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A comment on Power over fiber. Parent comment

Re:Power over fiber by cyberax on Thursday January 04, 2024 @01:56PM (#38870816)
It has. That's why countries don't have real chemical weapons anymore. They are easy to make (for an industrialized country), but they don't provide any real advantage when both sides in a war have access to them. They just increase misery for everyone involved.

Blinding laser weapons are in the same category.

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Re:Power over fiber by Snow_Falls on Thursday January 04, 2024 @05:20PM (#38873102)
That's not really the Geneva convention though, chemicals weapons are just not effective for any actual warfare (aside from committing atrocities).
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Re:Power over fiber by Grimblewald on Thursday January 04, 2024 @06:28PM (#38873704)
I'm sorry but that is totally incorrect. Being able to clear out a building without damaging its capacity to provide cover is enormously useful.

Chemical weapons are incredibly useful, just awful.

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Re:Power over fiber by nand4011 on Thursday January 04, 2024 @07:28PM (#38874151)
The argument I've seen against their usefulness is that they only work against static militaries that don't have NBC training, and a modern military can already defeat threats like that without paying the political cost of using them.

https://acoup.blog/2020/03/20/collections-why-dont-we-use-ch...

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Re:Power over fiber by cyberax on Friday January 05, 2024 @09:08PM (#38887650)
> Chemical weapons are incredibly useful

They're not. They're effective against an unprepared adversary. Any real military will have anti-chemical-weapons tactics and protection.

So this happens: you douse a building with a gas, and then walk inside and get shot by defenders in gas masks. And by the way, you also will have to wear a gas mask yourself.

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