Irritation weapons?
 

I've been pondering this for some time now (ok...since early this afternoon) and the lively discussion on the benefits/drawbacks of mosquitos in the "Nukes" thread brought it to mind again.

Would it be possible to design a weapon that could be used to annoy a planet's population, as opposed to exterminating it? Perhaps something that would act like a plague bomb but instead of slowly killing the population over time it would slowly make the population angrier over time. Something that would release swarms of biting insects into the environment or a plague of rampant hair loss or acne. Could this even be tied into population migration - increasing migration rates away from the inhospitable world?

Of course, I have no idea what I am talking about. I've barely had time to sink my tooths into the SEV demo let alone the full version (which I can't afford anyway...sniff sniff). Please feel free to educate me if necessary.

Re: Irritation weapons?
 

Something like BS bombing. In WW2 they would drop leaflets to demoralise the enemy. Now you could drop information about a war so that even though the enemy is stronger or fights better their propulation becomes unhappy with the governments handling of things and forces them to stop fighting (represented by demonstrations....sorry, rioting http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif).

Edit: or should that be rioting...sorry, demonstrations.

Re: Irritation weapons?
 

This all sounds like stuff that would be covered under Intelligence.

Although the idea of an acne bomb does sound quite frightening... Actually, I think the government was testing those back in the 90's. It would certainly explain my high-school years. All that acne... (shudder) and the explosions... yep that has to be it.