Usually, lasers are used rather than bullets. Willy Ley claimed in 1939 that bullets would be a more effective weapon in a real space battle.
Destruction of planets and stars
Destruction of planets and stars has been a frequently used aspect of interstellar warfare since the Lensman series. It has been calculated that a force on the order of 1032joules of energy, or roughly the total output of the sun in a week, would be required to overcome the gravity that holds together an Earth-sized planet. The destruction of Alderaan in Star Wars: Episode IV - A New Hope is estimated to require 1.0 × 1038joules of energy, millions of times more than would be necessary to break the planet apart at a slower rate.
Some fictional universes have different implementations. The Colonial Fleet in Battlestar Galactica uses a mixture of army and navy ranks, and the Stargate universe has military spacecraft under the control of modern air forces, and uses air-force ranks. In the Halo universe, many of the ranks of the current-day United States Military are used in lieu of fictional ranks. In the Andromeda
universe, officers of Systems Commonwealth ships follow naval ranking,
but Lancers (soldiers analogous to Marines) use army ranks.
Literature
Lucian
In his second-century satire True History, Lucian of Samosata depicts an imperial war between the king of the Sun and the king of the Moon over the right to colonise the Morning Star. It is the earliest known work of fiction to address the concept.
Future war: the precursor to space warfare
The first "future war" story was George T. Chesney's "The Battle of Dorking," a story about a British defeat after a German invasion of Britain, published in 1871 in Blackwood's Magazine. Many such stories were written prior to the outbreak of World War I. George Griffith's The Angel of the Revolution
(1892) featured self-styled "Terrorists" armed with then-nonexistent
arms and armour such as airships, submarines, and high explosives. The
inclusion of yet-nonexistent technology became a standard part of the
genre. Griffith's last "future war" story was The Lord of Labour, written in 1906 and published in 1911, which included such technology as disintegrator rays and missiles.
H. G. Wells' novel The War of the Worlds inspired many other writers to write stories of alien incursions
and wars between Earth and other planets, and encouraged writers of
"future war" fiction to employ wider settings than had been available
for "naturalistic" fiction. Wells' several other "future war" stories
included the atomic war novel The World Set Free (1914) and "The Land Ironclads," which featured a prophetic description of the tank, albeit of an unfeasibly large scale.
Space opera
The
modern form of space warfare in science fiction, in which mobile
spaceships battle both planets and one another with destructive
superweapons, appeared with the advent of space opera. Garrett P. Serviss' 1898 newspaper serial "Edison's Conquest of Mars" was inspired by Wells and intended as a sequel to "Fighters from Mars," an un-authorized and heavily altered Edisonade version of The War of the Worlds in which the human race, led by Thomas Edison, pursues the invading Martians back to their home planet. David Pringle considers Serviss' story to be the very first space opera, although the work most widely regarded as the first space opera is E. E. "Doc" Smith's The Skylark of Space.
It and its three successor novels exemplify the present form of space
warfare in science fiction, as giant spaceships employ great ray guns
that send bolts of energy across space to shatter planets in a war
between humans and alien species.
David Weber's Honorverse novels present a view of space warfare that simply transplants the naval warfare of Horatio Nelson and Horatio Hornblower into space. The space navy battle tactics in the Honorverse are much like those of Nelson, with the simple addition of a third dimension.
Several writers in the 1980s were accused of writing fiction as part of a propaganda campaign in favour of the Strategic Defense Initiative. Ben Bova's 1985 novel Privateers has been given as an example.
Television and film
Early television productions such as Captain Video and His Video Rangers (1949) were severely constrained by the available special effects
technology, and effect sequences were typically difficult to set up.
This, combined with the fact that early shows were often live
productions, meant that space action sequences were usually short and
simple.
Production techniques improved throughout the 1950s and 1960s,
and most programming moved to pre-recorded productions. This allowed
more complex effects to be used, and increased the ability of producers
to show action sequences such as space warfare. Star Trek is from this period. While the future presented in the original Star Trek
series was not one of open warfare, the machinery of war was ever
present, and was used in many episodes. Ships carried missiles armed
with antimatter warheads, known as "photon torpedoes", and deflector shields
for defense. Battles were shown on screen, but the expense and
difficulty of advanced special effects meant that most battles were
short and involved few craft. The costs of special effects dropped
dramatically over the years, but remained high enough that larger
battles showed relatively few ships firing and/or being hit. Star Trek: Deep Space Nine (1993) used computer graphics developed in part by Industrial Light & Magic, and could show battles between numerous classes of ships using tactics developed by military strategists.
