In Science Fiction
The mocking of the term "weapons of mass destruction" dates back well before the Iraq War, with Hugh Cook's 1992 fantasy novel The Witchlord and the Weaponmaster satirically mentioned that the avalanche is a terrible weapon of mass destruction, outlawed by civilised countries in the conduct of war.
The novel Dune discusses atomic weapons, and its sequel Dune Messiah employs one called a Stone Burner. In the Star Wars universe, the Death Star is a moveable, multi-use WMD (meaning that it, unlike most WMD missiles, can be used thousands of times.) In the Babylon 5 universe, WMDs have been used a number of times, most directly by the Earth Alliance (the Earth-Minbari War uses nuclear weapons), the Army of Light (the Shadow War, also nuclear), the Centauri (Narn-Centauri War, planetary bombardment with asteroids by mass drivers), as well as on their own planet on the Isle of Selini to rid themselves of the Shadows (nuclear), and the Drakh (biological warfare against Earth).
In "Scorpion", a 1997 episode of Star Trek: Voyager, Captain Janeway describes the Borg's multikinetic neutronic mine as a weapon of mass destruction.
In many real-time strategy video games, each playable army would be able to construct a WMD or 'superweapon' to use in battle, which can be similar to WMDs found today or different from current technology.
Read more about this topic: Weapons Of Mass Destruction In Popular Culture
Famous quotes containing the words science fiction, science and/or fiction:
“Science fiction writers, I am sorry to say, really do not know anything. We can’t talk about science, because our knowledge of it is limited and unofficial, and usually our fiction is dreadful.”
—Philip K. Dick (1928–1982)
“Philosophy of science without history of science is empty; history of science without philosophy of science is blind.”
—Imre Lakatos (1922–1974)
“We ignore thriller writers at our peril. Their genre is the political condition. They massage our dreams and magnify our nightmares. If it is true that we always need enemies, then we will always need writers of fiction to encode our fears and fantasies.”
—Daniel Easterman (b. 1949)