Balkanization and military stores, So what happened to all those WMDs? Options

[Chrysalis]

Greets,

I was recently reading up on the Tir so I did a quick look at what kinds of U.S. military bases can be found in the region - not many except for a small one called Umatilla Ordnance Depot (later changed to Umatilla Chemical Depot). A quick look through various sources confirmed that in the 1980s-1990s it was holding 12% of the chemical stocks of the U.S. military. Most of it was long term storage of the usual suspects of Sarin, Tabun, and VX in munitions (such as rockets, mines, and aerial bombs). In 2009, they are currently destroying all stocks of it including VX mines.

With the balkanization of the United States and the formation of various tin-pot dictatorship, I mean nation states in transition. What happened to all these munitions and supplies?

How many of these kinds of devices are still floating about?

What about the other two of the unholy trinity, nuclear and biological?

[HappyDaze]

What happened to all these munitions and supplies?

Not much... until Runner's Companion gave us the Restricted Gear Quality. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smokin.gif)

[Snow_Fox]

Remember the awakening was pretty violent. The Eurowars and the NAN rebellion probably burned up a lot of those weapons in the west.
AZT used a lot in the Yutican.
I think Israel nuked someone, Lybia if I remmeber right, that implies more war that probably used up the middle east's stocks.
I'm guessing the chinese stocks were pretty well split by war lords the way much of the survivng military was split between the UCAS and CAS.
India seems to be holding togther culturally.
Africa could be a wild card but how many of those states can afford WMD's?

[Captain Aardvark]

Africa could be a wild card but how many of those states can afford WMD's?

Probably more than we want to know. Oh what am I saying, it just means more work and cash.

[Fix-it]

Remember the awakening was pretty violent. The Eurowars and the NAN rebellion probably burned up a lot of those weapons in the west.
AZT used a lot in the Yutican.
I think Israel nuked someone, Lybia if I remmeber right, that implies more war that probably used up the middle east's stocks.
I'm guessing the chinese stocks were pretty well split by war lords the way much of the survivng military was split between the UCAS and CAS.
India seems to be holding togther culturally.
Africa could be a wild card but how many of those states can afford WMD's?

the glass desert formerly known as the Great Socialist People's Libyan Arab Jamahiriya, became that way after a retaliatory nuclear strike by Israel, in response to Chemical terrorism.

I was under the impression that nukes really don't work as they should post-awakening. Winterknight proved us wrong.

[Chrysalis]

What about biological and chemical stores?

Nothing quite like 10kg of VX, being aerosolised with a bit of NAN know how and a crop duster to make the Seattle acid rain seem quaint. Or fire off rockets from the Z-zones into the city centre.

I take it that despite the proliferation of all these weapons and knowledge, and cult of a month on the street no-one outside of Winternight has actually done anything with WMDs?

[kzt]

They have been actively destroying the stockpiles in giant very secure incinerators. They are done with many of the munitions and have about 37% of the total agents destroyed. I think they are done with all or almost all the VX and GB and are about to start on the mustard gas munitions.

[Backgammon]

Nukes have been used by various governements and megacorporations over the years, but the only rogue organisation to use them were indeed Winternight. To be fair, though, they didn't use one. They used like what, two dozen?

Chemical weapons seem to be a bit out of fashion, yes. During the Tsimshian/NAN war, some were used. They don't actually get used much, but developement of them is still a thriving industry. Universal Omnitech engineered a new strain of weaponized ebola. Africa is a hotbed of research into the subject (or is that a hotbed of subjects for the research?). I think people in general are a little calmer about chemical weapons since VITAS.

[pbangarth]

you know, Chrysalis, I get worried when you ask questions like this.

[FlakJacket]

IIRC don't the corps and Corporate Court in particular kind of frown on WMDs, at least the fairly unstable ones? It's things like these that are liable to get seriously out of hand, destabilise things and damage the market place for their goods - either by taking out the civilians that buy their stuff or the militaries that die too quickly so they can't sell them weapons or support services over a protracted conflict. Working with national governments and international law enforcement I could see them investing some time and money hoovering up any loose WMDs and discouraging various tin-pot dictatorships from trying to obtain them.

