History Main / BiologicalWeaponsSolveEverything

* The entire basis by which the events of ''Videogame/ResidentEvil'' occur. Naturally, this goes to show why they do not solve anything.

* In ''VideoGame/TimeCrisis 5'', the BigBad [[spoiler:Robert Baxter, [[RogueProtagonist previously the protagonist]] of ''Time Crisis II'']], stole a drug three years ago that turns its victims into mindless zombies, or as [[spoiler:his former comrade Keith Martin]] puts it, makes them incapable of feeling pain or fear. [[spoiler:Robert then reveals that he has a bomb that can be detonated to spread the drug to entire cities, with New York as his first target.]]

It can go by many names: [[TheVirus The "Virus"]], The "Plague", The "Cure", The "Cleansing", etc, but it fits the same criteria:

[[folder: Live Action TV]]

* An arc in ''Series/StargateAtlantis'' involved an attempt to develop a virus that would turn Wraiths into humans. They never managed to make its effects permanent or figure out an effective delivery mechanism. And their first test subject, "Michael", became a major recurring villain. Never really exploited is the fact that even when it's only temporary in effect, it still renders them amnesiacs with no ability to operate their own ships' bio-technology until the virus wears off.
* An erstwhile Alliance officer on ''Series/{{Firefly}}'' made his fortune using biological weapons to depopulate communities, then he looted their untouched valuables. [[spoiler: This was a lie, but it was certainly a plausible one.]]

* ''Series/{{V 1983}}''. In the mini-series, the human resistance develop the Red Dust that only kills the aliens, driving them off the planet. When the aliens return for the later TV series, the Dust can't be used again because long term studies have shown that any greater concentration in the atmosphere would damage the ecosystem.

* ''WesternAnimation/FamilyGuy:'' Stewie and Bertram end up in a playground war which ends when Bertram infects Stewie's side with Chicken Pox.

* Failed spectacularly in ''Film/{{Serenity}}''. The Alliance introduced a chemical agent into a colony's atmosphere, one designed to make the populace docile and well-behaved, to suppress any and all aggression (and thus resistance). The gas worked ''[[GoneHorriblyRight too]]'' well: most of the population became so apathetic that they just laid down and died. The others [[GoneHorriblyWrong became hyper-violent berserkers, known as the Reavers]].

* {{God}} has done this a few times.

* This plan works at the end of Creator/RobeartAHeinlein's book ''Literature/ThePuppetMasters''.

When used by the good guys at the climax, rarely do the negative affects get addressed. In RealLife, viruses are well known to mutate into nastier and unpredictable forms. A virus that once spread slowly and was cured easily could potentially mutate into a rapid pandemic. If it was bacteria/fungi, that stuff can survive outside of a living host and contaminate all sorts of things. If it was some sort of nerve agent, the issue of tainting water supplies or tainting landscape is glossed over. And even if humans are immune from the weapon used, it usually conveniently leaves other terrestrial lifeforms and ecosystems intact. This may be justified if it's an AlienInvasion, and NoBiochemicalBarriers is averted.

* ZigZaggedTrope on the George Pal version of ''Film/TheWarOfTheWorlds'': it maintains the original ending of the Literature example below, but before the natural bacteria of Earth do the job, the military and the scientists were proposing to use bio-warfare (out of desperation, because nuking the machines didn't worked and the only option left was to try and see if it was possible to kill the Martians themselves). Unfortunately, the mobilization of the Martians towards L.A. means that the university the scientists are in needs to be evacuated, and the trucks that carry the equipment are stolen by desperate Angelenos who smash it all to make room (in the words of ScienceHero protagonist Dr. Clayton Forrester: "they sliced their own throats!").

* Failed spectacularly in ''Film/{{Serenity}}''. The Alliance attempted to use an engineered gas to make the violent populace very docile. The gas worked ''[[GoneHorriblyRight too]]'' well: most of the population became so apathetic that they just laid down and died. The others [[GoneHorriblyWrong became hyper-violent berserkers, known as the Reavers]].

* Averted in ''[[FanFic/SovereignGFCOrigins Origins]]'', a ''MassEffect''[=/=]''StarWars''[[spoiler:[=/=]''[=Borderlands=]''[=/=]''[=Halo=]'']] MassiveMultiplayerCrossover, since the salarian STG's attempts to develop one to fight off an AlienInvasion repeatedly fail to produce anything that would be viable against the enemy [[spoiler:though given that enemy is the Flood, this makes sense]].

* This plan works at the end of Heinlein's book ThePuppetMasters.
** The film adaptation has a more justified version of this, where the alien slugs are vulnerable to encephalitis[[note]]inflamation of the brain[[/note]] - being almost all brain, they are ''far'' more vulnerable to it than humans are. After the disease is unleashed, a military man in the area admits that he and his men are "sick as hell", but are now free.

