Radiological warfare

Radiological warfare is any form of warfare involving deliberate radiation poisoning, without relying on nuclear fissionor nuclear fusion.

Radiological weaponsare normally considered weapons of mass destruction, and are very commonly equated with a radiological bomboften mis-called a "dirty bomb" (which refers to a nuclear weaponwith a radiological side effect). However, bombs are very inefficient ways to spread radiation, and all such special weapons have problems that render them likely impractical for military uses.

Rather, radiological warfare would be of vastly more use to terroristsspreading or intensifying fear, uncertainty and doubt. The release of radioactive material may involve no special "weapon" and include no direct killingof people, but rather make whole areas or structures unusable or unfavorable for the support of human life. The elevated radiation levels in the targeted areas would make these areas dangerous to humans. An area, once contaminated with radiation, is often extraordinarily difficult to clean up. Radiation is difficult to purge from the built environment, and may take a long time to fully decay in the natural environment.

Like land mines, radiological weapons can be used as an area-denialmethod.

This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License.
It uses material from the http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radiological+warfare Wikipedia article Radiological warfare.