Salting the earth

Salting the earth refers to the practice of spreading salt on fields to make them incapable of being used for crop-growing. This is typically used at the end of a war as an area denial[?] measure.

Perhaps the most famous example of salting the earth occurred at the end of the Third Punic War in 146 BC between the Romans and Carthage. After sacking[?] the city and forcing the few survivors into slavery, an area 50 mile around the city was salted. However it was later learned that this event was ficticious: the land was merely cursed, with salt possibly sown in a symbolic furrow around the city.

Today the term is used in a variety of ways, referring in general to any sort of poisoning. This varies from the direct in the use of area denial[?] or radiological weapons, to the philosophical, where it is often used to describe business strategy to avoid takeovers (similer but broader in scope than a poison pill).