Tag Archives: Biological and chemical warfare

NBC Warfare

Nerve agents and their deadly effect

CHEMICAL WARFARE

NERVE agents are among the most deadliest chemical weapons used in warfare and assassinations over the last 30 years.

Experts say the clear liquids can be made at only “a few laboratories in the world” and are strictly government-controlled.

They can kill within minutes, by disrupting electrical signals through the nervous system which makes it difficult to breathe. People cough and foam at the mouth as their lungs fill with mucus, they vomit, sweat, become incontinent and their eyes run. Victims typically die from suffocation.

It is described by experts as “turning on all the taps”. Dr Simon Cotton, from the University of Birmingham, says: “If you have ever seen a fly sprayed it drops on its back and lies with its legs in the air, twitching – this is the result of nerve agents taking hold.”

. See also History is littered with examples of chemical and biological attacks…

Nerve agents were developed in Germany in the 1930s as pesticides but were found to be extremely toxic. The first modern nerve agents, including sarin – released by a Japanese cult on the Tokyo subway in 1995 – were devised by the Germans during World War II.

Germany never used chemical weapons, despite producing ten tons of sarin. Production was taken over by the Soviet army after it captured the plant at Dyernfurth.

A new generation of the chemical weapons including VX, which was invented by the British during the Cold War and is 150 times more deadly than sarin. The UN classes it as a weapon of mass destruction.

A “fourth generation” of nerve agents, developed by the Soviet Union in the 1970s and 1980s, are said to be even more toxic than VX. These Novichoks, meaning newcomer in Russian, contain two harmless chemicals which become toxic when mixed in an aerosol or missile. This makes them easier to store and transport safely.

Professor Malcolm Sperrin, of the Institute of Physics and Engineering in Medicine, says: “Symptoms of exposure may include respiratory arrest, heart failure, twitching or spasms – anything where the nerve control is degraded.”

Scientists do not want to say how nerve agents are created, for fear of copycat attacks. However, the ingredients are cheap and easy to obtain. They were first used in the Iran-Iraq war in the 1980s.

VX is one of four main nerve agents and is usually inhaled or absorbed through the skin. Just a fraction of a drop can take effect within seconds and “fatally disrupt the nervous system”, according to the Council on Foreign Relations. They can be administered via aerosol or smeared on a victim’s face.

North Korean leader’s Kim Jong-un’s half-brother, Kim Jong-nam, died within 20 minutes after his face was smeared with VX at an airport in Malaysia last February.

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First World War, History, Second World War, United States, Warfare

History is littered with examples of chemical and biological attacks…

…Damascus suffered an appalling gas attack in which hundreds died, but other incidents in history have been much worse.

IT was a singularly evil chemical weapons attack, but tragically the hundreds killed in Damascus just two weeks ago were the latest victims in a long history of the use of poison gas to kill soldiers and civilians. This entry is an examination of past atrocities where many exacted an even greater toll:

IRAQ AGAINST THE KURDS… Saddam Hussein’s regime used chemical weapons to remove Kurds from around 40 villages in northern Iraq. On March 16, 1988, he carried out the most deadly attack, dropping poisons including mustard gas, sarin and VX on the town of Halabja. Men, women and children choked to death in the indiscriminate attack.

The atrocity prompted the United Nations Chemical Weapons Convention in 1997, an international pact banning production, stockpiling or use of chemical weapons. Only seven nations (including Syria) are not signatories. The death toll in Halabja was reported as being up to 5,000.

IRAN-IRAQ WAR, 1980-88… Hussein used sarin and mustard gas against Iran to tip the war in Iraq’s favour and forced Tehran to negotiate. But newly declassified CIA documents revealed recently the US knew about the use of chemical weapons but refused to act because Washington feared an Iranian victory. Up to 20,000 people were killed in the 8-year war.

VIETNAM… Between 1965 and 1975, in the bitter war against North Vietnam, the US dropped millions of tons of incendiary napalm to defoliate dense forests in which enemy fighters were hiding. The jelly-like substance ignited and stuck to skin, burning through muscle and bone, causing hideous injury and often death. America also dropped 50 million tons of Agent Orange, a super-strength chemical herbicide, to destroy all plants. But poisonous dioxins seeped into the soil and water supply, entering into the food chain and leading to severe health problems and disabilities for generations. More than a million people perished, as well as 400,000 Vietnamese children born with birth defects were recorded due to exposure to Agent Orange.

HITLER… Hitler refrained from using chemical weapons in battle but millions of Jews were transported to extermination camps, notably Auschwitz in Poland, and were suffocated in gas chambers using cyanide-based Zyklon B. Some six million Jews died in the Holocaust, plus gypsies, homosexuals, the disabled, and Soviet prisoners.

WORLD WAR TWO… Between 1937 and 1945, Japan launched both chemical and biological attacks while invading China. Emperor Hirohito authorised use of toxic gas on more than 2,000 occasions. In 1941, members of a secretive Japanese research and development facility (Unit 731) airdropped fleas contaminated with the bubonic plague on the Chinese city of Changde. Tens of thousands were reported killed.

ITALO-ABNYSSINIAN WAR… Ignoring the 1925 Geneva Protocol banning chemical or biological agents in war, Mussolini’s Italy unleashed mustard gas during its invasion of Ethiopia in 1935. Retaliating for the killing of one of its pilots, the air force dropped up to 500 tonnes of poison. An estimated 15,000 perished.

FIRST WORLD WAR… Known as the ‘chemists’ war’ for introducing deadly poison to combat. In 1915, at Ypres, Belgium, Germany opened thousands of canisters of chlorine upwind of Allied troops, condemning many to an agonising death. By 1918 chemical weapons had proliferated on both sides – including phosgene, cyanide and mustard gas. Horrified by the effects, 15 countries signed the Geneva Protocol. Around 90,000 were killed and more than one million people were injured.

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