re: #197 Obdicut

High explosives can kill more people, this is true. However, WMD can provide area denial capabilities that high explosives can’t. You could drop landmines to deny an area to the enemy, but those are rather easy to pick out compared with a WMD used to deny that same area - the detection, cleanup, and lingering effects make it far more difficult.

WMD, and their threat of use, can also slow down a military response, force additional precautions and otherwise cause fear as a terror weapon over their use, even though a high explosive can be just as deadly.

And bear in mind that the original 1993 WTC bombers sought to blow up the WTC using a bomb that had a chemical weapons component but thankfully that part vaporized in the explosion rather than be spread throughout the buildings.