Quote Originally Posted by Sarmatian View Post
Bah. The atomic bomb wasn't mentioned but it was covered by the same rules that forbade specific targeting of population centers. Hiroshima and Nagasaki had no military targets whatsoever, which is why they were untouched before.

If you want an example, if you invent a Star Wars Blaster, there's no need to rewrite the law to say "murder by blaster is illegal".
But that puts these weapons on the same level, doesn't it? There is probably a good reason for nuclear weapons to be treated in a special way. One reason could be that we could wipe out the planet with nuclear weapons within a day whereas I dare you to show me how that could be done with "conventional weapons". Even the US couldn't carpet bomb Russia faster than Russia could nuke the entire US. In that sense conventional weapons give the defender more time and a better chance to actually fight back and defend themselves (if we ignore "untouchable" stealth planes for a moment). The simple scale of destruction is what makes them special. If you took the same ICBMs and put TNT in there, you wouldn't get anywhere near the same effect, see the >100 missiles fired at Syria. Had they all been nuclear, there might be no Syria anymore.

A blaster is barely more deadly than any other gun.

As for the bombing of civilians, I already gave you that and using nukes twice didn't make it any better either.
I'm just not as sure as you are about WW3 being fought with nukes, really depends on how crazy the leaders and their followers are.