[Snow_Fox]

true, like Quantum in the last James bond movie- if you don't ball ball with us, we'll feed you yours.

still when the AAA's want to they do, like what happened in the Yucatan. Interestingly the Japanese didn't in CFS.

[Kerenshara]

Ok this is a great thread from a historical perspective, and in some fashion might make for a very cool …quot; and very scary …quot; run for somebody. But there are some issues to take into account:

First of all, with all forms of so-called “Weapons of Mass Destruction�, as General Curtis Lemay or Iosef Stalin and Nikita Khrushchev could have told you, the biggest issue is successfully delivering the weapon to your target. The challenges inherent are unique to each form of weapon.

Second of all, many non-nuclear weapons have a distinctly limited effective period after deployment: IIRC, VX breaks down in exposure to sunlight as do many weaponized bacteriological and viralogical weapons.

When looking at the biological weapons which might have been in storage prior to the break-up of the United States, they were largely weaponized versions of diseases that had plagued mankind for centuries. By 2070, simple off-the-shelf anti-biotic and anti-viral drugs probably have the ability to counter any or all of those weapons well within the incubation period. Also, many of those weapons can decay in storage, especially in poorly maintained storage, like a lost or forgotten warehouse. The difficulty of distribution of these agents varies largely by vector, but suffice it to say, wide spread distribution is not a simple matter. The easily spread inhalants are partly counteracted by the ubiquitous “nose plugs� or “filter masks� many denizens of the city wear when forced to go out on a dry day, and will have trouble propagating in rainy conditions. Furthermore, most urbanites inhabit dwellings that have very advanced particle filtration systems. Those that don’t, as a rule, aren’t worth going after because they don’t make a big enough impact, politically. Add to this the state of biological and genetic engineering, and the horrors that could come out of a modern lab would make the ugliest weapons of the late 20^th century look like a common cold. So taken as a whole, stockpiles of the old weapons would not be a dire threat relatively speaking in 2070.

Chemical weapons are another matter, since their onset is very fast. But the only advantage to a “stockpile� of such weapons is the time required to mix up a given batch in wartime is prohibitive. The state of the chemical sciences in 2070 are such that mixing up small batches of old-style chemical agents for terror or low-level warfare is relatively simple. A declassified source I saw once listed one half of VX (a binary nerve agent) as isopropyl alcohol! So the old agents in storage are both weaker and less stable than what modern chemistry can provide. Distribution is also a problem, either because you need to distribute an aerosol directly or a gas which is highly subject to wind and precipitation. Now, emptying a gas into the enclosed system of a high-rise HVAC system would be nasty to be sure, but this isn’t really any more a WMD at that point than enough plastic explosive to drop the same building with all the occupants at their desks or in their beds. And if you don’t think the Corps or Lone Star have something ready to shoot down a “crop duster� that decides to start buzzing a ‘plex, think again.

As always, the most dangerous and persistent WMD is the nuclear warhead, be it fission, fusion or dirty. (The dirty bomb is subject to wind and precipitation, but it's effects are very persistent and difficult to remediate). The materials used to make the device are hazardous for extremely long periods of time. If sufficiently advanced, the weapon can be made extremely compact and very powerful. The W-80 warhead utilized by the US Military had a nominal yield around 100 thousand tons of TNT, or between 5.5 and 8.5 times as powerful as the first atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima in 1945, but is less than 20�/51cm in diameter, less than a 68�/150cm long and reportedly weighs in less than 500 pounds/225kg. A package like that is easy to load into the bed of a pickup truck or a medium sized private aircraft - or even a drone - and that was only state-of-the-are in the mid 1980s. There have reportedly been nuclear “demolition charges� that would be man-portable (so-called suitcase nukes). The smallest publicly acknowledged nuclear weapons were less than 6�/15.5cm in diameter, 39�/100cm in length and 75 pounds/33.5kg and were fired from howitzers. Projectiles that size were ROUTINELY wired up as Improvised Explosive Devices, hidden, and used against American forces in Operations Enduring Freedom and Iraqi Freedom. But unless you’re a member of a suicide cult or your last name happens to be Ahab, you don’t want to be very close by when you activate a weapon like that, which causes problems. A drone could carry a very small nuke. A large drone (Seriously, what do you think a Tomahawk missile is?!) can carry a big device. Strategic weapons (for the sake of argument, let’s call them 1 MT and higher) complete with aerodynamic/reentry shrouds, connectors and so forth are not much larger than 78 inches/200cm in length, 39 inches/100cm in diameter and 2,200 pounds/1,000kg, and they are more than ten times more destructive.

