Grim, it sounds like you are talking about radiation weapons. A neutron bomb is probably the best known example (but this is also a thermonuclear weapon and would be part of the ban). Trust me, there are already worse weapons, but, as far as I know, nukes are currently capable of the most destruction from a single application. This ban is a start.
Most of the OECD have refused to go though. America pressured all its allies to stay sway; the Netherlands went anyway bit Australia, England, France etc all agreed. So the resulting resolution is really going to lack teeth.
good luck trying to take them from the U.S. Not to be super nationalistic but the U.S. us majority of the punch in the U.N. you try to take our nukes we gonna bail.
And you lose your literal nuclear option, which means that you'll lose MAD and increase the odds of large-scale wars happening. No one likes to admit it but they serve their purpose.
Nuclear weapons posses a yield thousands of times greater than the biggest conventional bombs. The yield of all known atomic tests in history is greater than the total conventional explosive (bombs) estimated used in ww2 by a wide margin and consider how relatively few nuclear tests their have been in comparison to even a single ww2ads bombing by numbers. Radiation is of course a byproduct of nukes but one that gets too much focus in public perception. While nuclear weapons are very powerful, we have seen the devastation that conventional bombs can wreak in combat. Only 2 nuclear weapons have ever been used
In anger. Maybe instead we could try to ban conventional bombs since those are the ones actually killing people and not hypothetical threats?
No it's not. There are around 11 nations capable of making and deploying nukes - US, Russia, China, Pakistan, India, Israel, UK, France, North Korea, then South Africa and Brazil are said to be capable of manufacturing but have not really carried out testing. I bet you won't find these nations sitting around that particular "Ban Nukes" table.
In anger. Maybe instead we could try to ban conventional bombs since those are the ones actually killing people and not hypothetical threats?