Custom «Terrorism» Essay Paper Sample

Terrorist are known to use variety of weapons that range from very simple tools such as stones or knives to those that have high levels of technology such as nerve gas among other. Livingstone (1987) confirms that the weapons that can be used by terrorist to harm their targets are virtually limitless and thus there is no standard terrorist weapon. In deciding on the choice of a particular weapon, terrorist often consider a number of factors. Some of these factors include the availability of weapons, suitability of the weapons for a given task or target and the potential terror level of the weapon. Flory and Higgins (1997) believe that terrorist settle on the kind of weapons they will use before carrying out an attack. In the past, chemical weapons have emerged to be one of the commonly used weapons by terrorist due to its severity, low demand of technology during development and low chances of detectability.

The severity of chemical weapons is one of the factors that fuel that use of chemical weapon by terrorist. The active components of chemical weaponry are considered to be chemical agents that cause high levels of damage to the natural environment and the ecosystems at large (UNEP, 2010). As a result of its use, terrorist have a potential of harming a wider area of targets environment. Additionally, chemical weapons are a common choice of terrorist the making of these weapons requires limited technology. Coppola (2006) contends that chemical weapons are easy to deliver to the target areas due to the low technology associated with them. Furthermore, this makes them very easy to transport and can in many cases go undetected

While terrorist refrain from the use of other weapons, a number of terrorist may consider the use of chemical weapons due to their severity, ability to be transported easily and their possibility of the weapons being undetected on transit to the target area.