Of all the WMDs which would have been remaining post-US, it’s the nukes that are most sensitive. I remember some old literature from 1^st ed. addressing that very point, and if the balkanization of the former USSR can be any meter stick, combined with old fluff, I believe most of those weapons would have been accounted for, certainly eliminating any substantial uncontrolled “stockpiles�. The delivery systems for very long range use tend to be very large and extremely expensive. A nuclear missile in its silo is a very large, manpower intensive (even for stable solid fuels) weapon to maintain, which translates into very high costs of ownership, and low return on investment from a corporate perspective. Even Ukraine and Belorussia handed their weapons back to Russia rather than have to deal with them.

So while I think this might make for a great run, going after the one “missing bomb� or something similar, I don’t see world-shaking consequences any worse that routinely seem to happen in the 6^th world.

[kzt]

Actually, nukes require regular expert maintenance by an industrial base to keep functional. Tritium decays pretty fast, the main nuclear material decays and becomes less pure, Polonium decays over time, batteries need to be replaced, being close to large amounts of nuclear material is apparently not great for electronics, etc. A 50 year old unmaintained nuke is not particularly likely to go off, if it does it's likely to go off at substantially below design yield and if it does go off at all the 2nd and 3rd stages won't.

[MKX]

Yep you're tritium decay is about 12 years, after 50 they're pretty much duds for a conventional one.
That's not to say that they aren't dangerous, plutonium by itself is one of the most toxic substances known to man and it hangs around quite a long time. Corps and big governments could maintain them fairly well, its not really in the best interests for a whole lot of reasons for a corp to ever deploy one in the contemporary set of rules they have to play with in the bigger picture, something about nuking your consumer base makes for bad profits and even worse PR more than anything else. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/grinbig.gif)

As for governments, well... they tend to change each election/coup so its any ones game of what would make them push a button.

[Kerenshara]

Actually, nukes require regular expert maintenance by an industrial base to keep functional. Tritium decays pretty fast, the main nuclear material decays and becomes less pure, Polonium decays over time, batteries need to be replaced, being close to large amounts of nuclear material is apparently not great for electronics, etc. A 50 year old unmaintained nuke is not particularly likely to go off, if it does it's likely to go off at substantially below design yield and if it does go off at all the 2nd and 3rd stages won't.

Hmm, I DID leave out a comment about upkeep in the Nuclear entry didn't I? My apologies. I think I though (*sigh*) I covered that with the costs of covering the long range delivery systems, but I separated that out, didn't I? Oh well, thanks for hitting that. But even a "dud" thermonuclear weapon will take out a really nice chunk of a city. And the contamination will actually be worse locally because the fissile materials will have been proprtionately much less dispersed than from a full detonation.

[SincereAgape]

Stephen Kenson touched upon this subject briefly in a SR novel that was published in 2006. I believe the book was titled "Poison Agendas."

[ Spoiler ]

In the book the main character caught hold of a potential hidden weapon cache in the Pueblo Council. Thus, she received funding from a former Mr. Johnson and hired a team to retrieve the weapons (Originally thought to be nukes). In typical fashion there is a twist and the run gets fragged.

But the idea behind the hidden weapon cache was a HUGE thing amongst the corps

[ Spoiler ]

[Rusted Scrap Met...]

