Zeon and NBC Weapons...

[Heatsaber]

Hi, all. I'm new here. I like a lot of the discussions I've read. I do have a quick question.

Just how aware was the average Zeon rank-and-file of the NBC attacks in the opening week of the war? I've read that the attacks were initially used to bring the Earth Federation to it's knees, and that everyone knew about it. I've also read that only a select few were really in the "know." Was this genocidal fervor a systemic Zeonic problem or was it carried out secretly by a few and propagandized into something else later?

Also, how were the attacks actually carried out? Would a Zaku fly into a colony area and just fire off a nuke, or was it a Musai? Thank you in advance for any attention to this matter!

[Deathzealot]

You haven't seen 8th MS Team have you? For there was an earlier scene where we see a Zaku C-Type fly into an colony and nuke it which is witnessed by Shiro the main character.

[Dark Duel]

Haven't watched 08th MST in a long time, but IIRC that particular flashback was a poison gas attack, not a nuclear one. Don't think Ensign Newbie would've survived a nuke when he was IN the colony in question.
Doesn't change the overall point about Zeon using NBC weapons, but just wanted to point that out.

[Deathzealot]

Hmmmm...it has been awhile since I have watched it as well. I also remember it launching it something and assumed it was a Nuke due to it launching from what looked like one of those Nuke Launchers the Zakus carried early on. /shrug/ But your right Shiro wouldn't have survived if it was a Nuke.

[AmuroNT1]

At least in some of the games like Gihren's Greed, there's a variant of the C-Type Zaku that's made specifically for nuclear attacks and wields a giant bazooka that seems to be the ancestor of the GP02's nuke-zooka.

[Gelgoog Jager]

Well, IIRC some of the animated scenes about the initial battles from the Gihren's Greed series show Zakus wielding regular 280mm bazookas and firing them at some EF warships which were completely destroyed in a single shot.

Back to the poison gas attack, the backstory of Cima Garahau seems to confirm that the soldiers that carried the gas attacks didn't know they were killing the colony's population (Mark pointed out that it seems they were told that they would instead spread an anesthetic before proceeding to evacuate the colonists).

[toysdream]

The notion that the people carrying out the gas attacks didn't know what they were doing comes pretty much exclusively from Entertainment Bible 39, and this seems to be the basis for a cut scene of Cima reacting in horror that was featured in one of the later Gihren's Greed games. The "Mayfly of Space" audio drama indicates that Cima was traumatized by her actions at the start of the war, but I don't believe it goes as far as saying she didn't know it was poison gas.

See also these previous threads for discussions of WMD use at the start of the war, what the different sources say, and how much of this is confirmed by the anime (virtually nothing).

UC Questions (page 3)
So just how many colonies did Zeon gas, anyway?

That second one is from July of this year and covers most of the same ground as this thread.

-- Mark