Editing Siege Weapon (section)

==Modern==
Siege Weapons are still useful into modern times. However they are used a bit differently than their middle age counterparts. 

===Howitzer===
Originating in the 17th century after descending from early [[Cannon|cannons]]. The Howitzer is still the go to indirect fire weapon for infantry in the 21st, and will continue to be so until [[Gauss#Railgun|Railguns]] become smaller and more portable.

===Portable Explosives===
Comes in all shapes and sizes. A few of the more noteworthy types:
*'''TNT''': TriNitroToluene. Also known as dynamite. More powerful than gunpowder, more stable than nitroglycerin. Dynamite comes in sticks and and is ignited using an electrical charge from a plunger device. Just a few well-placed sticks can blast rocks with ease.
*'''Plastic Explosives''': Explosives made from a flexible material, such as C4. Can be molded into any shape and stuck on any surface with a bit of duck tape. Stick the primer in, then remotely detonate when you’re a safe distance away.
*'''Thermite''': this compound produces a jet of molten iron when ignited, rather than exploding outright. Great for cutting through thick surfaces, or destroying gun barrels/sensitive equipment.
*'''Detcord''': A type of plastic explosive that’s optimized for dynamic entry. Comes in a rope shape for easy bundling and placement; stick it on a wall in an outline of the hole you want to make, or sandwich a rolled up bundle between two bags of water to create a powerful door-knocking explosive.
*'''Shape Charge''': explosives placed around an inverted metal cone. When ignited, the cone collapses into a jet of molten metal, concentrating the explosive power into a fine point to punch through armor. Commonly used in anti-tank rounds, though portable versions exist.
*'''IED''': Short for '''I'''mprovised '''E'''xplosive '''D'''evice. Term coined by the US military during the invastion of Iraq in the 2000s, that covers basically anything that goes ''boom'' and isn't covered by traditional military lingo or adheres to any standardized model of bomb or land mine. As the name tells, these are mostly improvised explosives made from a bewildering range of materials, from pipe bombs that are made by filling a solid steel pipe with some C4 or dynamite to more volatile and/or unreliable things like artillery shells equipped with a fuse or just a solid tube filled with ammonuiumnitrate (found in many fertilizers). 
*'''Land Mines''': Landmines are essentially small explosive containers that are buried and set off by someone or something stepping on them. Mines are primarily used to prevent an enemy setting foot in areas you don't want them to or force your enemy to march into a direction of your choosing. The major hassle of Land Mines is that they are buried en masse and remain actively dangerous until they are either set off or defused  - often long after a conflict has ended. This has lead to a movement toward banning anti-personnel mines.  While many countries have signed on to the Convention on the Prohibition of the Use, Stockpiling, Production and Transfer of Anti-Personnel Mines and on their Destruction (or the Ottawa Treaty), many countries, including Russia, China, and the United States have not.  While not a signatory, the US has said that they will abide by the terms of the treaty, except for on the Korean Peninsula (since the Korean DMZ is chock full of the things).

In addition, landmines come in all shapes and sizes.  Some will bounce into the air after being tripped, some are made from surprising materials like wood and glass, and the explosive yield can vary widely.  Britain was considering nuclear mines during the 1950s, in order to deal with any Soviet invasion of Germany.  Interesting fact:  In order to prevent the mine's electronics from freezing during the winter, the mines were to be equipped with live chickens which would theoretically provide enough heat to keep the electronics working.

===Bangalore torpedo===
These were explosives in a tube used mainly to clear obstacles such as mines, barbed wire, and barricades. They came in handy if you couldn't otherwise dismantle said obstacles properly, such as if you were storming an enemy position under fire and needed to create a clear path very quickly.

===Sling===
Thanks to the creation of explosive payloads, one of humanity's oldest weapons still sees occasional use as an indirect fire weapon. [[Sling]]s first returned to use during the Great War when hand grenades did, and saw use during the interwar and into the Spanish Civil War and into the World War II concurrent Winter War where the Finns used sling fired projectiles to kill ''tanks''. Grenade launchers have largely replaced them in industrialized forces, but they continue to see use among those not as well armed.