Kerenshara did a pretty good job describing a lot of the issues with NBC( R ) weapons.

One issue is the Second Great Ghost Dance that took place like 2051 or 2052, where multiple groups of coordinated runners disabled most of the existing NBC( R) stocks were disabled through magic.

Another issue is the fact that I highly doubt that any of the players would not have stocks of munitions around. With the growth of chemical and biological sciences, NBC ( R) weapons would more than likely be more lethal, not less, and the controls and safeguards would be even more stringent.

Don't forget that there are "Thor" class sats, capable of being used for pinpoint kinetic strikes (as addressed in another novel, the one with Wolf going to Hawaii IIRC).

Now, you have Umatilla, Black Briar, Johnston Atoll, Miesau, Flenseguen, Grebenhiem, and all of those locations (I only know the old NATO ones, and I can't really remember the old Warsaw Pact depot names). They'd either still be in use by various governments (good place to keep stuff is places that are already contaminated, and the background count from all those years would keep away mages (just watch out for the toxics baby!) from scouting, and to be honest, the defenses those places are SUPPOSED to have (not the lousy ones that eventually got approved) would keep away most runners) as storage areas, or be used as destruction points for old, unstable stuff.

Now, the point about maintenance is spot on. The electronics need it at least 6 months, and that's trained technician, not just board swapping.

Chemical rounds need steady maintenance too. They have to be stored upright, checked constantly for any sign of rust, and have the copper rotation ring checked for decay. Now, most modern chemical weapons are binary or trinary rounds. This requires a certain RPM speed to rupture the canister and mix the chemicals. Then you have the bursting charges, usually Comp B-4, used to crack round casing and cause the chemical to disperse (this is used for high altitude artillery attacks), and then... Well, it really doesn't matter. What I'm getting at is chemical round require maintenance and proper storage, and most doctrine requires it to be stored in a geologically stable area, away from population centers, etc.

Biological agents are a whole different ballgame, and to be honest, for the most part, NOBODY wants to use them. Biological agents fall in a few categories, but that doesn't matter either. Storage on those is supposed to be pretty intense (although drawdowns in the real world caused some lessening of those strictures, so we can assume that the same problem has happened in the 6th World) and highly secure, but the chance of them escaping can be a minimized with proper precautions?

With the Matrix being around, and the coding being around for some nasty stuff, you can bet your last nuyen that there are secure labs with some of the nastiest logic bombs and hardware burning software out there. Deckers who sit in the Matrix equivalent of an old Minuteman III silo in case the balloon goes up and it's time to destroy every bit of the Matrix they can lay their hands on. There would be nasty stuff out there designed to attack cyberwear, and all kinds of stuff.

What were talking about again? Oh, yeah, in the Sixth World.

Now, let's check out the old SR2 Shadowtech book. There's examples of nasty chemical and biological agents, and even an R class agent in there if you go with DOOM.

Corps would have their stocks, so would most nations. Even the smaller nations could build up a chemical weapons stock. After all, why would Multinational Corporations and all the nations stockpile it?

Simple: MAD

Remember that? Mutually Assured Destruction.

Now, that basically means: You geek me, I geek you, and your friends, and their friends, and everyone who knows them. You know, forget that, you geek me, I geek EVERYONE! ALL OF THEM! Even the kangaroos!

Remember, according to the Chicago bit, that even though Twist did the whole "kill the nukes" thing, even the corporations have redeveloped tactical nuclear weapons. (Now, tactical nuclear weapons are between 15 and 750 kt weapons, initially designed with the thought of breaking up the old Warsaw Pact "red steamroller" tank rush through the Fulda Gap, so don't think these are 1-5 MT ICBM weapons, or the 1.5 KT 5 or 6-pack MiRV weapons for overlapping blast patterns to break apart cities) Remember, one was detonated in Chicago.

Now, there's also biological and chemical weapons in several products (Shadowtech) as well as the biological weapon used in Chicago to destroy/disable the bug spirit flesh forms.

