On TV, in a documentary about Portdon Down. Up to 1500 people killed confirmed to be from Sarin in Damascus. I hadn’t realised so many.

Also on documentary, nerve gas VX is 170 times as deadly as sarin and acts the same way. A few ml is enough to kill between 10,000 and 100,000 people.

Documentary refers to chlorine, phosgene, mustard gas, anthrax, but that’s all old news. Michael Mosely agrees to get a dose of CS gas and survives.

The doco shows scores of rusted shells containing chemical warfare agents and follows the slow process as one of them is identified, cut apart and incinerated.

Ebola is currently being tested as a biological weapon.

What do you know about chemical and biological weapons and how do they really compare in deadliness / incapacitation to nuclear weapons?

mollwollfumble said:

On TV, in a documentary about Portdon Down. Up to 1500 people killed confirmed to be from Sarin in Damascus. I hadn’t realised so many.

Also on documentary, nerve gas VX is 170 times as deadly as sarin and acts the same way. A few ml is enough to kill between 10,000 and 100,000 people.

Documentary refers to chlorine, phosgene, mustard gas, anthrax, but that’s all old news. Michael Mosely agrees to get a dose of CS gas and survives.

The doco shows scores of rusted shells containing chemical warfare agents and follows the slow process as one of them is identified, cut apart and incinerated.

Ebola is currently being tested as a biological weapon.

What do you know about chemical and biological weapons and how do they really compare in deadliness / incapacitation to nuclear weapons?

I have been gassed many times by CS, it used to be part of annual NBC training in the Engineers. Part of that training involved being in full gear in hot Qld sun looking for pools of motor oil that simulated the persistent agents. Which reminds me, I know that there are different uses, persistent and non persistent and that in a worse case blood agents would be used before nerve because they degraded filters.

Persistent were an area denial weapon, not so much to stop manoeuvres but to slow them, units in gear are at a much much reduced effectiveness and require more support. Non persistent would be used as an offensive weapon. Problem is if both sides use th m then any advantages are pretty well nullified.

As always with these weapons the use was problematic, both from international condemnations and losing any moral high ground, the preparation for use and exploitation took specialised training and at the lowest level wind changes could upset your day.

AwesomeO said:

mollwollfumble said:

On TV, in a documentary about Portdon Down. Up to 1500 people killed confirmed to be from Sarin in Damascus. I hadn’t realised so many.

Also on documentary, nerve gas VX is 170 times as deadly as sarin and acts the same way. A few ml is enough to kill between 10,000 and 100,000 people.

Documentary refers to chlorine, phosgene, mustard gas, anthrax, but that’s all old news. Michael Mosely agrees to get a dose of CS gas and survives.

The doco shows scores of rusted shells containing chemical warfare agents and follows the slow process as one of them is identified, cut apart and incinerated.

Ebola is currently being tested as a biological weapon.

What do you know about chemical and biological weapons and how do they really compare in deadliness / incapacitation to nuclear weapons?

I have been gassed many times by CS, it used to be part of annual NBC training in the Engineers. Part of that training involved being in full gear in hot Qld sun looking for pools of motor oil that simulated the persistent agents. Which reminds me, I know that there are different uses, persistent and non persistent and that in a worse case blood agents would be used before nerve because they degraded filters.

Persistent were an area denial weapon, not so much to stop manoeuvres but to slow them, units in gear are at a much much reduced effectiveness and require more support. Non persistent would be used as an offensive weapon. Problem is if both sides use th m then any advantages are pretty well nullified.

As always with these weapons the use was problematic, both from international condemnations and losing any moral high ground, the preparation for use and exploitation took specialised training and at the lowest level wind changes could upset your day.

I was gassed by my own error of judgement whilst making chlorine gas in the school lab.
But because I knew this, i also knew I could take my full face mask off whilst pumping methyl bromide under plastic on the ground that I had secured. it was a fucking hot experience under full breathing shutdown in full sun. I knew I was safe and I didn’t need to be OH&S about it.

