 1975. In the months before the victory, the US Senate, with Presidential urging, ratified the Geneva Protocol of 1975. Coupled with President Ford’s Executive Order 11850 (8 April 1975), the United States officially acknowledged RCAs as prohibited war gases and renounced their use in Vietnam – with reservations. These reservations included the right to use RCAs in retaliation for enemy use, in defensive mode to save lives, and to quell civil disturbances in U.S. lines. The use of RCAs was further limited by prohibiting any use without express advance approval from the President. ---
**Author:** ![Bill\_Door](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/50afbb/32.png) [@Bill\_Door](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bill_Door)\ **Post date:** [October 18, 2014, 9:50am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-chemical-weapons-worse-than-explosives-or-guns/701323/32 "2014-10-18T09:50:50Z")
Chemical weapons are worse because they’re cheap. It doesn’t take a lot of resources to make and deliver a load of Sarin gas, hell, a bunch of nuts did it on the Tokyo subway. The guys with the money make the rules, and they’re interested in keeping the guys without money as disarmed as possible. Most of them would like to see a lot of the guys with money disarmed as well, but that ship has sailed. ---
**Author:** ![swampspruce](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/swampspruce/32/261_2.png) [@swampspruce](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/swampspruce)\ **Post date:** [October 20, 2014, 4:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-chemical-weapons-worse-than-explosives-or-guns/701323/33 "2014-10-20T16:23:56Z")
> [@Velocity](#): > > Without getting subjective - “which death hurts more” can be a debate that leads nowhere - explosives can set fuel in vehicles on fire, and burns are agonizing. If a bomb results in both your legs gone, that’s agonizing. If 30 big pieces of shrapnel embed deep in your body, including some in your eyes, that’s agonizing. If you get shot a dozen times in your arms and legs, that’s agonizing. Getting hacked up with a machete has to be agonizing. > My point: I’m not convinced a death by nerve gas is necessarily more painful than a death by conventional means. And even if a nerve gas were invented that killed relatively painlessly, I think it would still be banned as a WMD. Ok, I’ll try again. Your original assertion is flawed for two reasons: 1. You said,“Why was it a big deal when Saddam gassed the Kurds, and Assad used chemical agents in Syria, but not when people got shot, stabbed or blown up?” it is a big deal, especially when 800000 people had to die via guns and machetes. Saddam, Assad and the Hutu were all practicing genocide of a form. The difference is that the Hutus did it up close and personal by non professional soldiers, person by person. Using nerve agents in the above examples was done at a distance and indiscriminately by a state organized military. And you are correct that even chemical weapons that killed instantly and “painlessly” would be banned. 2. The prohibition against chemical weapons as defined by the 1925 Geneva Protocols only prohibit against their use in [war](http://thelawdictionary.org/war/), which is defined as “A state of forcible contention; an armed contest between nations; a state of hostility between two or more nations or states.” As I said before, you are right; at the end of the day, dieing at the hands of another is horrific at the best of times, but you are trying to differentiate between two different issues in your OP. The intention of banning chemical weapons serves the states’ interest by attempting to limit what weapons are used in conflict with each other. The idea is that any weapon used in war is directional, controllable and proportional to the intended result. By banning all conventional weapons how would you expect a nation to defend its interests against external aggression, champions with fisticuffs at dawn? ---
**Author:** ![Boyo\_Jim](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/87869e/32.png) [@Boyo\_Jim](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Boyo_Jim)\ **Post date:** [October 20, 2014, 5:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-chemical-weapons-worse-than-explosives-or-guns/701323/34 "2014-10-20T17:00:39Z")
The premise of the OP is flawed in that international law DOES in fact restrict bullets. Hollow point bullets, in fact all bullets that are designed to expand or explode, are banned from military use by the Hague Convention. In fact, the movie title Full Metal Jacket is a specific reference to the bullets designed for infantry use, as in jacketed to prevent expansion or distortion while padding through the body [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-chemical-weapons-worse-than-explosives-or-guns/701323.md?page=1)