Scenario 1: What will you do?

Question

This is a what if question and it is 1 of many. I will ask these kinds of questions every weekend.
Hezbollah has rockets full of nerve gas(capable of kill 1000s of people in one area) provided by Iran and is hiding them in a apartment building in Lebonan and will soon move them to another location to fire them at the capital of Israel. Israeli intel knows about this and the only way to avoid them from transporting the rockets is to bomb it from the air but here's the catch, their are 400 residents currently living in these apartment(most of them children) not to mention their are about 1000 of people in the area at the time.

What do you think should Israel do?

(a). Bomb the apartment but as the result unleashing the nerve gas in the city block
(b) call of the airstrike and try to track down the weopen,(100s of vehicals coming in and out of the apartment) risking a chemical attack on the country.

NO THIRD OPTION. These are the only two. Please tell my why.

These harsh decisions are made in war everytime people.

olayinka o
What the hell do you know about me you idiot. I've had asked this question to see how others would do in this scenario, no matter what country it is you moron. Rant somewhere else!

some of these answers are pretty good!
I like to see more.

Answer 1

Option B, for the following reasons:

1) Knowing that the threat is there, having some form of prevention back home is possible and casualties can be averted that way;

2) Rockets with a payload large enough to cause that kind of casualties would have to be pretty large, and hence could only be carried in larger vehicles. After all, it would be practically suicide to attempt to dismantle that kind of warheads without proper training and facilities;

3) Since Intelligence knows where they are, surveillance would be a piece of cake. Tracking down the limited number of vehicles capable of carrying weapons would therefore be much easier, and a big rocket tends to be pretty conspicuous;

4) Just like every other form of fighting, from hand-to-hand to modern warfare, one is msot vulnerable while in the middle of moving. As such, the weapons, being tracked as they are, would be easier to strike when they would be in transit and therefore minimize the number of casualties in each of the strikes and make the actual probability of destruction much higher.

5) There are several explosive and incendiary mixtures that can destroy chemical agents before they can spread out. But that is assuming that there is nothing or very little in the way to absorb the heat/energy of the detonation.. So destroying the building as per Option A (which would entail the explosion having to rip through brick, concrete, steel, etc and therefore lose a lot of its heat and energy that way) is not guaranteed to destroy the nerve agent, and instead it could spread it all over the whole city as opposed to single targetted strikes on soft/lightly armoured targets.

Edit: Ditto on the guy who answered before me. You're actually lucky if your options change only every two seconds. And any country with partway decent special forces capability, and the intelligence you stated is at hand, would raid the building and beeline for the few locations in the building where the rockets would be located and destroy them, most likely with thermite grenades that would incinerate the agent instead of releasing it.

Answer 2

I would apply a combination of A&B.

1) Attack bridges and intersections so that vehicles cannot move to or from the building.

2) At the same time leaflet the building and broadcast on all radio and TV stations that the building was going to get hit with HE and WP in 2 hours. Warn that any vehicles leaving the building weould be attacked.

3) Wait 2 hours and destroy any vehicle attempting to get to or from the building diring this time.

4) Hit the building with incendary weapons. (Heat breaks down chemical weapons.)

Answer 3

if those are your only two options, you bomb the apartment.

as a country your number 1 job is to protect your citizens. and if they try and search for those weapons on the ground they will be launched before they can be found. whose fault is it those weapons are in a civilian neighborhood? Hezbollah's fault. For them it is a win win situation. If they are able to launch them into Isreal, they win. If Isreal blows them up and kills the people from Lebanon, Hezbollah wins. Hezbollah does not care about other peoples lives. They are the evil ones and they are trying to either terrorize people from Isreal or make them look evil.

But you gotta protect your own citizens. bomb em.

Answer 4

What a stupid callous question asked by an Israeli symphatiser to justify the murder of innocent women and children.
The terrorist may well have a bunker busting nerve gas missile one day. i bet you didnt think the terrorist could have a weapon capable of wreaking havok on haifa.
A hezbollah terrorist? No Im an African and I am as mad as hell at Israel and her American Overlord.

Answer 5

Option A plus additional bombings or Syria and Iran. No hesitation.

Answer 6

option b. they have all the tech we have and the same kind of spec ops people,leave option a as last resort and if you've ever been in the mil you know there is always more than two options and they change every two seconds

Answer 7

Id have to say option A also.

Answer 8

Bomb it. You have to save your own people first.

Answer 9

A. And blame it on Iraq

Answer 10

OOHHH Boooyyyy.....you are going to entertain us every weekend. (oh brother)