Re compare to nukes, there are various nuke scenarios, battlefield use, counterforce and countervalue. Both would invite a reponse a bit like bacterial and chemical which would lose the aggressor any moral high ground and it would be similarly effected by the counter attack. In any situation where there can be a like response from an adversary it would be a big call for a rational actor to step over that threshold.

Bacterial and chemical attacks are deniable in ways that a nuke is not.

AwesomeO said:

Re compare to nukes, there are various nuke scenarios, battlefield use, counterforce and countervalue. Both would invite a reponse a bit like bacterial and chemical which would lose the aggressor any moral high ground and it would be similarly effected by the counter attack. In any situation where there can be a like response from an adversary it would be a big call for a rational actor to step over that threshold.

Bacterial and chemical attacks are deniable in ways that a nuke is not.

It is all about bullying.

AwesomeO said:

Re compare to nukes, there are various nuke scenarios, battlefield use, counterforce and countervalue. Both would invite a reponse a bit like bacterial and chemical which would lose the aggressor any moral high ground and it would be similarly effected by the counter attack. In any situation where there can be a like response from an adversary it would be a big call for a rational actor to step over that threshold.

Bacterial and chemical attacks are deniable in ways that a nuke is not.

Could there ever exist a scenario where attack and defense were completely unnecessary thought patterns?

roughbarked said:

AwesomeO said:

Re compare to nukes, there are various nuke scenarios, battlefield use, counterforce and countervalue. Both would invite a reponse a bit like bacterial and chemical which would lose the aggressor any moral high ground and it would be similarly effected by the counter attack. In any situation where there can be a like response from an adversary it would be a big call for a rational actor to step over that threshold.

Bacterial and chemical attacks are deniable in ways that a nuke is not.

Could there ever exist a scenario where attack and defense were completely unnecessary thought patterns?

Seriously. It is best that lest we forget. On the day we pick to remember that.
However, what we do on any other day, is open slather.

> Persistent were an area denial weapon …

That was mentioned on the doco in connection with anthrax. The island off the Scottish coart where anthrax was tested on sheep was considered off limits for 40 years before final decontamination.

Thanks for the feedback folks. It hadn’t occurred to me that some forumites had actual exposure to some of these.

mollwollfumble said:

> Persistent were an area denial weapon …

That was mentioned on the doco in connection with anthrax. The island off the Scottish coart where anthrax was tested on sheep was considered off limits for 40 years before final decontamination.

Thanks for the feedback folks. It hadn’t occurred to me that some forumites had actual exposure to some of these.

well why? We come from all walks and I’d have thought we all knew that by now.

mollwollfumble said:

> Persistent were an area denial weapon …

That was mentioned on the doco in connection with anthrax. The island off the Scottish coart where anthrax was tested on sheep was considered off limits for 40 years before final decontamination.

Thanks for the feedback folks. It hadn’t occurred to me that some forumites had actual exposure to some of these.

I would think militarily persistent is dealing in terms of months not 40 years. There would be a NATO definition standard somewhere for a persistent chemical or bacterial agent. Which is not to say that an area can not be irredeemably contaminated but that area denial is usually a shortish term manoeuvre type thing.

AwesomeO said:

mollwollfumble said:

> Persistent were an area denial weapon …

That was mentioned on the doco in connection with anthrax. The island off the Scottish coart where anthrax was tested on sheep was considered off limits for 40 years before final decontamination.

Thanks for the feedback folks. It hadn’t occurred to me that some forumites had actual exposure to some of these.

I would think militarily persistent is dealing in terms of months not 40 years. There would be a NATO definition standard somewhere for a persistent chemical or bacterial agent. Which is not to say that an area can not be irredeemably contaminated but that area denial is usually a shortish term manoeuvre type thing.

Theoretical or otherwise?

mollwollfumble said:

What do you know about chemical and biological weapons and how do they really compare in deadliness / incapacitation to nuclear weapons?