George Lucas' 1977 film Star Wars
broke new ground in its depiction of space warfare. Advances in
technology, combined with the film's comparatively high budget, allowed
Lucas to create long, complex space action sequences. The battle
sequences were modeled after World War II-era tactics from films such as The Dam Busters, and were a major milestone in fictional space combat.
A number of more ambitious films and television series soon followed, including ABC's Battlestar Galactica (1978). Battlestar Galactica used expensive effects influenced by those of Lucas' film and followed his lead in concentrating on battles between starfighters. It, and contemporary shows such as Buck Rogers in the 25th Century, set new standards in television space battles. The series primarily used laser-type energy weapons in defense and offence on battleships, although analogues to ballistic weaponry are present in several episodes. The 2003 "re-imagining" of Battlestar Galactica uses more conventional weaponry, such as guns and missiles mounted on the primary capital ships and starfighters, and use pure Newtonian physics to achieve a more realistic representation of how space warfare would actually appear.
In 1979 Mobile Suit Gundam
was released in Japan. The series was famous for revolutionizing the
giant robot genre due to the handling of mobile suits as weapons of war
as well as the portrayal of their pilots as ordinary soldiers, as
opposed to the previous style of portraying hero pilots.
James Cameron's Aliens, the 1986 sequel to the 1979 film Alien, used Starship Troopers as the basis for its military.
The movie involves a small unit of the United States Colonial Marine
Corps who provide emergency response to a planetary colony in 2179. The
film showed futuristic twists on many modern types of military vehicle
and gear, including a dropship, 10x25mm caseless "Pulse" M41A1 rifles,
flamethrowers and machine guns, and realistic body armor and tactical
equipment.
The 1993 television series Babylon 5
chronicled a turbulent time in galactic politics, which involved
several inter-species wars. Political and humanitarian aspects were
explored, such as atrocities against civilian populations, and telepathy
was used as a weapon. The series made an attempt to faithfully depict
the physics of combat in a vacuum, instead of using motion modelled on
aeroplanes within our atmosphere.
The 1995 American TV series Space: Above and Beyond
centered around the "Wildcards", a group of marines in the 2060s who
serve as both infantry and fighter pilots. The show attempted to depict
technology that was near-future, but based on research. It also explored
the alienation of deep space warfare, the horrors of loss and survival
on the battefield, the bonds that form in combat, and a fight against an
enemy of which they knew little. Space: Above and Beyond differs
from many other military science fiction works in that its soldiers use
weapons that fire bullets, and fight in space suits in alien
environments.
The British TV series Doctor Who, has numerous instances of this. Frontier in Space, set in 2540, mentions a war between Earth and Draconia, fought 20 years earlier. This story involves renegade Time Lord the Master trying to start another war on behalf of the Daleks, who plan to conquer the Galaxy. The Time War is a major plot point in the revived series, during which the Time Lords, the species of the Doctor, fought the Daleks. This war seems to have ended with the destruction of the Time Lord planet Gallifrey, which the Doctor did hoping the Daleks would also be destroyed.
A weapon of mass destruction (WMD) is a nuclear, radiological, chemical, biological, or any other weapon
that can kill and bring significant harm to numerous humans or cause
great damage to human-made structures (e.g., buildings), natural
structures (e.g., mountains), or the biosphere.
The scope and usage of the term has evolved and been disputed, often
signifying more politically than technically. Originally coined in
reference to aerial bombing with chemical explosives during World War II, it has later come to refer to large-scale weaponry of other technologies, such as chemical, biological, radiological, or nuclear warfare.
Who can think at this present time
without a sickening of the heart of the appalling slaughter, the
suffering, the manifold misery brought by war to Spain and to China?
Who can think without horror of what another widespread war would mean,
waged as it would be with all the new weapons of mass destruction?
