Politics in Media - The Good, the Bad, and the Preachy

A nuke is just a very big bomb. It’s indiscriminate but in a pretty predictable way.

Chemical and biological weapons are both indiscriminate and unpredictable. You can’t control how they affect their target, how they spread, when they stop, or really anything about them once they’re initiated.

Nuclear weapons are pretty evil (it’s mostly the radiation-what lingering fallout does to people-unborn children especially-is downright vile) though I would say they’re the “least evil” between the big three.

Chemical weapons are horrible because they’re essentially civilian-targeting weapons. They do present no danger to a modern military, but to surrounding civilian population it’s a whole different story-and they kill them in some of the most inhumane ways en masse.

Biological weapons are, naturally, the worst. To put it simply: Disease is the enemy of mankind (they kill far more than war does), anyone who uses a biological weapon has, effectively, betrayed the human race. Especially in the case of smallpox, a disease that the Cold War powers teamed up to exterminate.

Nuclear weapons used in a military capacity aren’t particularly dirty. There isn’t that much radioactive material in them and they explode up high. Even the fallout from a ground burst is nothing compared to a reactor disaster.

A “nuclear winter” effect could be caused by any large enough explosion.

Edited by archonspeaks on Jun 26th 2019 at 1:43:10 AM

That is true, especially modern ones that use fusion.

An H-bomb isn’t significantly less radioactive than an A-bomb, just a little bit. Pure fusion weapons are theorized to be highly radioactive, but nobody has set one off yet.

Now I am thinking in how Chemical and Biological weapons are used in fiction

In fiction it's often used as a Moral Event Horizon of sorts for whoever uses them.

The Genophage in Mass Effect is a nuanced example. While the reasons for its creation are made clear, there is still the impression that unleashing it upon the krogan was wrong. It's especially poignant since the scientist who created it is a party member in the second game. And in the third game he ultimately considers the Genophage a mistake, and will die trying (whether or not he succeeds is up to you) to cure it.

In Star Trek Deep Space 9, the War Is Hell theme is really emphasized with the Dominion War ultimately being ended by the Federation's black ops organization Section 31 engineering a plague that targets the Founders.

And while Willy Pete isn't technically a chemical weapon (it's considered an incendiary weapon under international law and thus isn't banned), it's been argued that it should be considered as such. Anyone familiar with Spec Ops: The Line is aware of that part of the game. The game doesn't shy away from what white phosphorus does to the human body, and Walker's decision to use it and his refusal to accept blame when he discovers the bodies of the huddled civilians are huge warning flags to show that he's losing it.

In Final Fantasy VI, Big Bad Kefka goes from a rather silly villain to a true monster when he poisons the city of Doma. That is far from the only (or even worst atrocity) he commits in the game, but that is the moment the game signals how awful he really is.

One of the most enduring Marvel comics storylines revolved around the Legacy Virus, a virus that was originally created by a future Apocalypse to wipe out non-mutants before Stryfe altered it to target mutants instead. The virus would eventually mutate to target non-mutants too.

Nukes by contrast don't get treated as universally bad in fiction. At least not outside Japan — Japanese media tends to have a considerably harsher view on nukes. Understandable, since they are the only country who has ever been on the receiving end of a nuke.

Still, you have stuff like the game Star Control, where the Human ship's primary weapon is a stockpile of tactical nukes.

Edited by M84 on Jun 27th 2019 at 12:03:42 AM

To be fair, in the latter example, I assume is a Space Game and Nukes loses a lot of their ominousness in space, being straightforward Big Big Bombs.

I'm now reminded of the Alternate History How Silent Fall The Cherry Blossoms, where a particularly vicious Imperial Japanese admiral do attack USA with Biological weapons, causing a relatively small outbreak of Bubonic plague that kill hundreds of Americans. Small lose relatively speaking, but causing a notorious desire of revenge from the Americans.

Then, said guy also shares his ideas with Germany, convincing them to try Biological and Chemical weapons as well and thus, he somehow managed to make WW 2 even nastier...

Edited by KazuyaProta on Jun 26th 2019 at 11:42:47 AM

Then there's Starcraft, where the Terrans use nukes. And in the storyline campaigns, both the bad and good Terrans get to use them.

Then there's the Command & Conquer series, where the more villainous factions are the ones who use nukes. The "good" factions otoh have equally destructive but non-nuclear superweapons like the Ion Cannon or the Weather Control Machine.

Edited by M84 on Jun 27th 2019 at 12:45:01 AM

The Genophage is based on the idea that Species Stereotypes are true. It would be a very different Krogan if they, you know, cured the Blood Rage rather than trying to render most sterile and babies stillborn.

But part of why I think the Genophage received the treatment it did was because if they did treat it as biologically Gray-and-Gray Morality that's a fucked up metaphor for RL.

Edited by CharlesPhipps on Jun 26th 2019 at 9:49:36 AM

The Genophage was created and justified by its creators only looking at the numbers. They ignored the fact that the Krogan are sapient and thus would suffer massive psychological trauma when faced with the reality of most of their children being stillborn.

Mordin himself admits that he made a mistake of looking only at the big picture while forgetting about the little pictures that make up the big picture.

Edited by M84 on Jun 27th 2019 at 12:49:45 AM

Ok. Not gonna lie, the idea of the Genophage legit terrifies and repugnates me HARD.

Honestly, I think we're talking about outright xenocide, right? Given that the species that it targetted was pretty much at the border of extinction during most of the franchise for what I've read.