There's also nuclear carrier groups, and a few of the NAN nations had ICBM class weapons or boomer subs still armed.

But even a "dud" thermonuclear weapon will take out a really nice chunk of a city. And the contamination will actually be worse locally because the fissile materials will have been proprtionately much less dispersed than from a full detonation.

That last part is the most critical. Yes, the kinetic impact will do serious damage, but since most weapons are designed for airburst (which does the most damage) the weapon would detonate at about 1500-15000 feet above the city (depending on the yield of the weapon) and the implosion trigger would cause what little material is in there to be blown into small chunks that would have to be found and recovered.

Ballistic tests have shown there will be some serious damage, but one thing to remember is how the weapons are designed. You have the implosion trigger, designed around shape charges, and what that will do is scatter hot chunks around the area, but not too far if detonated at ground level. Nuclear Emergency Response Teams have serious training in finding nuclear debris. Training exercises take place all the time, usually with... anyway, a properly supported team that is well trained can clean up the nuclear debris in under 36 hours. Combine it with upgraded sat scan tech to search for radiation sources and more than likely the cleanup time will be even faster.

Now, back to chemical weapons...

The average time from exposure to disabling will be on the average 30 seconds or lower. Some of the more nasty agents have an exposure to kill time of 8.7 seconds. In more than a few cases, the only chance you have is to get your suit and mask on between the round detonating in the air, and the chemical reaching you. Then, maybe, just maybe, with the injectors, if you're exposed, you can keep running for a few more hours. Whether or not you can survive nowadays is still up in the air, but for the most part, just go with the "if you're exposed, all your injector pack will do is keep you running for a few more hours, you're dead anyway."

Man, this turned long.

Suffice to say: A lot of the old storage areas would still be used, but any runner who thinks he's going to get in easy is in for a RUDE surprise. Megacorps will have them, most nations will have them, and with everything going on, I'd say it's pretty safe to say that there'd be a new Cold War, with versions of NATO and the Warsaw Pact forming up. Alliances would be built, then the various nations would be pushing as hard as they could to advance their stockpiles, as well as figuring out a way to make the opposition's weapons outdated and useless. There would be a return of special operations, and runners would find more and more work out there from government intelligence communities since "deniable assets" would be even more vital.

Man, now I forgot what I was trying to say because I went into lecture mode.

[Fix-it]

Actually, nukes require regular expert maintenance by an industrial base to keep functional. Tritium decays pretty fast, the main nuclear material decays and becomes less pure, Polonium decays over time, batteries need to be replaced, being close to large amounts of nuclear material is apparently not great for electronics, etc. A 50 year old unmaintained nuke is not particularly likely to go off, if it does it's likely to go off at substantially below design yield and if it does go off at all the 2nd and 3rd stages won't.

this was true in the cold war era, where the objective was to make them with the highest possible yield for a given weight and volume. IRL, the united states has been starting to move towards more "user friendly" nukes, which don't require nearly as much dangerous maintenance.

a weapon that doesn't fulfill it's projected yield is called a "fizzle" btw. and in most ways, a fizzle is far worse than the full yield of a weapon, due to contamination from the unspent pit, and booster, if it's a multistage weapon.

[Rusted Scrap Met...]

this was true in the cold war era, where the objective was to make them with the highest possible yield for a given weight and volume. IRL, the united states has been starting to move towards more "user friendly" nukes, which don't require nearly as much dangerous maintenance.

a weapon that doesn't fulfill it's projected yield is called a "fizzle" btw. and in most ways, a fizzle is far worse than the full yield of a weapon, due to contamination from the unspent pit, and booster, if it's a multistage weapon.

I'll admit, my info is all Cold War Era and right after.

Oh, and don't forget the jacketing for the "Enhanced Area Denial Weapons" from the bad old days designed to make the region uninhabitable for longer periods or time, or the "enhanced radiation" jacketing for neutron weapons.