===Chemical Weapons===
The UN/Geneva Protocol specifies a Chemical Weapon as a chemical compound, purposefully created to directly harm or incapacitate humans or indirectly, via poisoning crops, livestock and drinking water. While mentions of Chemical Weapons conjure up pictures from the Great War, not all of them take the form of gas to choke your enemy to death. All of them produce results that are horrible to look at and even worse to be at the recieving end of. The most noteable distinction from Biological Weapons is that of intent, Chemical Weapons are solely created for the single purpose of being weaponized in some way or form. Bioweapons, in contrast, are living organisms that have no inherent intent to harm humans, even though there are some edge cases where there is some overlap between the two. Ricin as a prominent example is an incredibly deadly chemical poison produced by the castor oil plant like many other plants do produce different chemical compunds to protect themselves against herbivores or fungus, making it both a Chemical and Biological Weapon at the same time. The plant itself is not a weapon, the poison being synthesized by its seeds however is. The point being: You cannot obscure the intent of use for a chemical weapon while Biological Weapons in many cases offer plausible deniability, many states in the world house pathogens that could kill millions for the sole purpose of researching vaccines and medication against them. As of the time of writing this section, chemical weapons have been outlawed and nations that still have stocks of them had them mostly destroyed. Presumably. Here are just a few examples for what form Chemical Weapons can take: 
*'''Tear Gas''': Yes. This counts. While not 'lethal' it still directly causes harm and incapacitates so Geneva Protocol counts it as a chemical weapon. So I can hear your next obvious question: why the fuck is it legal to use it on civilians even if there rioting if it's a warcrime? Well. . .there is no good answer to that. One reason is that we culturally all consider Tear Gas different to other chemicals so we deem it acceptable and the reason military don't get it if you did drop a tear gas canister on an infantry formation they just report 'been gassed!' and the other side might assume that the gentlemen agreement to not use chemical weapons is off and just start reacting the Somme on you before they can ID the exact agent being used.
*'''Poison Gas''': All of the big powers in World War 1 experimented with poison gas during the course of the war. Its first iteration were simple canisters of Chlorine that were opened when the wind blew towards the enemy, creating a noxious yellow cloud that would suffocate unprotected soldiers when the Gas reacted with their Lung Tissue, later transitioning to even deadlier comnbinations of gas to increase their effectiveness (like the infamous German "Buntschießen", where tear gas, not lethal on its own, would force enemy Soldiers to take their gas masks off would be combined with Phosgen and Chlorine). Needless to say, the injuries suffered from such an attack were mounstrous and a Gas Attack was one of the most feared events amoung the Soldiers on the Ground. So feared in fact, that not even Hitler (who experienced a gas attack as a Runner in Belgium) seriously considered their use, even when it became obvious that the Nazi War Effort was really going to shit (At least against Soldiers, Zyklon B also falls into the category of Chemical Weapons). Poison Gas as a weapon of war also has considerable downsides that made them obsolete even during World War 1; Gas masks improved to the point that a gas attack without sophisticated sequences of different chemicals became difficult to pull off, as well as the fact that you have to carefully time your assault if you want to avoid your troops stepping into a giant death cloud, turning the area you just bombarded into a huge dead zone. In theory, it might be useful to force a surrender of troops that might be hiding in a Bunker, but the use of Poison Gas is universally detested to such a degree that the political cost would outweigh the benefit in any case.
*'''Defoliants''': Herbicides sprayed via plane that destroy an enemies crops and cause trees to wither and drop their leaves, making undetected movement through dense foliage such a jungle difficult. Agent Orange was the most infamous compound of these kinds of weapons, with the US using them during their campaigns in Vietnam. While not deadly in itself, the Barrels that contained the stuff were contaminated with other chemicals because the US Military wanted to cut corners and didn't take potential sideeffects of exposure to Agent Orange into account, which in turn turned out to be extremely carcinogenic, but also corrupted the DNA of people exposed to it to such a degree that any children born from them would be deformed and debilitated for the rest of their lifes. 
*'''Poison Agents''': From the dawn of ages, humans experimented with poisons to make weapons deadlier, from the entrails of tropical frogs to simply rubbing swords and arrowheads in excrement. What we think of when we hear the words Poison Agent today are highly sophisicated substances that are ludicrously deadly. The Soviets in particular dedicated an entire branch of their military research solely to the creation of some of the deadliest poisons ever known to man, mainly for use in political assasinations of Dissidents or hostile politicians abroad. The Russians continue this proud tradition with compunds like Novichok, used for example in the attempted assassination of Sergej Skripal in the UK in 2018. 
*'''Psychotropic Agents''': Hallucinogenics or other compounds that in some way or form interact or change human behaviour in a way that is uncharacteristic for the person exposed to it. The US military experimented with such weapons during the 50s and 60s, which is where LSD first got into widespread distribution. Their existence as a weapon of war is heavily disputed; while there is definitive evidence that aformentioned experiments exist and there was some interest in it from the military side of things, there is only mostly anecdotal evidence that there was ever a compound mass-manufactured for combat purposed or used in combat. The US Army supposedly used some LSD to test its effectiveness on Vietcong camps in the 70s, but there is very little evidence to support this ever taking place and given the Agent Orange spraying at the same time it's possible the two got mixed up, spawning the rumor. 

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