Some more about of the biological warfare

Dilandu wrote:
1) Biological attack against the horses and draft dragons on the mainland. By using the OWL's remotes as "fleas", we could create a nice, perfectly controlled pandemy, that crippled the Church's supply of draft animals.

There is no such thing as a controlled pandemy, perfectly so or otherwise.

This is why in the real world, even lunatics normally do NOT even consider biological warfare.

I'm the geneticist. And I understand perfectly what is possible and what is not in this science. It IS possible to create a virus with a sufficient number of "safety mechanisms", so the mutation of ALL of them would took longer than the existence of the humankind.

That´s just wishful thinking. That´s the kind of delusions Monsanto run under, and it didn´t even take a full year of testing their crap to find mutational spread.

That was stuff that was 100% safe, it was claimed.

The idea is to use a virus that is transmitted through the remotes ONLY. I.e. the remotes should "bite" animals, infecting them with the virus.

And that would make a difference in what way?
That only means that you have full control over the primary vector of infection. It´s the secondary vectors that are going to kill you. Possibly literally.

AirTech wrote:
Having remotes poison the draft animals directly would produce much the same effect too (and more controllable)- you wouldn't even need to kill them, just debilitate them enough so they either can't work or become unmanageable ( wonder what a dragon in heat and on LSD is like...). Spraying something on the feed could have much the same effect, Clintyn will compound the issue looking for saboteurs and destroy the armies moral...

Yup, THAT would work without causing risks of hyper pandemics and fun stuff like that.

Going to mutate? The way smallpox (did not, as it happens) mutated, so as to resist immunization? Going to mutate is a trope, but not necessarily true.

No, but the thing is you have literally many billions of chances for mutation or "incorrect spread", the risks are very high that it will do one or the other, or both.

Less than a year for genetically modified crops to spread partial resistance to pestiticides to both plants and insects in the surrounding area, and that´s taken from a real world test of "safe" modifications to PLANTS. Bacteria and virus are drastically worse.

So sure, it´s not necessarily true, but chances are pretty distinctly not in your favour which is why even genocidal maniacs tend to avoid bio warfare.

I do not believe Charis needs any more advantages to win this war.

With the the destruction of the Army of Shiloh and the return of the Charisian navy into the Gulf of Dohlar, Charis has pretty much severed the entirety of Howard from direct CoGA control. This is in addition to knocking Howard out of the war given that this large chunk of mainland does not have the capability to produce weapons to fight Charis with any hope of victory. Even die hard fanatics are going to hesitate over marching onto the battlefield against Charis without at least weapons that will give them a chance to strike back.

Secondly the CoGA is in serious economic trouble, which should be pretty clear when in HFAF they "borrowed" money from Harching, plus all the other short term solutions Duchairn used to get the Jihad army up and running after the Sword of Schuler. IMO an economic collapse is a certainty now, regardless of what Duchairn does to stave it off.

And finally there are commanders like Harless, Hennet and Henkey, which there WILL be in an army like Harchong unless by some miracle Magwair can force his newly minted commanders into the position. Feel free to wage bets on the odds of this happening

The CoGA does a fine job of hamstringing themselves already for Charis to need biological weapons.