William Safire credits James Goodby (of the Brookings Institution) with tracing what he considers the earliest known English-language use soon after the nuclear bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki (although it is not quite verbatim): a communique from a 15 November 1945, meeting of Harry Truman, Clement Attlee and Mackenzie King (probably drafted by Vannevar Bush, as Bush claimed in 1970) referred to "weapons adaptable to mass destruction."
Safire says Bernard Baruch used that exact phrase in 1946 (in a speech at the United Nations probably written by Herbert Bayard Swope).
The phrase found its way into the very first resolution the United
Nations General assembly adopted in January 1946 in London, which used
the wording "the elimination from national armaments of atomic weapons
and of all other weapons adaptable to mass destruction." The resolution also created the Atomic Energy Commission (predecessor of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA)).
An exact use of this term was given in a lecture "Atomic Energy as an Atomic Problem" by J. Robert Oppenheimer. He delivered the lecture to the Foreign Service and the State Department, on 17 September 1947; it is reprinted in The Open Mind (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1955).
It is a very far reaching control which would eliminate
the rivalry between nations in this field, which would prevent the
surreptitious arming of one nation against another, which would provide
some cushion of time before atomic attack, and presumably therefore
before any attack with weapons of mass destruction, and which would go a
long way toward removing atomic energy at least as a source of conflict
between the powers.
The term was also used in the introduction to the hugely influential U.S. government document known as NSC 68 written in 1950.
During a speech at Rice University on 12 September 1962, President John F. Kennedy spoke of not filling space "with weapons of mass destruction, but with instruments of knowledge and understanding." The following month, during a televised presentation about the Cuban Missile Crisis on 22 October 1962, Kennedy made reference to "offensive weapons of sudden mass destruction."
An early use of the exact phrase in an international treaty is in the Outer Space Treaty of 1967, but the treaty provides no definition of the phrase,
and the treaty also categorically prohibits the stationing of "weapons"
and the testing of "any type of weapon" in outer space, in addition to
its specific prohibition against placing in orbit, or installing on
celestial bodies, "any objects carrying nuclear weapons or any other
kinds of weapons of mass destruction."
Evolution of its use
During the Cold War, the term "weapons of mass destruction" was primarily a reference to nuclear weapons. At the time, in the West the euphemism "strategic weapons"
was used to refer to the American nuclear arsenal. However, there is no
precise definition of the "strategic" category, neither considering
range nor yield of the nuclear weapon.
Subsequent to Operation Opera,
the destruction of a pre-operational nuclear reactor inside Iraq by the
Israeli Air Force in 1981, the Israeli prime minister, Menachem Begin,
countered criticism by saying that "on no account shall we permit an
enemy to develop weapons of mass destruction against the people of
Israel." This policy of pre-emptive action against real or perceived
weapons of mass destruction became known as the Begin Doctrine.
The term "weapons of mass destruction" continued to see periodic use, usually in the context of nuclear arms control; Ronald Reagan used it during the 1986 Reykjavík Summit, when referring to the 1967 Outer Space Treaty. Reagan's successor, George H.W. Bush, used the term in a 1989 speech to the United Nations, primarily in reference to chemical arms.
The end of the Cold War reduced U.S. reliance on nuclear weapons
as a deterrent, causing it to shift its focus to disarmament. With the
1990 invasion of Kuwait and 1991 Gulf War, Iraq's nuclear, biological, and chemical weapons programs became a particular concern of the first Bush Administration. Following the war, Bill Clinton and other western politicians and media continued to use the term, usually in reference to ongoing attempts to dismantle Iraq's weapons programs.
In early 2019, more than 90% of world's 13,865 nuclear weapons were owned by Russia and the United States.
After the 11 September 2001 attacks and the 2001 anthrax attacks in the United States, an increased fear of nonconventional weapons and asymmetric warfare took hold in many countries. The fear reached a crescendo with the 2002 Iraq disarmament crisis and the alleged existence of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq that became the primary justification for the 2003 invasion of Iraq; however, American forces found none in Iraq. They found old stockpiles of chemical munitions including sarin and mustard agents, but all were considered to be unusable because of corrosion or degradation.