The more "user friendly" nukes I'm familiar have smaller warheads, designed to be used in an overlapping airburst pattern and timed detonation in order to achieve maximum destruction for minimum use. Don't forget that another big bummer is the amount of fissionable material you need toward the explosive weight isn't as straight forward as people think. Doubling the amount of fissionable material does NOT double the explosive weight of the charge. And doubling the explosive weight does NOT double the radius of destruction. The math is a little more complex that that.

[Kerenshara]

Kerenshara did a pretty good job describing a lot of the issues with NBC( R ) weapons.

Thanks. I know I really glossed over it, but the post was already longer than I wanted. I chose to focus on "terorist" or "small force" related and storage/maintenance related elements over some of the finer technical details. You did a pretty good job yourself.

Don't forget that there are "Thor" class sats, capable of being used for pinpoint kinetic strikes (as addressed in another novel, the one with Wolf going to Hawaii IIRC).

Drek. I did!

With the Matrix being around, and the coding being around for some nasty stuff, you can bet your last nuyen that there are secure labs with some of the nastiest logic bombs and hardware burning software out there. Deckers who sit in the Matrix equivalent of an old Minuteman III silo in case the balloon goes up and it's time to destroy every bit of the Matrix they can lay their hands on. There would be nasty stuff out there designed to attack cyberwear, and all kinds of stuff.

And yet another WMD I should have considered. It's only logical that you have a way to counter-force your oponent's C³I² (Command Control Communications Intelligence and Information) infrastructure and capabilities. I like the analogy especially well.

Corps would have their stocks, so would most nations. Even the smaller nations could build up a chemical weapons stock. After all, why would Multinational Corporations and all the nations stockpile it?

Simple: MAD

Remember that? Mutually Assured Destruction.

Now, that basically means: You geek me, I geek you, and your friends, and their friends, and everyone who knows them. You know, forget that, you geek me, I geek EVERYONE! ALL OF THEM! Even the kangaroos!

There's another reason you leave out: credibility. With "modern" computer aided design and manufacturing, the hardest part about churning out a nuclear device is obtaining and refining the fisile materials. But the total effort represented in the production of even a handful of "advanced" multi-stage thermonuclear devices and their delivery systems is but a fraction of the cost of something like a carrier battle group or an armored corps and all the maintenance and logistical (and training) costs associated with them. They are the ultimate proof of legitimacy, the keys that gain you entrance to the international executive washroom. Their threat must be honored by every other player, regardless of the relative size of the stockpiles.
And if you design a weapon whose yield is dialable from say a dozen kilotons to a megaton or more (Did somebody say B61?), the threat is even more sincere, because you can't very well launch a Trident II D5 missile to take out a single small valley or hardened research facility or equivalent pinpoint target. But if you could use any one of your dialable devices on either a huge counter-value target (say, a city) or a counter-force target (say, an air base or military base) or all the way down to a counter-asset target (where you could hit a very tough underground target and not manage to disturb much around a couple city blocks with little fallout), the likelyhood of the use of such a weapon rises dramatically, forcing both sides to act with even more caution. With full-up strategic monster-weapons (SS-18 Satan), it would HAVE to be a MAD scenario, because once you loft something like that (50+ megaton warhead. It comes under "no, you're kidding, right?") the gloves come all the way off. But if the other guy knows you can hit his really tough sites and not drive the surrounding property values too far down, it changes his candor immensely.

Remember, according to the Chicago bit, that even though Twist did the whole "kill the nukes" thing, even the corporations have redeveloped tactical nuclear weapons. (Now, tactical nuclear weapons are between 15 and 750 kt weapons, initially designed with the thought of breaking up the old Warsaw Pact "red steamroller" tank rush through the Fulda Gap, so don't think these are 1-5 MT ICBM weapons, or the 1.5 KT 5 or 6-pack MiRV weapons for overlapping blast patterns to break apart cities) Remember, one was detonated in Chicago.

