Human Militaries and poison

So I've been thinking...There are a couple of advanced military groups in Felarya. Negav has the Isolon Fist, there are the Miratans and Delurans with their military, and they all seem to be fairly advanced and powerful. So I have a simple question, why don't they use more effective weapons, such as chemical weapons like poison. In particular, Negav and the Miratans seem as if they would benefit from the use of poisoned weapons. Mind you, it wouldn't be the average civilian or adventurer using this stuff, just soldiers like the Isolon Fist.

And before you say that poison would be useless, look at this.

"Finally we get to polonium, used to murder Russian ex-spy Alexander Litvinenko last November. Polonium is harder to come by than dimethylmercury but tough to beat for lethality. Due to intense emission of alpha particles from radioactive decay, it has an LD-50 of 10 to 50 billionths of a gram per kilogram of body weight, meaning one gram of vaporized polonium can kill nearly 1.5 million people."

or

"While it is the deadliest poison known to science, botulinum toxin is used in small quantities as a medication to treat muscle spasms and as a cosmetic. It is so powerful that it has been estimated that 1 teaspoon of the poison has the potential to kill 1.2 billion people. That translates into an LD50 of something as low as 40 nanograms per kilogram." Both articles were taken from here http://blogs.howstuffworks.com/2011/04/07/world-record-167-the-worlds-deadliest-toxins/.

Now that's just stuff we have here on Earth. I'm pretty certain that both Negav and the Miratans would have access to even more potent poisons. So why not use them? And I don't want to hear "Because this is a survival world" or "It would make preds less dangerous" crap. -_- I want an actual reason, not that. That's just an excuse to keep Preds on top no matter what, and a poor one at that. We can do better then that. =3

The problem is not why they are not using these weapon but what is the dose to be lethal to a giant creature ?
Because it's obvious the required amount of poison to kill a giant naga is enough to instant kill a important group human or small creatures. The other problem is to carry it with you because it represent an important load in additional of your regular exploration stuff..

I've kinda wondered this myself, I've been lately at looking at VX Nerve agent



If it takes a tiny drop of VX to kill a human, then I'd think a mortar filled with it should do it for an avarage gaint.

Mind you, since it's the mother of nerve agents, your chance of attracting the attention of the guardians is as about as likely it as would had you brought a nuke into Felarya.

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The problem is not why they are not using these weapon but what is the dose to be lethal to a giant creature ?

I don't think it would be as difficult of a problem as you might believe. Now mind you, I don't know much about poisons or how they scale up and down, but if just a teaspoon of botulinum could potentially kill 1.2 billion humans, or human sized beings, then I am sure 2 or 3 teaspoons could take down a naga. And if you managed to successfully create a bullet that would deliver your poison, and give a team of...lets say five soldiers 25 of those bullets, you have at the most 125 shots. Two teaspoons per bullet would make a max of 250 doses. I doubt you would need that much since one teaspoon could kill 1.2 billion human sized beings, and correct me if I am wrong but mass plays an important role in determining how much poison you need. I doubt Crisis has the mass of that many humans...

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If it takes a tiny drop of VX to kill a human, then I'd think a mortar filled with it should do it for an avarage gaint.

Mind you, since it's the mother of nerve agents, your chance of attracting the attention of the guardians is as about as likely it as would had you brought a nuke into Felarya.

XD Well you don't really need a mortar...I think if you made a bunch of tranquilizer darts, filled them with the poison, and gave every member of the squad two or three magazines of those darts, and I am sure you could take down a couple preds. As for the Guardians, I don't think they would care, unless one of those groups suddenly decided to try and take over all of Felarya and began to expand their borders a bit too much.

As for why we never see anyone using these things when they clearly have access to military weaponary, it might simply go down to the majourity of writers that write these Felarya military stories not actually understanding how military weapons work in real life. They only know about the guns and the bombs because they are the most loud and exciting, they never look into gases or poisons because they underestimate how leathal they can be. Or perhaps they just ignore them because they arn't as exciting to write about as gun battles.

Darth_Nergal wrote:

I don't think it would be as difficult of a problem as you might believe. Now mind you, I don't know much about poisons or how they scale up and down, but if just a teaspoon of botulinum could potentially kill 1.2 billion humans, or human sized beings, then I am sure 2 or 3 teaspoons could take down a naga. And if you managed to successfully create a bullet that would deliver your poison, and give a team of...lets say five soldiers 25 of those bullets, you have at the most 125 shots. Two teaspoons per bullet would make a max of 250 doses. I doubt you would need that much since one teaspoon could kill 125 billion human sized beings, and correct me if I am wrong but mass plays an important role in determining how much poison you need. I doubt Crisis has the mass of that many humans...

These five soldiers will be able to kill easily the global population on Earth and all human settlement in Felarya and more. Which makes a disproportionate answer to the predator threat.

DarkOne wrote:

As for why we never see anyone using these things when they clearly have access to military weaponary, it might simply go down to the majourity of writers that write these Felarya military stories not actually understanding how military weapons work in real life. They only know about the guns and the bombs because they are the most loud and exciting, they never look into gases or poisons because they underestimate how leathal they can be. Or perhaps they just ignore them because they arn't as exciting to write about as gun battles.

