Direwolf18 wrote:
The idea of localized bio weapons was tried in the honorverse during earths final war. It ended up damn near wiping out life on earth. In the Heirs to the Empire trilogy they didn't even intentionally use their bioweapon. Someone just had an "Oops" moment. And trillions upon trillions of people died.
The Honorverse is a bit different scenario. There the bioweapon was used against the enemy, supplied with modern medicine - i'e' the viruses were MUCH harder to control, just because their targets were pretty well "hardened" and viruses required quite a lot of adapting ability to be effective.
In Safehold case, the bioweapon would be used against totally "soft", unprotected targets, with basically no ability to resist. I.e. we would not need for the virus to be too capable of adapting and resisting. Basically because no medicine resistance is supposed to be used.
Bioweapon isn't some sort of dark magic that Absolutely Could Not Be Controlled. It's pretty nasty thing, and it's really hard to control if the enemy is defended by modern medicine. But against enemy that have no scientific-based medicine - no even germ theory - the controlled virus is much simpler.