What is the most powerful weapon used in a war?

[Deja Q]

Nukes?

Nope.

Compassion?

Getting warmer, but nope...

Knowledge?

Well, knowledge is a tool. How do you use that tool?

Knowledge is the most dangerous thing any person can have. But if only a person knows how to use it. (so even if our news media bothered to include all points of view and articles we can only seem to find from external (non-US) sources, I doubt our populace - monkeyfied as it has been - would still know what to do with it.)


Edit: Subject line spelling :dunce:

[DanCa]

1. Mothers - seriously it takes a man to start a war.

It takes a mother to stop one.

[Smarmie Doofus]

2. Without question: information. In other words...media. n/t

[Deja Q]

3. But our media spits out disinformation.

How come we opted to find other sources and other points of view?

Our desire for knowledge.

Information is used for control.

Knowledge makes us free.

Fascists do not like freedom, therefore they seek to control - hence the media.

[SkiGuy]

4. Propaganda

[kahleefornia]

5. Surprise. Fear

Fear and Surprise, Ruthless Efficiency,and an almost fanatical devotion to the Pope.

[TheCowsCameHome]

6. Lies.

That's what got us where we are today.

[NNN0LHI]

7. IEDs are running a close second though n/t

[readmylips]

8. Lies....

as we very well have experienced.

[Ready4Change]

9. The Bullet

When I read weapon I think "the thing which directly kills." Bullets are the most common weapon in use during our worlds most populated eras. These eras have seen more people killed by bullets than actually existed in many other eras. Machine guns simply mowed down men like weeds in the insane charges of WWI. And the unrelentingly continuous single pop of bullets has been an unstopped metronome of death since the 1800's.

Before the time of bullets I probably would have said the knife, as I suspect it has been the domestic weapon of choice as well as a tool of war since our species earliest history. That's without extending "knife" to include bayonets on rifles (which I'd categorize with spears) or swords, which I'd put into their own category.

If you're talking the SINGLE most powerful weapon of course I'd give the nod to either the Hiroshima or Nagasaki atomic bombs. (I forget which city was most populous, I'm afraid.) Those are likely the only 2 times a single instance of a weapon has directly killed hundreds of thousands.

However (thankfully) that's the only two times nukes have actually been used, so even their total destruction as a class of weapons doesn't stack up against the hundreds of millions killed by simple propelled chunks of metal over the last couple centuries.

Simple, accessible, plentiful. Nothing else has ever killed at the rate of bullets, and I suspect, nothing will supplant them in the foreseable future.