IIRC, it would be fair to say the Chicago nuke (Which if people did NOT know, the actual "ground zero" was the old F.A.S.A. corporate headquarters street address. Can't say they didn't have a sense of humor.) was one of those cute "sub-tactical" models like the counter-asset weapons I mentioned above. It's a category that was worked on feverishly in the late 1950's and shelved (yes, the Army DID ask for a prototype nuclear hand grenade, able to wipe out a city block... right until some sergeant in the design phase asked "Uh, Sir, just how the hell far did you want somebody to have to throw that thing?"), reawakened in the very late 1970's, then shelved with the end of the Cold War, and reawakened a decade yet again as the United States faced ever tougher and deeper hardened targets. And that leaves out the "Enhanced Radiation" or "Neutron" bomb, designed to kill living cells with a dramatically reduced blast radius to minimize infrastructure damage. *shudders* Nasty piece of work, that.

And as a foot note, two related items that should be mentioned: the Electromagnetic Pulse attendant in any nuclear detonation, and the FOBS the Soviets cooked up (Fractional Orbital Bombardment System; featured but BADLY mischaracterized in the James Bond movie Goldeneye.) to disrupt communications and modern eletronics. With the increasing use of optical computing architecture by 2070, the threat of the baseline EMP is very limited, but the short term effects are not to be overstated in relationship to wireless communications. The US discovered with their early very high altitude nuclear testing in the early 1950's that when a nuclear device detonates above the stratosphere (I think that's the right atmospheric layer, but this is really fuzzy these days) the energy pulse is actually wider and more intense. The FOBS set off a massive nuke in near earth orbit (say 100 km). Again, the physical damage is minor, but relatively delicate satellite systems might be knocked out (think really wicked solar flare) and wireless communications would (theoretically) have been disrupted for an extended period.

Interesting topic. Odd place to see it crop up.

[MKX]

Putting it very simply, NBC's are a bit like the AK47, great for their time, great now and will still in most likelyhood, kill someone in 2070 as well as they did in 1950. But they're pretty old and tired after 120 years and you'll find yourself spending more time and money keeping it operational than actually using it, then you've got to find ammo, parts and teach people that are unfamiliar, how to use it.
People have covered the basics of maintaining NBC's, they're not easy to live with and certainly not cheap, that's one thing a balkanised country doesn't tend to have a lot of compared to a large country and thats a budget to cover an expensive military deterrent which you'll probably never use, they'd be running on a shoestring as-is and outsourcing most of their industrial needs to corporations.
Politicians for all sorts of reasons will cut into a budget with their short-term priorities, even tyrants have priorities that don't necessarily mean they'll have the readies to keep their favourite nuke happy probably because they've blown last years budget on the thing already and have to spend this years budget quelling civil insurection from food riots... but you get that in the big jobs (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)

Tactically there's all kind of other ways of achieving what a WMD does without the necessity of slopping around nasty chemicals, bugs and radioactives. Nanotech has a number of applications that don't necessitate that anyone actually dies directly, by attacking a countries electricity supply for example in selected targets, destroys their ability to manufacture food, medicine weapons or fuel for a few years until the nanite stops functioning after a set period of time you've got it set for. Once they're unable to sustain a conventional war you can roll in and pound them or have them reduced to something easier to live with on your doorstep.
Magic and matrix attacks also seems to function outside the box of conventional military doctrine to cripple key areas or people you've got problems with

[Kerenshara]

Politicians for all sorts of reasons will cut into a budget with their short-term priorities, even tyrants have priorities that don't necessarily mean they'll have the readies to keep their favourite nuke happy probably because they've blown last years budget on the thing already and have to spend this years budget quelling civil insurection from food riots... but you get that in the big jobs (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)

I think you missed a big part of the point of WMDs. They give a nation (or corporation or whatever) credibility, and that is unlikely to change in sixty or so years. You don't have to maintain Cold War size stockpiles and R&D programs. If a country as economically bereft as North Korea can not only develop and test but EXPORT the technologies needed for nuclear weapons, any nation with a functional economy and decent industrial base can maintain a "token" arsenal and keep their place at the big table. And they are still much cheaper to obtain and maintain than "capital" conventional forces that would give you equal "weight".

