Comment by randomtoast

TLDR; It is short range primarily because the underlying fields (those of the W and Z bosons) are “stiff,” causing any disturbance to die off exponentially at distances much smaller than an atom’s diameter. In quantum language, that same stiffness manifests as the nonzero masses of the W and Z bosons, so their corresponding force does not effectively propagate over long distances—hence it appears “weak” and short-range.