Chemical weapons have been in the news lately. We’ve seen them used as a tool of assassination by North Korea and (probably) Russia. Meanwhile Syria has been dropping barrels of homemade “stuff” on rebels.
The first use of chemical weapons was during WWI. Initial attempts at using tear gas proved useless and deadlier gases were soon used.
The first deadly gas used was chlorine. Anyone who has made the mistake of mixing bleach and ammonia (I did once) has experienced chlorine gas. It irritates the lungs and in sufficient concentration can cause asphyxiation. Chlorine is relatively easy to defend against, however. It also is relatively heavy so it tends to settle in low lying areas. Troops that were standing up were often not even affected by the chlorine, which collected down in the trenches and shell holes.
The other problem with chlorine was you could see the green cloud of gas coming at you, giving you time to prepare. To “improve” on chlorine, chemists invented colorless Phosgene gas. Phosgene was more potent than chlorine and had the advantage of being invisible. Phosgene was fairly dense, so they usually mixed it with chlorine to help spread it.
Roughly 100,000 troops were killed by gas during WWI and 85% of them were killed by Phosgene. Nasty stuff.
Nastier yet was Mustard gas, which gets it’s name from the yellowish-brown color. Mustard gas is what’s called a “blister agent”. Meaning it burns anything it touches: eyes, mouth, lungs, skin. Wearing a gas mask alone will not protect you from Mustard gas because it will absorb through your clothes and cause painful burns. Death by Mustard gas was excruciating and sometimes the victims suffered for weeks before dying. While not nearly as deadly as Phosgene, many thousands were blinded or horribly burned by the gas. Many others suffered permanent respiratory problems.
Mustard gas is also what we call “persistant”, meaning it sticks around. Sometimes for as long as several weeks. That can be a problem if you plan on attacking across an area that you just gassed. Once you release it, it has no friends.
Overall chemical weapons caused roughly 1.3 million casualties during WWI, with roughly 100,000 of those being fatal.
Gas! GAS! Quick, boys! — An ecstasy of fumbling,
Fitting the clumsy helmets just in time;
But someone still was yelling out and stumbling,
And flound'ring like a man in fire or lime ...
Dim, through the misty panes and thick green light,
As under a green sea, I saw him drowning.
In all my dreams, before my helpless sight,
He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning.
— Wilfred Owen, "Dulce et Decorum est", 1917
After WWI chemical weapons were used in various conflicts although usually not on a large scale. Most notably they were used by Italy in Ethopia and the Japanese in China during the 1930s.
All the major powers in WWII had vast stockpiles of chemical weapons which were fortunately never used in combat. The only chemical warfare in WWII was in places like Auschwitz and needs no further explanation on my part.
Those fun-loving Nazis developed the first nerve agents in the 1930s as an offshoot of producing insecticides. That’s why I tend to think of nerve gas as “Raid for people”. It does to you roughly what bug spray does to a roach. Some of these are so deadly that one drop touching your skin can be fatal.
Fortunately Germany never used these weapons during WWII because they assumed the allies had them as well. We actually didn’t have them and didn’t even know they existed until late in the war. So we got lucky there. I had often wondered why Hitler didn’t use them at least against the Russians, who he viewed as “subhuman”.
Now the term “nerve gas” is a bit of a misnomer, as they’re not really gases. The stuff comes down more like oily raindrops. Then it turns into a gas as the liquid evaporates. So even if you don’t get “slimed” initially you don’t want to be hanging around the stuff unprotected.
I recall when we accused the Soviets of using chemical weapons during their war in Afghanistan. To my knowledge those accusations turned out to be false.
There wasn’t much use of chemical weapons after WWII until the Iran-Iraq War. Our pal Saddam, back when he was still our pal, used them extensively against the Iranians (as well as the Iraqi Kurds).
I’m sure everyone remembers when we bombed Baghdad in 1988 in retaliation.
Ha! Had you going there! Actually we looked the other way because he was doing it to someone we didn’t like. Oh, and we sold him the stuff to make ‘em with too. Because reasons.
So why didn’t Saddam use this stuff against us in the Gulf War? From my understanding we warned them through back channels what our response would be if chemicals were used against coalition forces. I cannot confirm that we threatened the use of nuclear weapons, but it’s probable. I doubt Saddam held back because he was such a nice guy. Presumably he was scared of something.
In the military, we were trained and equipped (theoretically) to operate in a chemical environment. I question how effectively we could have done it. The suits are hot and cumbersome. Even on a cool day I found the chem gear to be hot and claustrophobic. In a hot climate I suspect we’d lose a lot of people just to heat stroke. To this day I have no idea how they expected me to flip switches in the cockpit while wearing three pairs of gloves. We had to fly the simulator in our chem gear every so often just to prove we could do it and I found it to be a miserable experience.
Then there’s the whole logistics aspect. The gas mask filters have to be swapped out every few hours. Everything has to be decontaminated. A lot of this stuff has to be disposed of after it’s been exposed. I’m sure someone out there knows how long we could keep this up before we run out of “stuff” but I don’t.
Let’s look at what a chemical attack might do to a military airfield. Presumably our missile defenses have stopped most of the inbound warheads, but one has “leaked through” the defenses and hit just west of the airfield (red crater). The wind (blue arrow) has dispersed the chemicals over a very small part of the airfield. This is pretty typical from what I remember. They’ve only managed to slime a small part of the airfield. Presumably most everyone was in shelter during the attack so casualties would be minimal. Any important equipment would have been covered with tarps or plastic. Unless you’ve got enough missiles to completely saturate the defenses, it’s not going to do that much.
In short, the chemical threat to well prepared military forces isn’t that great. It makes our lives miserable and hurts our combat effectiveness, but it’s probably not decisive.
Against unprotected civilians, however, it’s horrific. We have chem gear, the enemy has chem gear, the people caught in the middle don’t have chem gear. Rain this stuff down on a neighborhood and it’s instant crime against humanity.
Which brings us back to Syria. From what I’m reading, the Assad regime is using a mix of chlorine and Sarin (nerve agent). Both are bad, but the Sarin is the really nasty stuff. Since they’re fighting an insurgency rather than conventional warfare, they’re dropping the stuff from helicopters.
Now one might ask: why is it worse to kill people with chemicals rather than using chemicals to make an explosion to blow them up? That’s a fair question. I can only say that the soldiers who lived through WWI, people who had grown indifferent to shelling and bullets, found chemical weapons to be uniquely horrifying.
How do we stop someone from using this stuff? I wish I had the answer. Chlorine is easy to make and is used in water purification. Taking out their supply of Chlorine condemns thousands to die of water-borne diseases like cholera. Nerve agents are harder to make but if you can make pesticides you can probably make a primitive nerve agent. Take out their pesticide manufacturing and now you’re hitting their food supply.
Bomb them to “send a message”? That seems to be our strategy and I don’t give it much chance of success. If the Syrian regime feels threatened they are likely to use chemicals again — because they work. And as long as Russia is backing them up, we’re not likely to undertake regime-change in Syria (not that I’m suggesting it).
So where does that leave us? I have no idea. Hey, I never said it was easy. Fortunately we have sane, rational, intelligent leadership — yeah, we’re screwed.