Banned Warfare Weapons

Mustard gas terrorized World War I trenches. Its name comes from its yellow-brown color and odor, similar to horseradish. Heavier than air, mustard gas cleared trenches well. It almost single-handedly caused the 1928 Geneva Conventions. Inhaling it fills lungs with fluid, drowning victims in their own fluids.

Soldiers were told to pee into handkerchiefs and breathe through them if hit by a mustard gas bomb or exposed to it. This helped them escape or let the gas disappear.

The Hague and Geneva outlawed nerve gases of all kinds from 1899 until 1993. All nerve agents—like Sarin, VX, Tabun, and Soman—work the same way: they block the enzyme that normally destroys a vital neurotransmitter.Nerve agents make the entire nervous system malfunction, like an electrical system full of short circuits.

Death usually results from the respiratory system shutting down. However, painful blisters, boils, and internal bleeding happen first.

Phosgene caused about 85% of chemical weapon deaths in World War I. Simple, cheap production made phosgene easy. It damages lung proteins, causing them to break down. This stops the lungs from exchanging oxygen. Phosgene is insidious; it is colorless, almost odorless, and symptoms take time to appear.

Japan used phosgene at least 375 times during WWII. They generally used it against China.

Tear gas police use on crowds in America is technically banned for war by the Hague Convention. Though mostly non-lethal, tear gas is an inhalant chemical weapon that blocks breathing, placing it in the same legal class as mustard gas. Check Russian Special Ops tactics for more on lethality against terrorists. So, shooting protesters in Missouri is legal, but dropping it on a machine gun nest in Afghanistan is not.

Pepper spray follows the same rule as tear gas. Technically, pepper spray is an aerosol chemical weapon that disrupts breathing, which the Hague Convention bans.

Protocol I of the 1979 Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons bans weapons using non-metallic fragments not seen by X-Ray. Field surgeons cannot find fragments they cannot locate inside an injured body.

This rule does not forbid using plastic or undetectable materials in weapons. It only means weapons cannot use undetectable fragments as the main damage device.

Protocol II of the 1979 Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons prohibits or regulates these old death traps. Pits with sharpened bamboo spikes maimed thousands of soldiers in Vietnam and the Pacific during WWII. Vietcong and Japanese routinely rolled those spikes in human or animal feces first, causing secondary infections after even a small scratch.

This directly violates the 1907 Hague convention on biological weapons and may violate the 1675 Strasbourg Agreement. This violates many conventions, agreements, and accords. Still, it remains fun to upercut your opponent into in Mortal Kombat.

Bio-weapons are some of humanity's oldest terror weapons. They date back to the Mongols, who catapulted rotting, infected bodies over castle walls to spread disease and sickness. The Black Plague, spread by fleas on rat backs and originating in Asia, might be the lingering result of a primitive bio-terrorism attack centuries earlier.

Protocol III of the Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons does not explicitly forbid flamethrowers on the battlefield if the area is far from civilians. This protocol mostly targets incendiary devices near civilian areas. It does not necessarily stop flamethrowers in an open tank battle or clearing caves in Afghanistan. Guerrilla fighters, however, often hide behind or inside civilian areas.

Flamethrowers are prohibited if human shields are used or captives are present. They are also very easy to improvise. Any controlled release of accelerant plus fire is a flamethrower by definition.

You might like the smell of napalm in the morning. However, the same Protocol III, passed after Vietnam, limits napalm use. It cannot be used near civilian targets. Napalm cannot burn forests unless the trees hide military combatants or vehicles. Thus, napalm is not banned, but it often cannot be used on current battlefields.

The technology exists for forty years. "Blinding" laser beams are not the laser "dazzlers" police and special ops teams use; those beams are low-powered and do not cause permanent blindness.

This ban covers lasers powerful enough to cause permanent blindness. Doing so is easy; most juvenile delinquents with laser pointers have been warned. The prohibition against deliberately blinding weapons goes back to some of the first weapons bans passed in the 19th century.

Laser cannons exist. The Air Force mounts powerful laser cannons on aircraft and battleships. These weapons shoot down incoming missiles from up to 250 miles away. Hypothetically, they could mount on tanks to incinerate ground targets. However, using directed energy weapons this way is currently banned. Authorities forbid it because the low dose from a long distance might just cook eyes instead of killing the target, violating the ban on blinding lasers.

