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Fortunately we don't see any real work in the chemical and biological weapons space anymore. While it would still be pretty handy for terrorist groups, in actua

Fortunately we don't see any real work in the chemical and biological weapons space anymore. While it would still be pretty handy for terrorist groups, in actual warfare chemical weapons aren't super useful. See https://acoup.blog/2020/03/20/collections-why-dont-we-use-chemical-weapons-anymore/ https://acoup.blog/2020/03/20/collections-why-dont-we-use-ch... .

bsedlm 5y ago
that we don't see it doesn't mean it is not happening.
WinterMount223 5y ago
I guess developments are not published on Nature.
cogman10 5y ago
Just doesn't seem like it's worth it even for terrorists. Why invest a bunch of time and effort making more and more deadly poisons when we've already got a wide variety of them that are cheap to manufacture, well known in how they work, and don't cost a bunch of research money to uncover?
- openasocket 5y ago
  True, though you have to remember that threat is a social construct and isn't necessarily a rational measure. The 2001 anthrax attacks killed 5 people, injuring 17, and shocked the nation. As a direct result Congress put billions into funding for new vaccines and drugs and bio-terrorism preparedness. If 5 people were killed and 17 wounded in a mass shooting by a terrorist, would we really have reacted as strongly? If you wanted to install fear into a country, I think being attacked by some custom, previously unknown chemical weapon would scarier than sarin.
- at_a_remove 5y ago
  At the risk of putting myself on a watchlist, They already know that, so They have an eye on certain kinds of labware, different precursors, and such. And They already have antidotes to some of these poisons. One could optimize for compounds with hard-to-monitor precursors. Compounds that can be transported with low vapor pressure and volatility, so they cannot be easily sniffed out. Or imagine a lethal compound with a high delay factor. Or something with specifically panic-inducing effects, perhaps hemorrhagic with a side effect of your skin sliding off in great slick sheets. Another interesting high delay factor compound might induce psychosis: have fun tracking where these gibbering maniacs were a week ago. With a sufficiently dark imagination, "needs" could be identified for all sorts of compounds. Remember, the goal is to throw a monkey wrench into the gearwork of an opposing civilization, not necessarily to kill. Fear of the unknown is very effective for this.
  - logifail 5y ago
    > At the risk of putting myself on a watchlist, They already know that, so They have an eye on certain kinds of labware, different precursors, and such. And They already have antidotes to some of these poisons. Errm, maybe They Do. On the other hand, I used to work in an organic chemistry research lab, and at least within my ex university's context, we could basically order anything we wanted from the standard chemical suppliers without anyone batting an eyelid. Pre-signed but otherwise blank order forms were freely handed out, you just filled in what compounds you wanted and handed it over, two days later it arrived and you collected it from Stores. I personally ordered a compound for a reaction I was planning and it was only after it arrived - when I read the safety data sheet - that I realised just quite how toxic it was. I backed carefully away from that particular bottle, and left it in the fridge, still sealed. Then found another - safer - way to do the reaction instead...
    - dekhn 5y ago
      Is that toxic bottle still sealed, in the fridge, after you've left the institution? I've had to deal with a few EHS situations like that.
      - danuker 5y ago
        How did you deal with it? I would expect they don't take returns.
        dekhn 5y ago
        You call your university's EHS department and tell them as much about what you know about the contents of the bottle (which may not be what is on the label). They seal off the lab, remove it, and using what they can determine about the contents, destroy it safely.
        throwaway0a5e 5y ago
        The same thing that happens when someone quits. The people finding these things have the same skill sets and access to the same handling/disposal facilities as the people leaving these things so it's very much a "oh my former coworker forgot to/didn't have an opportunity to dispose of X before departing, I'll just do it myself in the same manner he would have". Furthermore, these people have lives, they go on vacation and cover each other. The institutional knowledge of how to handles dangerous organic things necessarily exists in the institutions that do so.
- upsidesinclude 5y ago
  Hmmm, and then you have to ask, for whom is it worth it? Who might invent a bunch of time and effort in those areas?
- chasd00 5y ago
  from what i understand the delivery of a chemical or biological weapon is the hard part. For most things, you can't just pour it out on the ground to have a huge effect. Somethings you certainly can, weapons grade Anthrax probably just needs a light breeze to devastate a city but something like that is beyond the reach of your average terrorist groups.
JasonFruit 5y ago
Chemical and biological weapons are very useful in warfare as a way to demonize one combatant. False or doubtful claims of chemical weapons deployments have an effect on the response of the public and international organizations that is entirely out of scale with the damage that could be inflicted.
- danuker 5y ago
  Relevant if you want real life cases of military impersonation: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_flag https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_flag
