Antarctic Treaty stance on radiological area denial

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amitakartok
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Antarctic Treaty stance on radiological area denial

What the title says. We all know that the treaty bans the use of nuclear weapons - but what about conventional weapons salted with radioisotopes for contamination purposes, rather than nuclear fission? If, for example, M'Quve were to booby-trap Odessa with smoke bombs spiked with powdered cesium-137 to render the facilities and resources unusable to the Federation without severe radiation poisoning of anyone who works there, would that still be a treaty violation?
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Seto Kaiba
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Re: Antarctic Treaty stance on radiological area denial

Radiological weapons ("dirty bombs") are usually lumped under the header of nuclear weapons for most purposes both in fiction and in reality, either because they'd have to be deployed by "salted" nukes to produce long-lasting radiological contamination of a wide area or simply because they employ nuclear material. For the same reason, they're also often lumped under "weapons of mass destruction".

The Antarctic Treaty banned (indiscriminate) weapons of mass destruction like nuclear, biological, and chemical weapons, so it seems a safe bet that radiological weapons were covered by the treaty as well. Even if they weren't, it'd almost certainly still be a war crime to boobytrap a facility with radiological weapons given how easily that kind of thing can spread radioactive material outside the combat zone on prevailing winds.

(This is one of the chief reasons that these weapons aren't used... uncontrolled spreading of the radioactive material is pretty much unavoidable, and nobody wants deadly deadly cobalt or cesium radioisotopes blowing back over their own forces after setting a dirty bomb off, and it's impossible to set off a hideously cruel weapon like that and NOT instantly get branded as The Bad Guy. Especially if that spreading cloud of radioisotopes starts blowing towards an inhabited area. You could be the nicest, most cultured guy in the Earth Sphere... but set a bomb like that off, and the locals'll lynch you regardless. Even M'Quve isn't THAT dumb.)
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amitakartok
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Re: Antarctic Treaty stance on radiological area denial

Even M'Quve isn't THAT dumb.
Um... M'Quve tried to launch a nuke in canon despite the explicit treaty ban. I think he is that dumb. And the above thing would be armed when the base is being abandoned, so non-POW Zeon forces wouldn't be affected.

The question came to me after having read the Zeon event tree in Gihren's Greed and went WTF at the fact that punishing M'Quve for that nuke rather than doubling-down on the blatant treaty violation is considered morally evil.
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Seto Kaiba
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Re: Antarctic Treaty stance on radiological area denial

amitakartok wrote: Tue Oct 15, 2019 12:17 pm Um... M'Quve tried to launch a nuke in canon despite the explicit treaty ban. I think he is that dumb. And the above thing would be armed when the base is being abandoned, so non-POW Zeon forces wouldn't be affected.
Don't get me wrong, Colonel M'Quve did something incredibly stupid and reckless by attempting to deploy a nuclear weapon against the Earth Federation Forces attacking Odessa. As big and showy as they are, nuclear warheads are still neater and vastly more precise than a radiological "dirty" bomb and fallout can be minimized if the warhead is deployed correctly. It's an unpalatable weapon, but it's still precision military ordnance that kills near-instantly in most cases.

Radiological weapons are difficult to deploy with precision, they're exceedingly difficult to clean up after, have an inordinately high probability of collateral damage due to interactions with weather systems, and most importantly they're exceedingly cruel weapons that cause a slow, painful, lingering death. That's why militaries don't use that kind of weapon in the real world... they're mainly weapons of terror good for causing mass civilian casualties. It's really not a weapon you can use without a MASSIVE loss of face. M'Quve would probably have been ostracized by Zeon's own troops similar to how Cima Garahau was after Zeon's forces learned she'd gassed an entire colony with nerve agent (and they didn't care whether she knew or not, so M'Quve knowingly deploying something even worse would probably not go over well on either side).

Launching a nuclear missile instead of deploying radiological bombs as booby traps is the difference between being tried and simply shot as a terrorist.
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