Iraq, however, declared a chemical weapons stockpile in 2009 which U.N.
personnel had secured after the 1991 Gulf War. The stockpile contained
mainly chemical precursors, but some munitions remained usable.
Because of its prolific use and (worldwide) public profile during this period, the American Dialect Society voted "weapons of mass destruction" (and its abbreviation, "WMD") the word of the year in 2002, and in 2003 Lake Superior State University added WMD to its list of terms banished for "Mis-use, Over-use and General Uselessness" (and "as a card that trumps all forms of aggression").
The most widely used definition of "weapons of mass destruction" is that of nuclear, biological, or chemical weapons (NBC) although there is no treaty or customary international law
that contains an authoritative definition. Instead, international law
has been used with respect to the specific categories of weapons within
WMD, and not to WMD as a whole. While nuclear, chemical and biological
weapons are regarded as the three major types of WMDs,
some analysts have argued that radiological materials as well as
missile technology and delivery systems such as aircraft and ballistic
missiles could be labeled as WMDs as well.
However, there is an argument that nuclear and biological weapons do not belong in the same category as chemical and "dirty bomb"
radiological weapons, which have limited destructive potential (and
close to none, as far as property is concerned), whereas nuclear and
biological weapons have the unique ability to kill large numbers of
people with very small amounts of material, and thus could be said to
belong in a class by themselves.
Other documents expand the definition of WMD to also include radiological or conventional weapons. The U.S. military refers to WMD as:
Chemical, biological, radiological,
or nuclear weapons capable of a high order of destruction or causing
mass casualties and exclude the means of transporting or propelling the
weapon where such means is a separable and divisible part from the
weapon. Also called WMD.
This may also refer to nuclear ICBMs (intercontinental ballistic missiles).
Protest in Amsterdam against the deployment of Pershing II missiles in Europe, 1981
The significance of the words separable and divisible part of the weapon is that missiles such as the Pershing II and the SCUD are considered weapons of mass destruction, while aircraft capable of carrying bombloads are not.
In 2004, the United Kingdom's Butler Review
recognized the "considerable and long-standing academic debate about
the proper interpretation of the phrase 'weapons of mass destruction'". The committee set out to avoid the general term but when using it, employed the definition of United Nations Security Council Resolution 687, which defined the systems which Iraq was required to abandon:
"Nuclear weapons or nuclear-weapons-usable material or any
sub-systems or components or any research, development, support or
manufacturing facilities relating to [nuclear weapons].
Chemical and biological weapons and all stocks of agents and all
related subsystems and components and all research, development, support
and manufacturing facilities.
Ballistic missiles with a range greater than 150 kilometres and related major parts, and repair and production facilities."
Chemical weapons expert Gert G. Harigel considers only nuclear
weapons true weapons of mass destruction, because "only nuclear weapons
are completely indiscriminate by their explosive power, heat radiation
and radioactivity, and only they should therefore be called a weapon of
mass destruction". He prefers to call chemical and biological weapons
"weapons of terror" when aimed against civilians and "weapons of
intimidation" for soldiers.
Testimony of one such soldier expresses the same viewpoint. For a period of several months in the winter of 2002–2003, U.S. Deputy Secretary of DefensePaul Wolfowitz
frequently used the term "weapons of mass terror", apparently also
recognizing the distinction between the psychological and the physical
effects of many things currently falling into the WMD category.
An additional condition often implicitly applied to WMD is that
the use of the weapons must be strategic. In other words, they would be
designed to "have consequences far outweighing the size and
effectiveness of the weapons themselves". The strategic nature of WMD also defines their function in the military doctrine of total war
as targeting the means a country would use to support and supply its
war effort, specifically its population, industry, and natural
resources.
Within U.S. civil defense organizations, the category is now Chemical, Biological, Radiological, Nuclear, and Explosive (CBRNE), which defines WMD as:
(1) Any explosive, incendiary, poison gas, bomb, grenade, or rocket having a propellant charge of more than four ounces [113 g], missile having an explosive or incendiary charge of more than one-quarter ounce [7 g], or mine
or device similar to the above. (2) Poison gas. (3) Any weapon
involving a disease organism. (4) Any weapon that is designed to release
radiation at a level dangerous to human life.