* Nearly backfires in the ''Literature/NewJediOrder'' novels for Star Wars. The virus in question, Alpha Red, is specifically designed to target [[ScaryDogmaticAliens Yuuzhan Vong life-forms]] (and ''only'' Yuuzhan Vong life-forms). The Jedi oppose it for idealistic reasons (as not all the Yuuzhan Vong were evil, and they believed the race as a whole could likely be redeemed--and even if that were ''not'' the case, they would not be a party to genocide), but the final novel (''The Unifying Force'') adds several pragmatic considerations to the question (which had, to some extent, been brought up before, but in that novel they go from theoretical to ''actual''). On a planet the virus was tested on, the virus also affected a native form of life, proving the virus could mutate to infect other lifeforms. Worse, [[spoiler:an infected ship escaped, letting the Yuuzhan Vong know about the threat...and ''even worse'', Alpha Red was a threat to the living world Zonama Sekot, which was an offspring of the primordial homeworld of the Yuuzhan Vong. The last part of the novel includes the Yuuzhan Vong trying to crash that infected ship on the living planet, and the heroes attempting to stop it]].

* ''Series/StargateSG1'' had two episodes ("2010" in season 4, and "2001" in season 5) about the Aschen, an alien race who conquer worlds by supposedly being nice and friendly and handing out life extending drugs...that sterilize most of the population, letting the Aschen move in and take over after nearly everyone on the target planet has died out. The Aschen also offered Earth a bacterium that could be engineered to wipe out the Gou'ld, and tried to use it on Earth when their "sterility drug" plan was uncovered.

* In Jack London's story "The Unparalleled Invasion," what prevents the YellowPeril from taking over the world is the bombardment of Chinese cities with glass tubes containing "every virulent form of infectious death," which exterminates the Chinese population in six weeks.

* ''TabletopGame/Warhammer40K''. [[http://wh40k.lexicanum.com/wiki/Virus_bombing Virus bombing]] is one of the ways Exterminatus (destroying a planet that has succumbed to TheCorruption or cannot be saved) can be carried out. As it destroys all life (and eventually, the ''atmosphere''), its use is rather limited. And now they've found out that using them strengthens Nurgle, the Chaos god of disease...

* Creator/RobertRankin trumps H.G. Wells in his Victorian steampunk novel, ''The Educated Ape''. The ''War of the Worlds'' is referenced as having just been won, as per book, by the Martians not having thought to innoculate against Earth's diseases. But the devious Winston Churchill (a man who in life was an advocate of euthenasia, eugenics and chemical warfare) sent some of the captured Martian spacecraft back to them, loaded with volunteer crews of terminally ill humans, with every contagious diseases known to Man. A Mars cleansed of its higher life forms is then open to colonisation from the British Empire...

* ''Series/{{V}}''. In the mini-series, the human resistance develop the Red Dust that only kills the aliens, driving them off the planet. When the aliens return for the later TV series, the Dust can't be used again because long term studies have shown that any greater concentration in the atmosphere would damage the ecosystem.

* In the Destroy ending of Videogame/MassEffect3, the trope is inverted, with the final weapon destroying all ''synthetic'' life, including the friendly ones, and leaving the organic life alone.

So why choose this above DeusExNukina? Several reasons. While nuclear weapons are highly destructive and devastating to an enemy, a NuclearWar would probably cause more problems than it solved (perpetual winter, radiation, etc.), and thanks to the UsefulNotes/ColdWar, the general public is ''very'' familiar with the theoretical effects of a nuclear war. On the other hand, [[PhlebotinumDuJour biological weapons are so variable that they can basically do whatever the plot requires.]]

* The original ''Franchise/{{Halo}}'' trilogy can be loosely interpreted to end this way. The eponymous Halos are installations which can wipe out all life within a certain radius, meant to "starve" [[TheVirus The Flood]]; they aren't biological weapons themselves, but they're clearly built to target certain forms of life (plants and most animals are left untouched, but anything sapient is toast). [[spoiler:The Chief fires one at the end of ''VideoGame/{{Halo 3}}'' to defeat the Flood infecting the Ark.]]

* The original ''Franchise/{{Halo}}'' trilogy can be loosely interpreted to end this way. The eponymous Halos are installations which can wipe out all life within a certain radius, meant to "starve" [[TheVirus The Flood]]; they aren't biological weapons themselves, but they're clearly built to target certain forms of life (plants and most animals are left untouched, but anything sapient is toast). [[spoiler:The Chief fires one at the end of ''VideoGame/{{Halo 3}}'' to defeat the Flood on the Ark.]]

* The first ''Franchise/{{Halo}}'' trilogy can be loosely interpreted to end this way. The eponymous Halos are installations which can wipe out all life within a certain radius, meant to "starve" [[TheVirus The Flood]]. The Halos aren't biological weapons themselves, but they're clearly built to target certain forms of life (plants and most animals are left untouched, but anything sapient is toast).

* ''Series/StargateSG1'' had two episodes ("2010" in season 4, and "2001" in season 5) about the Aschen, an alien race who conquer worlds by supposedly being nice and friendly and handing out life extending drugs...that sterilize most of the population, letting the Aschen move in and take over after nearly everyone on the target planet has died out.