RE: War of the Worlds in DS2

>  After all, 
> > an
> > alien invader that can't even put up with the common cold 
> isn't going to
> > have much fun at all against weaponized anthrax.
> Er.. You'd have to find a microbe that they were vulnerable to but we 
> weren't. YOu couldn't just throw any old WMD at them. I doubt the 
> inhabitants of whatever city was involved would be very happy 
> with you 
> using weaponised anthrax against the Martians. You could 
> probably find 
> one, but you'd have to capture a few martians to test them on first...

Weaponized Anthrax is the perfect weapon to use.  Especially if you know
you're going to use it.  You simply hand out anti-biotics a few days
before spraying the whole area.  The advantage to such diseases like
anthrax is that we have the cure in hand.  The current difficulty with
bio-terrorism is that often you don't know you've been hit until the
window for cheap and effective cures has already passed.  If you are
doing a planned, pre-emptive strike, then you can protect your own
people, whether that be soldiers or civilians using prophylactic
measures.

Same for nukes - you will note that most SF writers always use the
caveat that aliens will land in population centers and that's why most
governments would be reluctant to use nukes.  Personally, if I didn't
know better, I would land in a spot that was devoid of high
concentrations of natives to test out their defenses.  Unless aliens
have a great amount of knowledge about us, how do they know that
microwaves from cell phones won't scramble their sensors/cause
cancer/bad headaches at short ranges?  I would not like to drop into the
center of a hornet's nest until I knew more. For all they know, every
human is a proto-warrior ready to convert to a blood thirsty killing
machine at the slightest provocation (just think of the Hollywood movies
being broadcast on TV and Satellite right now...) Thus I would tend to
land a "Recon in Force" unit to test the defenses, and if it looked good
then land the main invasion fleet.  Landing blind is a bad idea.

If aliens land in the middle of the New Mexico desert and started
rampaging, I don't think there would be as much issue about dropping a
tac nuke on them, than if they landed in downtown LA.

--Binhan