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OTL coming up to WWII there was virtually no awareness of the possibility of a nuclear bomb on the part of the world's military establishments and publics. Even in the physics end of the scientific community it wasn't exactly shouted from the rooftops. Honestly TLs involving world war in the '30s and '40s are massively nuke-heavy for my tastes. I'd think it more likely to have wars without the bomb than wars with more bombs.

End digression. Point is, while their was little cognizance of the potential of a sustained fission reaction, there was an awareness of radioactive materials. Moreover, while we endlessly debate who could build a nuke and how, virtually every power in Europe had the means to create a much simpler radiation bomb. I mean, in modern parlance, a dirty bomb. [Hearts of Iron I believe let's you use these.] Well before the war there were suggestions of using radioactive materials as weapons in bombs or dropped as dust from bombers. I recall one early science fiction story that actually predicted MAD, though it supposed simpler radiation weapons, not bombs. I'm blanking on its title.

How useful could radiation bombs actually be in a battlefield setting? If one could expose concentrations of enemy troops to high levels of radiation, it would obviously wreak havoc, though one would expect the opposing side to reply with comparably awful weapons with little delay. But could that be done?

Unlike many of the chemicals weaponized for WWI, radioactive materials are not generally byproducts of "normal" industry. For the most part you have to collect and concentrate the stuff for no other purpose than collecting and concentrating it. That makes it a relatively expensive move. Especially in a war like most of OTL's WWII - a war of maneuver. Radiation weapons, like chemical ones, work best if the target can't move easily out of the way. On the other hand, there were plenty of times when military units moved slower or stayed in one place; a dirty bomb (if it could work at all) would be effective against the Dunkirk pocket, the German defenses in Italy, Leningrad, Stalingrad, or Moscow. Cities are unfortunately the most useful target - even if one weapon leaves negligible radiation, the sum of repeated exposures could be intense.

Even with the somewhat doubtful utility of radiation bombs, radiation could be useful in the same sense as a minefield, by contaminating crops, buildings, water supplies, or dust on the roads in a limited area. In a situation where an advance through such an area is certain, huge quantities of radioactive material could be used to reliable effect.

So, thoughts? Could radiation bombs be put to effective use, even if only for the matter of weeks it will take the opposing side to realize what they're dealing with and employ countermeasures?
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