Military definition
For the general purposes of national defense, the U.S. Code defines a weapon of mass destruction as:
any weapon or device that is intended, or has the capability, to
cause death or serious bodily injury to a significant number of people
through the release, dissemination, or impact of:
toxic or poisonous chemicals or their precursors
a disease organism
radiation or radioactivity
For the purposes of the prevention of weapons proliferation,
the U.S. Code defines weapons of mass destruction as "chemical,
biological, and nuclear weapons, and chemical, biological, and nuclear
materials used in the manufacture of such weapons".
Criminal (civilian) definition
For the purposes of U.S. criminal law concerning terrorism, weapons of mass destruction are defined as:
any "destructive device" defined as any explosive, incendiary, or poison gas
– bomb, grenade, rocket having a propellant charge of more than four
ounces, missile having an explosive or incendiary charge of more than
one-quarter ounce, mine, or device similar to any of the devices
described in the preceding clauses
any weapon that is designed or intended to cause death or serious
bodily injury through the release, dissemination, or impact of toxic or
poisonous chemicals, or their precursors
any weapon involving a biological agent, toxin, or vector
any weapon that is designed to release radiation or radioactivity at a level dangerous to human life
any "destructive device" as defined in Title 18 USC Section 921:
any explosive, incendiary, or poison gas – bomb, grenade, rocket having
a propellant charge of more than four ounces, missile having an
explosive or incendiary charge of more than one-quarter ounce, mine, or
device similar to any of the devices described in the preceding clauses
any weapon designed or intended to cause death or serious bodily
injury through the release, dissemination, or impact of toxic or
poisonous chemicals or their precursors
any weapon involving a disease organism
any weapon designed to release radiation or radioactivity at a level dangerous to human life
any device or weapon designed or intended to cause death or serious
bodily injury by causing a malfunction of or destruction of an aircraft
or other vehicle that carries humans or of an aircraft or other vehicle
whose malfunction or destruction may cause said aircraft or other
vehicle to cause death or serious bodily injury to humans who may be
within range of the vector in its course of travel or the travel of its
debris.
Indictments and convictions for possession and use of WMD such as truck bombs, pipe bombs, shoe bombs, and cactus needles coated with a biological toxin have been obtained under 18 USC 2332a.
As defined by 18 USC §2332 (a), a Weapon of Mass Destruction is:
(A) any destructive device as defined in section 921 of the title;
(B) any weapon that is designed or intended to cause death or
serious bodily injury through the release, dissemination, or impact of
toxic or poisonous chemicals, or their precursors;
(C) any weapon involving a biological agent, toxin, or vector (as those terms are defined in section 178 of this title); or
(D) any weapon that is designed to release radiation or radioactivity at a level dangerous to human life;
Under the same statute, conspiring, attempting, threatening, or using
a Weapon of Mass Destruction may be imprisoned for any term of years or
for life, and if resulting in death, be punishable by death or by
imprisonment for any terms of years or for life. They can also be asked
to pay a maximum fine of $250,000.
The Washington Post reported on 30 March 2006: "Jurors asked the judge in the death penalty trial of Zacarias Moussaoui
today to define the term 'weapons of mass destruction' and were told it
includes airplanes used as missiles". Moussaoui was indicted and tried
for conspiracy to both destroy aircraft and use weapons of mass
destruction, among others.
The surviving Boston Marathon bombing perpetrator, Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, was charged in June 2013 with the federal offense of "use of a weapon of mass destruction" after he and his brother Tamerlan Tsarnaev
allegedly placed crude shrapnel bombs, made from pressure cookers
packed with ball bearings and nails, near the finish line of the Boston
Marathon. He was convicted in April 2015. The bombing resulted in three
deaths and at least 264 injuries.
There are eight countries that have declared they possess nuclear
weapons and are known to have tested a nuclear weapon, only five of
which are members of the NPT. The eight are China, France, India, North Korea, Pakistan, Russia, the United Kingdom, and the United States. Israel
is considered by most analysts to have nuclear weapons numbering in the
low hundreds as well, but maintains an official policy of nuclear
ambiguity, neither denying nor confirming its nuclear status.
