Originally posted by: Fox5
Originally posted by: GarfieldtheCat
Originally posted by: Fox5
Nukes are on a whole different scale than any other possible weapon, including dirty bombs. Even the smallest nuke kills billions, while the most deadly of anything else aren't likely to be beyond the hundreds.
By posting this, it is obvious that you have *no* clue what you are talking about.
Meant millions, not billions.
And show me an instance of a chemical, biological, or any non-nuclear single bomb/release killing more than a 1000 people. (besides 9/11) Well, bombs could do it by targetting a structure containing over that many people, but I have severe doubts that chemical or biological weapons can be successfully used to kill massive numbers of people.
"Millions" is STILL off by an order of magnitude or two. The smallest nukes (like the dreaded "suitcase nuke") could kill maybe a few thousand, and while the largest nukes might be able to kill millions of people, it's not real likely that terrorists would be able to get their hands on such a weapon. Killing millions of people would probably require many nuclear weapons, not just one.
Not to say that your comparison isn't valid. Even if we're being more realistic about the impact of nuclear weapons, they are capable of causing orders of magnitude more deaths than most other weapons, even other WMDs. Chemical and biological weapons are more terror weapons than anything that would ACTUALLY kill on a huge scale like a nuke. That said, I think that makes it almost MORE likely that terrorists would use such a weapon rather than a nuke.
The thing is though, getting nuclear, biological or chemical weapons is pretty difficult, relatively speaking. Terrorists in real life aren't as sophisticated as they are in the movies, and honestly they really don't need to be. 9/11 may have been well planned, but it was actually a pretty simple attack that nevertheless caused a HUGE impact (although maybe not the one the terrorists wanted). They're not James Bond villians, their "job" is to cause as much chaos as possible...trying to obtain WMDs, while maybe on their wish list, is probably too difficult to bother with when there are so many other effective approaches.