More a 'settings' question than a games question, but here seems like the right place to ask:
So /tg/, I have a crippling phobia of adult Periplaneta americana and keep a can of Raid on hand just in case.
Today I had to relight the pilot on my water heater which required me to open that too-long sealed infernal gateway to the WH closet and descend into the stronghold of The Roach King and his damnable horde of disgusting minions.
After employing enough bug bombs to constitute a minor war crime, I started Shop-Vaccing up the desiccated arthropodic corpses of my hated enemies. Their vile, impotent husks were empty of the evil of their existence, but my hate for them burned still. I reflected on their mass extinction from my turf. This is how I dealt with inhuman, vile things daring to exist in spite of my most strenuous objection. Would not this be how most people would deal with unwanted life?
I mean, WE don't use Biochemical warfare on eachother because we did that whole World War 1 thing and learned it's slightly too hellish even for war. But there's nothing stopping us from employing it on equally threatening or hated aliens or enemies when the chips are down and the cameras aren't watching.
So why don't we see more BioWeapons in more Science Fiction? XCOM cats are plugging chryssalids with bullets when we've dissected a living sample and could probably figure out what cocktail of air or liquid would rot it from the inside out.
It makes sense not to use them in some settings. Picard can't very well prattle on about how awesome the Federation is if he virus-bombs Romulus and Remus back to primordial soup. But why doesn't Cdr Shepherd agent orange the Reapers, or why wouldn't Haldeman's characters employ apocalyptic chemical attacks against the Taurans.
IS there a setting where humans make liberal use of nerve-destroying chems to win their wars?
Just something that crossed my mind.
Gas not so much, but plenty of sci-fi settings have bioweapons. Although in sci-fi context this doesn't mean bacteria or viruses, but rather living creatures made for war. Usually they end up not working and turning on their masters though.
Warhammer 40k, but you're, probably, know that
Symbionts and grafts in eberron
>>46560264
>why doesnt Shepherd agent orange the Reapers?
Cause they were mechanical AI juggernauts and even one was able to stand up the continuous pounding from half a fleet of various warships and not give a fuck. If they produced a chemical that could somehow kill it the quantities and volatility of the stuff would be a huge issue. Look up the chemical CIF3 that the nazis experimented with for an idea.
Anyway, on to the actual point and away from my sperg. Theres a few reasons I could see as to why they wouldnt:
>1
Once life was discovered outside of our little orb they expanded all those war limitations to include other sapient races.
>2
Its been so long since chemicals have been weaponized that the research to make them on par with what is currently being used isnt seen as worth the funding. (bit iffy of a reason, but could work)
>3
MAD, mutually assured destruction. Eye for an eye and all that. What (presumedly) stops us from launching nukes at each other is just as likely to stop us from launching chemical warfare in fear of the chemical nukes that could be launched back.
>4
Simple morality. While there would certainly be plenty of people willing to in wartime (myself included) there would also be a lot of people who wouldnt be willing to. Potentially starting a political movement or even rebellion, the last things you need in wartime.
All that said, there is one huge reason for it: its effective and causes very minimal casualities on your side while inflicting a lot on the opponent. It also brings an intimidation factor with it in how horrific it is, demoralizing your opponent. If pushed to the brink and nukes werent an option it wouldnt surprise me if we turned to them as a last ditch effort.
>>46560264
> Would not this be how most people would deal with unwanted life?
You have a phobia, and you're dealing with non-sapient pests.
People who don't have severe, irrational fears and who are dealing with fellow thinking beings may not react in quite the same way.
A biowepaon is when you use a living thing to attack your target. Plague, smallpox, anthrax, Pythium oligandrum, Amblyseius swirskii (depending on the target) etc.
Neurotoxins like that bug bomb, or sarin, VX, etc are chemcial weapons.
>>46560386
>its effective and causes very minimal casualities on your side while inflicting a lot on the opponent
They're very effective against the unprepared, like some random Kurdish village, but against people who are properly prepared (as any military force is likely to be) it's mroe a weapon of obstruction and area denial than killing, as you simply force people to wear their protective gear and scrub everything squeaky clean.
This can be even more so the case in SciFi, where the wide variety of environments mean fully sealed suits may be pretty common amongst fighting forces. If you're geared up for hard vacuum you're not going to give a fuck about it raining tabun and marburg.