Directed energy weapons include 'death ray' lasers, sonic cannons, and plasma rifles. Right now, directed energy weapons strong enough to kill people in war are forbidden. This rule does not apply to de-powered, non-lethal microwave emitters like the Active Denial System. The ADS sends out energy that causes intense heat on a crowd. It does not cause actual burning.

The sensation from the ADS feels like standing a few feet from an open oven. You can set the ADS to 'kill,' but that is illegal for now.

Since the Vietnam War, old unexploded landmines have hurt Southeast Asia. Cambodia has a high rate of amputees; some 40,000 people stepped on landmines planted during the 1970 Cambodian Civil War. In 2013 alone, 111 people died from landmines buried more than 40 years earlier. Therefore, as of 1980, mines outside fenced or cordoned areas must have a self-dearming or self-destruct device set to go off after a set time.

Standard land mines can still be used. They must only be employed inside fenced areas, away from civilians. They must be removed or destroyed when the conflict ends.

The oldest arms agreement, the Strasbourg Agreement of 1675, banned poisoned bullets. Early war guns lacked accuracy, so soldiers soaked bullets in poisonous or infectious stuff. Soldiers sometimes hid bullet caches in rotting corpses; a latrine pit worked just as well.

When France and the Holy Roman Empire fought, they first suffered many casualties from infection, not gunshot wounds. Over 250 years passed before Geneva addressed chemical and biological weapons again.

The Hague Convention of 1899 outlawed hollow-point bullets, also called "expanding ordinance," for international warfare. This followed the St. Petersburg Declaration of 1868. That declaration banned exploding or expanding projectiles under 400 grams, clearly separating "bullets" from "artillery shells."

The ban aimed to stop using bullets that guaranteed death. Some argue that is the main goal of shooting someone in the first place.

You read that right. The 1898 Hague Convention states international law forbids dropping bombs from balloons. The prohibition against "the discharge of any projectile or explosive from balloons or similar means" took effect at the 1907 Peace Conference as a trial measure before the third conference.

International law forbids bombs laced with radioactive material, though most nations do not pursue them. A dirty bomb aims to make an area uninhabitable by irradiating it, meaning the "winner" cannot occupy it. However, the radioactive material needed for an effective dirty bomb could also build a nuclear bomb.

Salted bombs function like dirty bombs but are true nuclear weapons meant for short-term area denial. A "salted" nuke uses an isotope like cobalt, gold, zinc, or sodium. A nuclear blast creates a massive fallout cloud of these elements. These weapons match the type used in the Soviet "Doomsday Device" from Dr. Strangelove..

Small, one-kiloton salted nukes could serve a tactical purpose. They would allow radioactive fallout to decay in a year or two, denying enemy forces large land areas temporarily. Radiation is invisible, so these weapons face prohibition due to their potential harm to civilians.

Do not laugh too hard; this has happened, sometimes with devastating results. Some link the Black Plague to a lingering bio-terror attack from Asia. Using hordes or plagues of disease-carrying animals in war is illegal today.

During World War II, Americans tested a secret weapon to destroy Japanese cities. Japan's cities mostly used wood and paper. The plan involved releasing a bomb filled with sleeping bats (captured from New Mexico caves) wearing napalm-like incendiary collars. At dawn, the bats would fly out and roost under Japanese homes up to 40 miles away. Project "X-Ray," the code name, was tested in 1944, but the war ended with the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

Protocol V of the Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons bans 'explosive remnants of war,' like unexploded bombs and artillery shells. This protocol formed in the 1990s. New Middle Eastern jihadis started building roadside bombs using unexploded Soviet ordnance from the Afghanistan conflict. Improvised explosive devices remain a terror source in that area.

America generally avoids biological and chemical weapons. However, many historians assert the U.S. attempted genocide using bio-weaponry. America's 'manifest destiny' involved removing original inhabitants from the continent. Bullets and blades killed many; diseases introduced by Europeans wiped out far more. Europeans gained partial immunity to many diseases from their global trade centers, yet they remained carriers. Where Europeans went, plague followed, killing native populations and aiding conquest.