  - groby_b 5y ago
    In general, a wikipedia link with no additional comment does little to advance a discussion in any direction. It might be relevant, but it's an extremely low-value comment. A good chunk of the people reading the comment (and caring about it) will already know it's describing false-flag operations. A good way to think about good HN comments is "is there a specific point I'm trying to make". Anything that doesn't try to articulate a point is likely to be downvoted.
    - danuker 5y ago
      Thank you.
R0b0t1 5y ago
They are amazingly useful in real warfare. Drop nerve gas on a city, walk in a couple days later. WMDs are the only way to really take a country by force, and of all of them, chemical weapons are the most palatable and also the easiest to produce. Considering this, defense against them is at least mildly important. A proper defense only exists by considering offense, so they're still developing chemical weapons somewhere. The modern hot topic is viruses and other pathogens.
- amelius 5y ago
  They go against the Geneva Protocol, and it's not even allowed to stockpile them so not even useful if you are a terrorist with a death wish because then there are simpler ways to end your problems.
  - csee 5y ago
    Russia used them extensively in Syria quite recently, so the concerns are valid.
    - someotherperson 5y ago
      The allegations by OPCW are politicised[0] and based on theoretical chemistry, i.e hexamine as an acid scavenger. That is to say: neither the Syrian government nor Russia have used chemical weapons in Syria. They haven't used them because they are -- for all intents and purposes -- useless. If you want to take down a group of people in flip flops and have access to a thermobaric[1] MLRS[2] you're not going to break international law so you can give one or two of them a scratchy throat with chlorine payloads (if you're lucky). [0] https://wikileaks.org/opcw-douma/ https://wikileaks.org/opcw-douma/ [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermobaric_weapon https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermobaric_weapon [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TOS-1 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TOS-1
      - ceejayoz 5y ago
        The assertions in the Wikileaks docs are contested, and focus on a single incident when the war has had multiple. https://www.bellingcat.com/news/mena/2020/01/15/the-opcw-douma-leaks-part-1-we-need-to-talk-about-alex/ https://www.bellingcat.com/news/mena/2020/01/15/the-opcw-dou... For example, that https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ghouta_chemical_attack https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ghouta_chemical_attack happened is not disputed by Russia; they dispute who did it.
VLM 5y ago
> Fortunately we don't see any real work Not really, having new developments all classified is not helpful to anyone.
derefr 5y ago
On a tangent: it occurred to me recently that we also don't see much use of ICBMs with non-nuclear payloads, despite these being a fairly-obvious "dominant strategy" for warfare — and one that isn't banned by any global treaties. I'm guessing the problem with these is that, in practice, a country can't use any weapons system that could potentially be used to "safely" deliver a nuclear payload (i.e. to deliver one far-enough away that the attacking country would not, itself, be affected by the fallout) without other countries' anti-nuke defenses activating. After all, you could always say you're shooting ICBMs full of regular explosive payloads, but then slip a nuke in. There is no honor in realpolitik. So, because of this game-theoretic equilibrium, any use of the stratosphere for ballistic weapons delivery is effectively forbidden — even though nobody's explicitly asking for it to be. It's interesting to consider how much scarier war could be right now, if we hadn't invented nuclear weapons... random missiles just dropping down from the sky for precision strikes, in countries whose borders have never even been penetrated.
- upsidesinclude 5y ago
  I'd consider how much more docile the nation's of the world would have become sans nuke. If the possibility of an untraceable, space borne, hypersonic weapon was on the table we might have had a better deterrent than nuclear weapons. The lack of fallout and total deniability makes it almost certain they would have been deployed and quite concisely ended a few conflicts at the onset. It is alarmingly frightening, moreso even, because the impact could be extremely precise- leaving infrastructure intact.
  - nradov 5y ago
    Nah. There's no point in putting hypersonic cruise missiles in space. Too expensive, and not survivable. Those weapons will be launched from air, ground, and surface platforms. Magazine depths will be so limited that they'll only be used for the highest priority targets. They won't be enough to end any major conflict by themselves.
    - 323 5y ago
      So why are the Chinese doing it? https://www.heritage.org/asia/commentary/chinas-new-weapon-just-upped-global-threat-level https://www.heritage.org/asia/commentary/chinas-new-weapon-j...
mcguire 5y ago
The real fun starts when somebody starts using techniques like this that overcome the weaknesses of known chemical weapons and provide specific advantages. It's also kind of hard to monitor computational chemical research. It's my understanding that the Soviet army doctrine in the '70s and '80s included the use of chemical weapons. That hypothetical threat put a hell of a lot of friction on NATO in terms of training, supplies, and preparedness.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]

bsedlm 5y ago

that we don't see it doesn't mean it is not happening.