—-

at those Command and Conquer examples. I mean, Weaponized Weather coded as "less evil" than nukes? That's just silly

Edited by KazuyaProta on Jun 26th 2019 at 12:04:24 PM

Nukes come in a wide variety and range of points.

But I tend to agree they should be banned outright and there's no reason they should be used by any nation.

Why?

What use is a nuke against anything but civilian targets?

Godzilla doesn't exist.

Edited by CharlesPhipps on Jun 26th 2019 at 10:08:04 AM

In one of my D&D campaigns (set in my sci-fantasy setting), I had the players survive a nuclear attack once. The Dragon was amassing an army outside the main town the campaign had been revolving around so far. The party was expecting a conventional invasion, when the bomb dropped and blew up the city behind them. It turns out the actual purpose of the army was to simply kill all the survivors of the nuke. The Party holed up in a school that had miraculously survived, and single-handedly held off the invading soldiers.

Nukes can, in theory, being used in battle. In fact, the unused plans to invade Japan planned to use the Nukes to clean up the beaches and allow a easier entry of American soldiers (yeah...). There a reason why the term Tactical Nuke exist

I still wonder how Japan would be if Downfall happened. I imagine that Japan as we know simply wouldn't exist. Famine and Battle would have wiped out large parts of the population.

I don't believe in the apocalyptic "Japanese Anhilation"/ "Void Islands" views (where the invasion is so bloody that America ends up practically commiting Genocide against Japan), but it would be super bloody. REALLY BLOODY.

Edited by KazuyaProta on Jun 26th 2019 at 12:16:44 PM

Anyway, my point was that while nukes' treatment in media has some variety to it, bio-weapons are almost always treated as heinously evil.

Adding another example — in the Animorphs series, the event that led to war-prince Alloran being disgraced was his decision to unleash the horrific Quantum Virus in a bid to keep the Yeerks from gaining new shock troops in the form of the Hork-Bajir race. Even worse, he targeted the Hork-Bajir. And it didn't even work, since the Yeerks had already captured enough Hork-Bajir to maintain a sustainable population in captivity. In the main series the Andalites' pedestal is well and truly broken when they make plans to unleash another Quantum Virus on humanity to keep the Yeerks from getting them.

Edited by M84 on Jun 27th 2019 at 1:27:02 AM

Biological weapons get an exemption when dealing with aliens or monsters.

See Blade 3.

Sliders also used it to wipe out the Kro-Mag I think.

Indeed, one of the problems with Deep Space Nine was the Founder plague was generally treated by fans as justified.

The problem with a race of No Civilians.

Edited by CharlesPhipps on Jun 26th 2019 at 10:25:20 AM

Nukes have plenty of military value outside striking civilian centers. Counterforce strategies are like half of all nuclear doctrine.

Also worth considering that there’s no way to uninvent the bomb. As long as the concept exists someone will have it, and as long as someone has it someone else has to have it too to keep things balanced.

Edited by archonspeaks on Jun 26th 2019 at 10:29:51 AM

Generally speaking though, the use of bio-weapons is almost always an example of a Moral Event Horizon, Jumping Off the Slippery Slope, or both.

Those tend to go hand in hand with media which actually try to justify genocide.

Edited by M84 on Jun 27th 2019 at 1:31:01 AM

It's funny that someone mentioned StarCraft here, because part of the motivation for the villian Arcturus Mengsk for overthrowing the Confederacy was because the confederates used a nuclear barrage against his homeworld of Korhal, which lead to the foundation of the Sons of Korhal and his beginnings as rebel leader.

While the game does give you access to Nuclear weapons, the original campaign presents a far worse weapon than the nuke if that's even possible: unleashing the Zerg Swarm on a target location, which is what Mengsk did to the confederate capitol world of Tarsonis and not only left the billions of military and civilian population at the mercy of the Swarm, but also used a nuclear barrage just to further spite the Confederacy.

Edited by raziel365 on Jun 26th 2019 at 11:26:52 AM

What Mengsk did with the Psi-Emitters was more or less him unleashing a bio-weapon on Tarsonis.

This, alongside abandoning Kerrigan, made Raynor realize that Mengsk was a monster.

In the sequel, revealing Mengsk's part in unleashing the Zerg on Tarsonis causes his public approval rating to plummet.

Edited by M84 on Jun 27th 2019 at 2:32:13 AM

Some of the background material (mostly older stuff) for Warhammer 40,000 mentions that the use of nuclear weapons is frowned upon, if not outright banned by the Imperium, not that it stop people using them (see the background of the Death Korps of Kreig). On the other hand biological and chemical weapons have seen regular use by all factions and have had tabletop rules to some extent (the 2nd Edition Virus Grenade was something of a Game-Breaker due to the fact it could wipe out an entire unprotected army, such as Imperial Guard and Orks, in a single turn). And this is before you get to the fantastic WMDs that can rip holes in reality and cause stars to go nova.

It would be nice if we could ban nukes. Unfortunately, there's no way of putting that particular genie back in the bottle without some kind of utopian revolution taking over the world.

Nukes are somewhat lo-tech for the Imperium, though I do wonder sometimes why they don't get used more as a last resort when orbital bombardment is no longer an option.

"Kind of"?

Edited by GoldenKaos on Jun 27th 2019 at 8:41:22 PM

TBF...it's Warhammer 40k. Every faction is kind of evil, so it's not all that unexpected that they would all be willing resort to some freaky chemical or biological weaponry.

Nukes probably get treated that way in 40k because, compared to the other horrible shit in 40k, nukes are a little too real.

Edited by M84 on Jun 28th 2019 at 3:41:39 AM

Yeah, 40k is meant to be fantasy pew pew above anything else.