South Africa
developed a small nuclear arsenal in the 1980s but disassembled them in
the early 1990s, making it the only country to have fully given up an
independently developed nuclear weapons arsenal. Belarus, Kazakhstan, and Ukraine inherited stockpiles of nuclear arms following the break-up of the Soviet Union, but relinquished them to the Russian Federation.
The history of biological warfare goes back at least to the siege of Caffa in 1346 and possibly much farther back to antiquity. However, only by the turn of the 20th century did advances in microbiology
allow for the large-scale weaponization of pathogens. At least nine
states have operated offensive biological weapons programs during the
20th century, including Canada (1946 - 1956), France (1921 - 1972), Iraq (1985 - 1990s), Japan (1930s - 1945), Rhodesia, South Africa (1981 - 1993), the Soviet Union (1920s - 1992), the United Kingdom (1934 - 1956), and the United States (1943 - 1969).
The Japanese biological weapons program, which was run by the secret Imperial Japanese ArmyUnit 731 during the Sino-Japanese War (1937–1945), became infamous for conducting often fatal human experiments on prisoners and producing biological weapons for combat use. The Soviet Union
covertly operated the world's largest, longest, and most sophisticated
biological weapons program, in violation of its obligations under
international law.
International restrictions on biological warfare began with the 1925 Geneva Protocol, which prohibits the use but not the possession or development of biological and chemical weapons. Upon ratification of the Geneva Protocol, several countries made reservations regarding its applicability and use in retaliation. Due to these reservations, it was in practice a "no-first-use" agreement only. The 1972 Biological Weapons Convention
(BWC) supplements the Geneva Protocol by prohibiting the development,
production, acquisition, transfer, stockpiling, and use of biological
weapons.
Having entered into force on 26 March 1975, the BWC was the first
multilateral disarmament treaty to ban the production of an entire
category of weapons of mass destruction. As of March 2021, 183 states have become party to the treaty.
Chemical weapons
Countries with known or possible chemical weapons, as of 2013
Chemical weapons have been used around the world by various
civilizations since ancient times. In the industrial era, they were used
extensively by both sides during World War I, and by the Axis powers during World War II (both in battle and in extermination camp gas chambers)
though Allied powers also stockpiled them. Countries in Western Europe
renounced the use of such weapons. As of 2018, a handful of countries
have known inventories, and many are in the process of being safely
destroyed under the Chemical Weapons Convention. Nonetheless, proliferation and use in war zones remains an active concern, most recently the use of chemical weapons in the Syrian Civil War.
Ethics and international legal status
Some commentators classify some or all the uses of nuclear, chemical, or biological weapons during wartime as a war crime (or crime against humanity if widespread) because they kill civilians (who are protected by the laws of war) indiscriminately or are specifically prohibited by international treaties (which have become more comprehensive over time).
Proponents of use say that specific uses of such weapons have been
necessary for defense or to avoid more deaths in a protracted war. The tactic of terror bombing from aircraft, and generally targeting cities with area bombardment or saturation carpet bombing
has also been criticized, defended, and prohibited by treaty in the
same way; the destructive effect of conventional saturation bombing is
similar to that of a nuclear weapon.
United States politics
Due
to the potentially indiscriminate effects of WMD, the fear of a WMD
attack has shaped political policies and campaigns, fostered social
movements, and has been the central theme of many films. Support for
different levels of WMD development and control varies nationally and
internationally. Yet understanding of the nature of the threats is not
high, in part because of imprecise usage of the term by politicians and
the media.
An atomic-bomb blueprint
Fear of WMD, or of threats diminished by the possession of WMD, has
long been used to catalyze public support for various WMD policies. They
include mobilization of pro- and anti-WMD campaigners alike, and
generation of popular political support. The term WMD may be used as a powerful buzzword or to generate a culture of fear. It is also used ambiguously, particularly by not distinguishing among the different types of WMD.
A television commercial called Daisy, promoting Democrat Lyndon Johnson's 1964 presidential candidacy, invoked the fear of a nuclear war and was an element in Johnson's subsequent election.