WinterMount223 5y ago

I guess developments are not published on Nature.

cogman10 5y ago

Just doesn't seem like it's worth it even for terrorists. Why invest a bunch of time and effort making more and more deadly poisons when we've already got a wide variety of them that are cheap to manufacture, well known in how they work, and don't cost a bunch of research money to uncover?

openasocket 5y ago
True, though you have to remember that threat is a social construct and isn't necessarily a rational measure. The 2001 anthrax attacks killed 5 people, injuring 17, and shocked the nation. As a direct result Congress put billions into funding for new vaccines and drugs and bio-terrorism preparedness. If 5 people were killed and 17 wounded in a mass shooting by a terrorist, would we really have reacted as strongly? If you wanted to install fear into a country, I think being attacked by some custom, previously unknown chemical weapon would scarier than sarin.
at_a_remove 5y ago
At the risk of putting myself on a watchlist, They already know that, so They have an eye on certain kinds of labware, different precursors, and such. And They already have antidotes to some of these poisons. One could optimize for compounds with hard-to-monitor precursors. Compounds that can be transported with low vapor pressure and volatility, so they cannot be easily sniffed out. Or imagine a lethal compound with a high delay factor. Or something with specifically panic-inducing effects, perhaps hemorrhagic with a side effect of your skin sliding off in great slick sheets. Another interesting high delay factor compound might induce psychosis: have fun tracking where these gibbering maniacs were a week ago. With a sufficiently dark imagination, "needs" could be identified for all sorts of compounds. Remember, the goal is to throw a monkey wrench into the gearwork of an opposing civilization, not necessarily to kill. Fear of the unknown is very effective for this.
- logifail 5y ago
  > At the risk of putting myself on a watchlist, They already know that, so They have an eye on certain kinds of labware, different precursors, and such. And They already have antidotes to some of these poisons. Errm, maybe They Do. On the other hand, I used to work in an organic chemistry research lab, and at least within my ex university's context, we could basically order anything we wanted from the standard chemical suppliers without anyone batting an eyelid. Pre-signed but otherwise blank order forms were freely handed out, you just filled in what compounds you wanted and handed it over, two days later it arrived and you collected it from Stores. I personally ordered a compound for a reaction I was planning and it was only after it arrived - when I read the safety data sheet - that I realised just quite how toxic it was. I backed carefully away from that particular bottle, and left it in the fridge, still sealed. Then found another - safer - way to do the reaction instead...
  - dekhn 5y ago
    Is that toxic bottle still sealed, in the fridge, after you've left the institution? I've had to deal with a few EHS situations like that.
    - danuker 5y ago
      How did you deal with it? I would expect they don't take returns.
      - dekhn 5y ago
        You call your university's EHS department and tell them as much about what you know about the contents of the bottle (which may not be what is on the label). They seal off the lab, remove it, and using what they can determine about the contents, destroy it safely.
      - throwaway0a5e 5y ago
        The same thing that happens when someone quits. The people finding these things have the same skill sets and access to the same handling/disposal facilities as the people leaving these things so it's very much a "oh my former coworker forgot to/didn't have an opportunity to dispose of X before departing, I'll just do it myself in the same manner he would have". Furthermore, these people have lives, they go on vacation and cover each other. The institutional knowledge of how to handles dangerous organic things necessarily exists in the institutions that do so.
upsidesinclude 5y ago
Hmmm, and then you have to ask, for whom is it worth it? Who might invent a bunch of time and effort in those areas?
chasd00 5y ago
from what i understand the delivery of a chemical or biological weapon is the hard part. For most things, you can't just pour it out on the ground to have a huge effect. Somethings you certainly can, weapons grade Anthrax probably just needs a light breeze to devastate a city but something like that is beyond the reach of your average terrorist groups.

JasonFruit 5y ago

Chemical and biological weapons are very useful in warfare as a way to demonize one combatant. False or doubtful claims of chemical weapons deployments have an effect on the response of the public and international organizations that is entirely out of scale with the damage that could be inflicted.

danuker 5y ago
Relevant if you want real life cases of military impersonation: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_flag https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_flag
- groby_b 5y ago
  In general, a wikipedia link with no additional comment does little to advance a discussion in any direction. It might be relevant, but it's an extremely low-value comment. A good chunk of the people reading the comment (and caring about it) will already know it's describing false-flag operations. A good way to think about good HN comments is "is there a specific point I'm trying to make". Anything that doesn't try to articulate a point is likely to be downvoted.
  - danuker 5y ago
    Thank you.