Using chemical weapons like gaz or poison give a bad reputation to their users, remember the "weapon mass destruction" speech or when a totalitarian governments are portrayed when they are suspected to use them. For the public opinion they are dirty weapons and less glorious than the guns.

gwadahunter2222 wrote:

Using chemical weapons like gaz or poison give a bad reputation to their users, remember the "weapon mass destruction" speech or when a totalitarian governments are portrayed when they are suspected to use them. For the public opinion they are dirty weapons and less glorious than the guns.

But that shoulden't be a problem in Felarya because I've yet to read any story where the governments give a crap about public opinon. The Miratans of all socities shoulden't have this problem, they are an military society so there isn't much of an public opinon to begin with. These guys see nothing wrong with wiping out other socites for their benift, are we really going to believe these guys are fine with genocide, as long as it doesn't involve gas and poison?

DarkOne wrote:

But that shoulden't be a problem in Felarya because I've yet to read any story where the governments give a crap about public opinon. The Miratans of all socities shoulden't have this problem, they are an military society so there isn't much of an public opinon to begin with. These guys see nothing wrong with wiping out other socites for their benift, are we really going to believe these guys are fine with genocide, as long as it doesn't involve gas and poison?

That's also true for the Deluran or Vishmintal specially the Deluran with have no problem to sacrifice their own men. It seems you are disappointed by Rin's adventure as you quote the Miratans as example because they belongs to Randomdude and you shopuld ask his permission to use them.

Ok, let me try something.


As to why Miratans don't use poison, I figger they use mechs because they have it cheaper making mechs than isolating bacteria to produce poison and then cultivating them. I'm assuming that to them, gunmetal is as cheap as toilet paper- and given they have multiple worlds to draw recruits from, warm bodies aren't in short supply either. Since their operation isn't yet all that big, they haven't given serious thought to getting into full-swing conquest, nor do they meet enough giant predators to justify the expenditure.

If they do, though, spine beetles got enough poison in them to kill whatever these folk might like, and I assume they'll go harvest their spikes as soon as they come to their senses. It'd be cheaper than setting up a poison factory.


As to why Vishmitals don't use poison, Karbo told me they had homeworld trouble: I figure they don't quite have the means at the time to get their poison to Felarya, if they have facilities to produce it in the first place. Besides, given they have the Investigators shoving a microscope up their asses all the damn time, bringing poison to Felarya might not be the brightest of ideas. They can always bring money instead to gamble on adventurers to get whatever they want.


As to why Fisters don't use poison, I imagine their combat doctrine favors magic instead, being a hybrid of locally recruited and wizards- none of which is usually trained in using poison. Heavy machinegun fire and rifles usually involve spray&pray tactics (also known by their street name of cover fire), which would require ridiculously large amounts of poison, to put enough poison in every bullet to make it poisonous. And that's a lot of poison- meaning every stray bullet will contain enough poison to poison a hundred people with poisonous poison. Poison bullets is a good idea for assassination, but poison rounds become a bit of a hassle if you're going to use a rifle. Some mages in the Fist might be good with poison, though.


Now the Qeshjatam, if those guys don't use poison, I'll eat the Investigator microscopes right out of the Vishmitalis' asses. I mean, what else do they got?


As to what would predators do about poison, I figure you can reduce the effectiveness a little by infesting yourself beforehand with black skin divers. Not all poisons will kill you right off; some of them will give these buggers the time to work their magic. Of course, if they get bitten by a giant black mamba, that might not work out too well.

I guess I must have been mistaken but I thought Felarya's magical soil or something made poisons less effective the way it makes bio-warfare ineffective. If not, it's still quite probable that healing potions, spells, etc. are too widely available and effective for poisons to work, at least against civilized communities.
Now regarding usefulness against predators, does anyone remember the scene in the second Jurassic Park movie where the guy has a gun that can instantly kill a T.rex? He never manages to fire it and gets eaten because he idiotically let the sight get caught on a net. Now obviously this shouldn't happen every time, but one has to admit that "you failed to use your poison in time" is a pretty convenient excuse for one of Felarya's imaginary GMs.
Lastly (and my worst argument yet... I'm only trying to play Devil's Advocate anyway), wouldn't it be a pretty awesome idea to carry around a syringe full of neurotoxin so that when you get eaten, you can kill the predator from inside and then just carve your way out? Kinda breaks the whole OP predator aesthetic.

parameciumkid wrote:

I guess I must have been mistaken but I thought Felarya's magical soil or something made poisons less effective the way it makes bio-warfare ineffective.

Depends on the chemical compound, if let's say it's a nerve agent that causes the brain to heart function to stop working.....well no healing properties is going to help you there.

Something funny I just realized, these humans might have problems obtaining or using poisons for various reasons....but the wildlife has no issues with it whatever, Dridders have their venom (the wiki says a small amount is leathal) It's quite ironic when the wildlife is more effient at using chemical warfare than the highly advanced humans are, granted they have to close in first, but still.

If Felarya has fairy hunters that sell wings for their magical properties, then is it not plausable that there are Dridder hunters that kill and abstract Dridder venom to sell to the highest bidder? Might not exactly be military that would want it, but someone might want to buy it.