Later, United States' President George W. Bush used the threat of potential WMD in Iraq as justification for the 2003 invasion of Iraq. Broad reference to Iraqi WMD in general was seen as an element of President Bush's arguments. The claim that Iraq possessed Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD) was a major factor that led to the invasion of Iraq in 2003 by Coalition forces.
Over 500 munitions containing mustard agent and sarin were
discovered throughout Iraq since 2003; they were made in the 1980s and
are no longer usable as originally intended due to corrosion.
The American Heritage Dictionary
defines a weapon of mass destruction as: "a weapon that can cause
widespread destruction or kill large numbers of people, especially a
nuclear, chemical, or biological weapon." In other words, it does not have to be nuclear, biological or chemical (NBC). For example, Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, one of the perpetrators of the Boston Marathon bombing, was charged under United States law 18 U.S.C. 2332A for using a weapon of mass destruction and that was a pressure cooker bomb. In other words, it was a weapon that caused large-scale death and destruction, without being an NBC weapon.
Media coverage
In 2004, the Center for International and Security Studies at Maryland (CISSM) released a report examining the media's coverage of WMD issues during three separate periods: nuclear weapons tests by India and Pakistan in May 1998; the U.S. announcement of evidence of a North Korean nuclear weapons program in October 2002; and revelations about Iran's nuclear program in May 2003. The CISSM report argues that poor coverage resulted less from political bias among the media than from tired journalistic conventions. The report's major findings were that:
Most media outlets represented WMD as a monolithic menace,
failing to adequately distinguish between weapons programs and actual
weapons or to address the real differences among chemical, biological,
nuclear, and radiological weapons.
Most journalists accepted the Bush administration's formulation of the "War on Terror" as a campaign against WMD, in contrast to coverage during the Clinton era, when many journalists made careful distinctions between acts of terrorism and the acquisition and use of WMD.
Many stories stenographically reported the incumbent
administration's perspective on WMD, giving too little critical
examination of the way officials framed the events, issues, threats, and
policy options.
Too few stories proffered alternative perspectives to official line, a problem exacerbated by the journalistic prioritizing of breaking-news stories and the "inverted pyramid" style of storytelling.
In a separate study published in 2005, a group of researchers assessed the effects reports and retractions in the media had on people's memory regarding the search for WMD in Iraq during the 2003 Iraq War. The study focused on populations in two coalition
countries (Australia and the United States) and one opposed to the war
(Germany). Results showed that U.S. citizens generally did not correct
initial misconceptions regarding WMD, even following disconfirmation;
Australian and German citizens were more responsive to retractions.
Dependence on the initial source of information led to a substantial
minority of Americans exhibiting false memory that WMD were indeed discovered, while they were not. This led to three conclusions:
The repetition of tentative news stories, even if they are
subsequently disconfirmed, can assist in the creation of false memories
in a substantial proportion of people.
Once information is published, its subsequent correction does not
alter people's beliefs unless they are suspicious about the motives
underlying the events the news stories are about.
When people ignore corrections, they do so irrespective of how certain they are that the corrections occurred.
A poll conducted between June and September 2003 asked people whether
they thought evidence of WMD had been discovered in Iraq since the war
ended. They were also asked which media sources they relied upon. Those
who obtained their news primarily from Fox News were three times as
likely to believe that evidence of WMD had been discovered in Iraq than
those who relied on PBS and NPR for their news, and one third more
likely than those who primarily watched CBS.
Media source
Respondents believing evidence of WMD had been found in Iraq
Based on a series of polls taken from June–September 2003.
In 2006, Fox News reported the claims of two Republican lawmakers that WMDs had been found in Iraq, based upon unclassified portions of a report by the National Ground Intelligence Center. Quoting from the report, Senator Rick Santorum
said "Since 2003, coalition forces have recovered approximately 500
weapons munitions which contain degraded mustard or sarin nerve agent".
According to David Kay, who appeared before the U.S. House Armed
Services Committee to discuss these badly corroded munitions, they were
leftovers, many years old, improperly stored or destroyed by the Iraqis. Charles Duelfer agreed, stating on NPR's Talk of the Nation:
"When I was running the ISG – the Iraq Survey Group – we had a couple
of them that had been turned in to these IEDs, the improvised explosive
devices. But they are local hazards. They are not a major, you know,
weapon of mass destruction."