R0b0t1 5y ago

They are amazingly useful in real warfare. Drop nerve gas on a city, walk in a couple days later. WMDs are the only way to really take a country by force, and of all of them, chemical weapons are the most palatable and also the easiest to produce. Considering this, defense against them is at least mildly important. A proper defense only exists by considering offense, so they're still developing chemical weapons somewhere. The modern hot topic is viruses and other pathogens.

amelius 5y ago
They go against the Geneva Protocol, and it's not even allowed to stockpile them so not even useful if you are a terrorist with a death wish because then there are simpler ways to end your problems.
- csee 5y ago
  Russia used them extensively in Syria quite recently, so the concerns are valid.
  - someotherperson 5y ago
    The allegations by OPCW are politicised[0] and based on theoretical chemistry, i.e hexamine as an acid scavenger. That is to say: neither the Syrian government nor Russia have used chemical weapons in Syria. They haven't used them because they are -- for all intents and purposes -- useless. If you want to take down a group of people in flip flops and have access to a thermobaric[1] MLRS[2] you're not going to break international law so you can give one or two of them a scratchy throat with chlorine payloads (if you're lucky). [0] https://wikileaks.org/opcw-douma/ https://wikileaks.org/opcw-douma/ [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermobaric_weapon https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermobaric_weapon [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TOS-1 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TOS-1
    - ceejayoz 5y ago
      The assertions in the Wikileaks docs are contested, and focus on a single incident when the war has had multiple. https://www.bellingcat.com/news/mena/2020/01/15/the-opcw-douma-leaks-part-1-we-need-to-talk-about-alex/ https://www.bellingcat.com/news/mena/2020/01/15/the-opcw-dou... For example, that https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ghouta_chemical_attack https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ghouta_chemical_attack happened is not disputed by Russia; they dispute who did it.

VLM 5y ago

> Fortunately we don't see any real work Not really, having new developments all classified is not helpful to anyone.

derefr 5y ago

On a tangent: it occurred to me recently that we also don't see much use of ICBMs with non-nuclear payloads, despite these being a fairly-obvious "dominant strategy" for warfare — and one that isn't banned by any global treaties. I'm guessing the problem with these is that, in practice, a country can't use any weapons system that could potentially be used to "safely" deliver a nuclear payload (i.e. to deliver one far-enough away that the attacking country would not, itself, be affected by the fallout) without other countries' anti-nuke defenses activating. After all, you could always say you're shooting ICBMs full of regular explosive payloads, but then slip a nuke in. There is no honor in realpolitik. So, because of this game-theoretic equilibrium, any use of the stratosphere for ballistic weapons delivery is effectively forbidden — even though nobody's explicitly asking for it to be. It's interesting to consider how much scarier war could be right now, if we hadn't invented nuclear weapons... random missiles just dropping down from the sky for precision strikes, in countries whose borders have never even been penetrated.

upsidesinclude 5y ago
I'd consider how much more docile the nation's of the world would have become sans nuke. If the possibility of an untraceable, space borne, hypersonic weapon was on the table we might have had a better deterrent than nuclear weapons. The lack of fallout and total deniability makes it almost certain they would have been deployed and quite concisely ended a few conflicts at the onset. It is alarmingly frightening, moreso even, because the impact could be extremely precise- leaving infrastructure intact.
- nradov 5y ago
  Nah. There's no point in putting hypersonic cruise missiles in space. Too expensive, and not survivable. Those weapons will be launched from air, ground, and surface platforms. Magazine depths will be so limited that they'll only be used for the highest priority targets. They won't be enough to end any major conflict by themselves.
  - 323 5y ago
    So why are the Chinese doing it? https://www.heritage.org/asia/commentary/chinas-new-weapon-just-upped-global-threat-level https://www.heritage.org/asia/commentary/chinas-new-weapon-j...

mcguire 5y ago

The real fun starts when somebody starts using techniques like this that overcome the weaknesses of known chemical weapons and provide specific advantages. It's also kind of hard to monitor computational chemical research. It's my understanding that the Soviet army doctrine in the '70s and '80s included the use of chemical weapons. That hypothetical threat put a hell of a lot of friction on NATO in terms of training, supplies, and preparedness.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]