I have some idea of how to respond to attacks, since the Victorian emergency management community received funding to run special training before the ’06 Comm Games in Melbourne, but our current capacity would be (if you repeat this I’ll deny it) extremely poor.

mollwollfumble said:

……..

Ebola is currently being tested as a biological weapon.

What do you know about chemical and biological weapons and how do they really compare in deadliness / incapacitation to nuclear weapons?

I saw that doco last night. It showed them working on defences against ebola in case it was used as a weapon. Quite different to working on it as a weapon themselves.

From wikipedia.

Schedule 1 chemicals have few, or no uses outside chemical weapons. These may be produced or used for research, medical, pharmaceutical or chemical weapon defence testing purposes but production at sites producing more than 100 grams per year must be declared to the OPCW. A country is limited to possessing a maximum of 1 tonne of these materials. Examples are sulfur mustard and nerve agents, and substances which are solely used as precursor chemicals in their manufacture. A few of these chemicals have very small scale non-military applications, for example milligram quantities of nitrogen mustard are used to treat certain cancers.

Schedule 2 chemicals have legitimate small-scale applications. Manufacture must be declared and there are restrictions on export to countries that are not CWC signatories. An example is thiodiglycol which can be used in the manufacture of mustard agents, but is also used as a solvent in inks.

Schedule 3 chemicals have large-scale uses apart from chemical weapons. Plants which manufacture more than 30 tonnes per year must be declared and can be inspected, and there are restrictions on export to countries which are not CWC signatories. Examples of these substances are phosgene (the most lethal chemical weapon employed in WWI), which has been used as a chemical weapon but which is also a precursor in the manufacture of many legitimate organic compounds (e.g. pharmaceutical agents and many common pesticides), and triethanolamine, used in the manufacture of nitrogen mustard but also commonly used in toiletries and detergents.

certain notable exceptions exist. Chlorine gas is highly toxic, but being a pure element and extremely widely used for peaceful purposes, is not officially listed as a chemical weapon.

I take that as saying that there is no complete ban on any chemical. Limitations are much more lax than I expected, which is excellent in times of world peace, like now. That would quickly change if there was a Bhopal type accident involving these chemicals. Permitting more than 30 tonnes per year per plant of phosgene, unexpected and somewhat shocking. 100 grams per year of a schedule 1 agent is a hell of a lot.

Another fact from the documentary is that mustard gas is rarely fatal. Extreme burns yes, but mostly non-lethal.

I seem to remember hearing about an irritant, nonlethal in itself but makes people take off their gas masks.

I also seem the remember that gas masks have to be tuned to different chemical agents, a mask that works against one chemical may not work against another, and vice versa.

Before watching the documentary I had the completely wrong impression that a serious chemical warfare attack involved hundreds of tons of chemicals, agent orange in Vietnam was 76,000 tons. I couldn’t have been more wrong. Dropping of a VX bomb on Hiroshima the same physical size as the atomic bomb could have killed more people.

The USSR had military aircraft that were equipped to spray nerve agents like VX over wide areas, indiscriminately killing anything that moved in the spray area. Spraying it out by the hundreds of litres.

There were also a great number of agricultural spraying aircraft available to them, which could easily have been used for the same purpose. A wide swath of Germany could have been quickly inundated in nerve agents in the event of a Soviet offensive.

captain_spalding said:

The USSR had military aircraft that were equipped to spray nerve agents like VX over wide areas, indiscriminately killing anything that moved in the spray area. Spraying it out by the hundreds of litres.

There were also a great number of agricultural spraying aircraft available to them, which could easily have been used for the same purpose. A wide swath of Germany could have been quickly inundated in nerve agents in the event of a Soviet offensive.

It wasn’t just the USSR that had that…

poikilotherm said:

captain_spalding said:

The USSR had military aircraft that were equipped to spray nerve agents like VX over wide areas, indiscriminately killing anything that moved in the spray area. Spraying it out by the hundreds of litres.

There were also a great number of agricultural spraying aircraft available to them, which could easily have been used for the same purpose. A wide swath of Germany could have been quickly inundated in nerve agents in the event of a Soviet offensive.