Later, wikileaks would show that WMDs of these kinds continued to be found as the Iraqi occupation continued.
Many news agencies, including Fox News, reported the conclusions of the CIA that, based upon the investigation of the Iraq Survey Group, WMDs are yet to be found in Iraq.
Public perceptions
Awareness
and opinions of WMD have varied during the course of their history.
Their threat is a source of unease, security, and pride to different
people. The anti-WMD movement is embodied most in nuclear disarmament, and led to the formation of the British Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament in 1957.
In order to increase awareness of all kinds of WMD, in 2004 the nuclear physicist and Nobel Peace Prize winner Joseph Rotblat inspired the creation of The WMD Awareness Programme to provide trustworthy and up to date information on WMD worldwide.
In 1998 University of New Mexico's Institute for Public Policy released their third report on U.S. perceptions – including the general public, politicians and scientists – of nuclear weapons since the breakup of the Soviet Union. Risks of nuclear conflict, proliferation, and terrorism were seen as substantial.
While maintenance of the U.S. nuclear arsenal was considered
above average in importance, there was widespread support for a
reduction in the stockpile, and very little support for developing and
testing new nuclear weapons.
Also in 1998, but after the UNM survey was conducted, nuclear weapons became an issue in India's election of March, in relation to political tensions with neighboring Pakistan. Prior to the election the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) announced it would "declare India a nuclear weapon state" after coming to power.
BJP won the elections, and on 14 May, three days after India
tested nuclear weapons for the second time, a public opinion poll
reported that a majority of Indians favored the country's nuclear
build-up.
On 15 April 2004, the Program on International Policy Attitudes (PIPA) reported that U.S. citizens showed high levels of concern regarding WMD, and that preventing the spread of nuclear weapons
should be "a very important U.S. foreign policy goal", accomplished
through multilateral arms control rather than the use of military
threats.
A majority also believed the United States should be more forthcoming with its biological research and its Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty commitment of nuclear arms reduction.
A Russian opinion poll conducted on 5 August 2005 indicated half
the population believes new nuclear powers have the right to possess
nuclear weapons. 39% believes the Russian stockpile should be reduced, though not fully eliminated.
In popular culture
Weapons of mass destruction and their related impacts have been a mainstay of popular culture since the beginning of the Cold War,
as both political commentary and humorous outlet. The actual phrase
"weapons of mass destruction" has been used similarly and as a way to
characterise any powerful force or product since the Iraqi weapons
crisis in the lead up to the Coalition invasion of Iraq in 2003.
The international radioactivity symbol (also known as trefoil) first appeared in 1946, at the University of California, Berkeley Radiation Laboratory. At the time, it was rendered as magenta, and was set on a blue background.
It is drawn with a central circle of radius R, the blades having an internal radius of 1.5R and an external radius of 5R, and separated from each other by 60°. It is meant to represent a radiating atom.
The International Atomic Energy Agency
found that the trefoil radiation symbol is unintuitive and can be
variously interpreted by those uneducated in its meaning; therefore, its
role as a hazard warning was compromised as it did not clearly indicate
"danger" to many non-Westerners and children who encountered it. As a
result of research, a new radiation hazard symbol (ISO 21482) was
developed in 2007 to be placed near the most dangerous parts of
radiation sources featuring a skull, someone running away, and using a
red rather than yellow background.
The red background is intended to convey urgent danger, and the
sign is intended to be used on equipment where very strong ionizing
radiation can be encountered if the device is dismantled or otherwise
tampered with. The intended use of the sign is not in a place where the
normal user will see it, but in a place where it will be seen by someone
who has started to dismantle a radiation-emitting device or equipment.
The aim of the sign is to warn people such as scrap metal workers to
stop work and leave the area.
Biological weaponry/hazard symbol
Developed by Dow Chemical company in the 1960s for their containment products.
According to Charles Dullin, an environmental-health engineer who contributed to its development:
We wanted something that was memorable but meaningless, so we could educate people as to what it means.
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