>>46560264
Bioweapons aren't chemical weapons. your bugspray is a chemical agent not a virus.
lobbing a dead cow via trebuchet into a besieged castle is biological warfare, as is giving smallpox blankets to indians
We don't use it as often because it is relativley hard to control as opposed to gas or nuclear weapons since bioweapons are living things like viruses and bacteria. also using them is a warcrime and will most likely trigger an international response
Though i have to admit i would really like a modern fantasy setting based on the 90s Balkan wars
>>46560461
This is a fair point. I hadnt considered full body enviro suits or the like. Then youd have to figure out how to get around their filters and stuff (which would likely fall under my point 2).
As for preparedness, thats something thats (almost) entirely up to setting and fluff. Its entirely possible that other races didnt use chemical or bio warfare, especially if they were a more peaceful or less territorial bunch. Or maybe theyre just as violent but it never clicked for them to throw dangerous chemicals at each other, or maybe it clicked in peace time and it got a ban like what we have without ever having the need to make sufficient gas masks and the like. For these types of races whose only protection is incidental (enviro suits if applicable) chemical warfare would be a wonderful option.
That said, the most effective way to use the chemical warfare would be to carpet bomb important places on the races planets (spaceports, main military bases, capitals, etc) with dirty bombs. However then you have to get around their AA and at that point it would still probably be better to fire a MAC cannon or equivalent from orbit.
In other words OP, money and better options coupled with the moral grey area make chemical warfare pretty meh outside of trench warfare.
>>46561216
>Then youd have to figure out how to get around their filters and stuff
It's much easier to defend against a chemical weapon than it is to design one that defeats said defenses.
Producing a chemical that kills people is frankly easy as hell. There's already a billion of them, the hardest part is just picking out the best ones. That's because the human body is an immensely complex system with a multitude of interdependent parts built out of an enormous variety of highly reactive compounds all working in harmony, which in engineering terms translates to "Several trillion points of failure."
An environment suit, meanwhile, is a far simpler construction made from a scant dozen compounds specifically selected for nonreactivness. There simply aren't many compounds that react with both petrochemical plastics and human tissue, and most of those that do are either not strong enough to be useful as a weapon, or are TOO strong to be useful as a weapon. Sure, a spritz of Chlorine Triflouride over the enemy will fuck them up no matter what gear they're using, but how do you plan to get it to them without melting yourself? It's just as nasty against YOUR suit, and I don't expect many of your troopers to be happy to handle a material that ignites glass, sand, water, asbestos, titanium, and human flesh in the absence of oxygen. All you're really doing is giving the enemy an extremely tempting target.
>>46560264
Wars aren't always fought with genocide as the absolute objective. Many times it's over resources, and you can't exactly harvest resources very well when the planet you've just bio-nuked has extremely virulent, flesh-eating gas for air, the water is home to a million strains of flesh-eating bacteria, and it's overrun with uncontrollable murder-monsters.
I mean, aside from genociding entire species, completely destroying biospheres, and otherwise setting back a war of acquisition by salting the earth, it's something any sane person would find objectionable. Any space president who uses genocide and biosphere destruction as a go-to option for warfare is probably not getting a second term, or is headed straight for the chopping block.
But consider that bio-weapons are very hard to control as well. Sure, you can techno-up some bullshit, but something alive or at the very least capable of replication (self-perpetuation is a necessary trait for a persistent weapon) it's subject to evolution. Engineered viruses and bacteria can, and absolutely will, evolve beyond their design constraints. Still, a chemical weapon with a short lifespan might work, but it's still of unpredictable nature and rather limited utility as you'd need to keep it viable despite its short "sell by" date.
But consider a captured sample can be turned against its perpetrators as well. We see this in the realm of digital warfare as well. Stuxnet was a breakthrough that fucked with Iran's nuclear program, but now the virus has seen itself used in a hundred other malicious viruses since. You'd better have the antidote, cliche aside, if you're going to be using poison, but if there's an antidote it might not be the most effective poison after all.
>>46560264
The Ge'Nev-ah High Council has forbidden it. Their decrees are backed by deities.
>>46560264
>Why don't Humans use more Bioweapons
Because we already use the precisely correct amount.
Wait.
You're not human, are you?
Good sci-fi doesn't revolve around pew-pewan and the individual's experience of the deployment of bioweapons would be something akin to the Death Star operators: waiting around and pressing a few buttons meant to ensure that nothing goes wrong.