It wasn’t just the USSR that had that…

chemtrails…

IMHO Bio Weapons are the worst
because they can be persistent, unpredictable
and have unexpected and far reaching consequences
once it is allowed to “escape into the wild”.

IOW You never know when it’s going to come back to bite you.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ow53uy1qElI

I wonder if you could weaponise something like CRISPR so it can be spread like a flu and degrades DNA so no one has natural immunity

Here’s a bit about gas masks. From Do Gas Masks Work?

Syria is widely credited with having some 1,000 tons of nerve gas at its disposal.

Depending on their type and construction, gas masks can be effective against a wide range of substances, from ordinary dust and pollen to poisonous gases — including nerve gases (such as sarin and organophosphate pesticides) that act on the central nervous system.

Inexpensive face masks are effective only against airborne particles. Those rated 100 stop 99.97 percent of particles 0.3 microns and larger. So it would stop anthrax, provided you’re aware that you’re being exposed, but not gases. They may stop “CS gas” because it isn’t a gas but a solid dissolved in a liquid.

Activated carbon masks will stop gases, if installed correctly. Even better are full-face masks that are connected to an air supply.

62 percent of Tel Aviv residents now have gas masks.

Will a wet hankie stop some chemical warfare agents, such as chlorine?

The race to steal the Nazis biological and chemical weapons at the end of WWII tarnished the outcome somewhat I thought, what good would they do you, they’d do you lots of bad I suppose

mollwollfumble said:

Here’s a bit about gas masks. From Do Gas Masks Work?

Syria is widely credited with having some 1,000 tons of nerve gas at its disposal.

Depending on their type and construction, gas masks can be effective against a wide range of substances, from ordinary dust and pollen to poisonous gases — including nerve gases (such as sarin and organophosphate pesticides) that act on the central nervous system.

Inexpensive face masks are effective only against airborne particles. Those rated 100 stop 99.97 percent of particles 0.3 microns and larger. So it would stop anthrax, provided you’re aware that you’re being exposed, but not gases. They may stop “CS gas” because it isn’t a gas but a solid dissolved in a liquid.

Activated carbon masks will stop gases, if installed correctly. Even better are full-face masks that are connected to an air supply.

62 percent of Tel Aviv residents now have gas masks.

Will a wet hankie stop some chemical warfare agents, such as chlorine?

Better than nothing I suppose

Cymek said:

The race to steal the Nazis biological and chemical weapons at the end of WWII tarnished the outcome somewhat I thought, what good would they do you, they’d do you lots of bad I suppose

And the Japanese experiments. But then again, pragmatism.

Cymek said:

mollwollfumble said:

Will a wet hankie stop some chemical warfare agents, such as chlorine?

Better than nothing I suppose

It’s like the whistle and the flashing light on your lifejacket – gives you something to do while you die.

captain_spalding said:

Cymek said:

mollwollfumble said:

Will a wet hankie stop some chemical warfare agents, such as chlorine?

Better than nothing I suppose

It’s like the whistle and the flashing light on your lifejacket – gives you something to do while you die.

May work against teargas?

Hold on. There are antidotes.

For radiation poisoning there are antidotes.
Iodine and calcium are protections against radiation poisoning, as well as chelating agents that bind to metals in the stomach.

Nerve gases work on the acetylcholine pathway, so there ought to be antidotes there, too. “Sarin is a potent inhibitor of acetylcholinesterase, an enzyme that degrades the neurotransmitter acetylcholine after it is released into the synaptic cleft”. Atropine is an antidote to sarin. Sarin and other nerve gases such as vx stop the breakdown of acetylcholine. Atropine stops that excess acetylcholine from binding to receptors. Curare has a similar effect. Botox would also work as an antidote to nerve gas, it inhibits acetylcholine production. It’s a serious balancing act between the different poisons, but get the balance right and the patient will recover.

Anthrax can be treated with antibiotics such as penicillin, as well as antitoxins such as obiltoxaximab.