What makes nuclear weapons different than other weapons?

Answer 1

Nuclear weapons, biological weapons, and chemical weapons (aka, weapons of mass destruction) are different from other weapons because they:

• cause indiscriminate damage, often over wide unpredictable areas outside the intended target area
• produce long term often permanent and disabling injuries to even those with only minor exposure
• survivors usually must go through extensive decontamination procedures before medical personnel can treat the survivors' injuries without endangering their own lives, this will cause more fatalities either due to delay of treatments and/or inadequate or incorrect decontamination procedures
• both nuclear weapons and biological weapons could "run away" under certain conditions and have effects on a global scale, altering the environment and/or causing plagues, affecting both combatant and neutral countries indiscriminately (chemical weapons typically cannot do this)
• etc.