If I may use a literary reference, from Frank Herbert's "Dune", there are repeated references to the "House Atomics", and the connotations imply that those weapons existence is among the keys to a family being treated as one of the "great houses". This is not dissimilar. It is why so many countries are now eagerly seeking to join the nuclear club: in a post-Cold War (if you believe THAT one I have some bottom land in Brooklyn with a great piece of infrastructure on it, cheap) world, one way to make the United States take you seriously and treat with you as an adult is to have a nuke tucked in your hip pocket. Even if we accept Iran's claims about pursuing peaceful nuclear power, once you have the means to generate what is needed, you're "nuclear capable" (think modern Japan, who has forsworn nuclear weapons but more than has the capability to produce them in useful numbers) and that's a big deal.

[kzt]

this was true in the cold war era, where the objective was to make them with the highest possible yield for a given weight and volume. IRL, the united states has been starting to move towards more "user friendly" nukes, which don't require nearly as much dangerous maintenance.

a weapon that doesn't fulfill it's projected yield is called a "fizzle" btw. and in most ways, a fizzle is far worse than the full yield of a weapon, due to contamination from the unspent pit, and booster, if it's a multistage weapon.

That was the plan. Not any more. The new plan is that we'll all join hands and happily live in a world free of nukes because everybody really loves everyone else.

In the 6th World the USSR didn't collapse until like 2030.

[MKX]

Not really, sure the dictator of your neighbouring satellite state of Kebabistan has his very own nuclear device or ten.
If you're a large country, you've got ten times the NBC capability, troops, resources and a handful of tricks up your sleeve that will leave Kebabistan going back to the iron age overnight and reading books by candle light. Sure they can reach out and touch you, do some damage, but essentially that just gives the bigger dog on the block just cause to WTF stomp them into the dirt completely.
Heck, the annoying individual might just wake up one morning in his bunker to find out that he's got massive amounts of ritual sorcery aimed at his arse and soon to be very melted.

I don't discount the conventional WMD's have some credibility and people will respect them, but there's more than one way to skin a cat as a solution.

[Rusted Scrap Met...]

And if you want something really to give you sleepless nights...

A corporation or small nation (NAN member-states for example) could build a chemical weapon stockpile pretty quickly. To be honest, even making tabun or BZ wouldn't be that hard. And use in battlefield or even in the world of SR isn't as hard as some people think. To be honest, you could pretty much build a chemical weapon and the dissemination vehicle (NOT some crappy crop duster, but a quality item) in the world of SR with stuff right off the shelves, and maybe some small fixer purchases.

In a world where the gray/black market can let you get ahold of military grade vehicles and AVM's and AAM systems, with excellent ranges, you could build the delivery vehicle in a SR Rigger's garage. The chemical component, even if you did a binary method, could be manufactured quite easily. That means that a multi-national corporation or any of the nations are going to have stocks of chemical agents. And if you think the declassified stuff is nasty that you can read about nowadays, think what modern ones are like. Now consider how advances in advances molecular chemistry has done to the chemical weapons programs of the world of Shadowrun. The Holy Grail of a non-persistant chemical agent that does not affect animals, plants, create chemical stains or contamination, that has an antidote that lasts a long time and protects even against heavy long term exposure could very well be a reality in SR.

And don't quote movies, if you get a VX exposure, atropine is going to little more than keep you going. Now, since corrosive VX agents already exist, even your vaunted cyberfilters and tracheal filters aren't going to save you. And the Gods and Totems help you if some wiseass has mixed a blister agent in with the corrosive nerve agent. It's going to smoke everyone who comes into contact with it.

If that runner waltzes into the zone, the suits are going to have to be specially designed. A J-Series descendant at least, with internal air supply and complete and total environmental seal and able to stand up to corrosive agents. Plastic is out, since there already exists agents that can eat through the rubber of a mask and the plastic of J-Series suits.

High security bio-labs would have not only "thermal incineration" options for the inside, but would also have...

You know what... nevermind.