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Why Don’t We Use Chemical Weapons Anymore?

52 points by troops_h8r 4y ago

codefreeordie 4y ago
Because they're not really useful. It's very difficult to keep chemical weapons contained so that they only damage your target and not your own soldiers or your allies or a bunch of civilians whose gruesome deaths will not play well in the media. In general, conventional weaponry is more effective at accomplishing military objectives.
- Comevius 4y ago
  Also because of a lack of imagination. Imagine using these puppies in large cities. The world lacks a better class of terrorists. Saudi Arabia used to do some wild stuff with planes back in 2001, prompting the United States to kill a million people in completely unrelated countries, but now we are back to car bombs and incels running with guns when we have a whole spectrum of biological, chemical and radioactive agents waiting to be unleashed.
  - ceejayoz 4y ago
    I am both baffled and relieved that most terrorists seem to lack creativity.
    - worthless-trash 4y ago
      I don't think its creativity limiting the actions, its factors of capability, reliability and gullibility of those carrying out the actions. Batman style "poisoning the water supply" isnt really a viable option due to the complexities of pulling it off successfully.
      - adolph 4y ago
        Something something fluoridation of water supplies . . . precious bodily fluids.
      - bombcar 4y ago
        Anyone who is not directly involved in the various things like water supply doesn’t realize all the safety measures and such that in place to prevent accidental contamination- which also help detect and prevent intentional damage. The total number of terrorists is small, and their ability is limited. But that may not always be the case.
        worthless-trash 4y ago
        Exactly this.
    - girvo 4y ago
      Typically if you’re creative and smart enough to attempt certain horrific things, that seems to be self limiting. Those who can’t, don’t want to, for various reasons, and those who want to and would, can’t. It’s fascinating. Where that gets dangerous is when the horror under discussion becomes democratised. TATP is simple to synthesise (though incredibly dangerous when done clandestinely), and so we saw a rise of bombings and attempted bombings using it as that knowledge spread, for example.
    - alan-crowe 4y ago
      Every-one needs to be a hero in their own head. So you are fairly safe. You can only fall victim to heroic terrorist attacks. But not as safe as that sounds. It is about being a hero according to the attackers head cannon, not your head cannon. Terrorist attacks are down stream from culture. Keep an eye on what movies, novels, religions, and preachers call heroic. The terrorist attacks of 2052 will be distorted versions of what is heroic today.
  - worthless-trash 4y ago
    Its funny how the modern social commentiary associates "incels" with the classes of people they disagree with. It is evident that these people do reproduce.
    - socialismisok 4y ago
      Incels and "lone wolf" shooters had/have a significant overlap.
      - Jensson 4y ago
        In one direction perhaps, not many incels become lone wolf shooters.
    - Comevius 4y ago
      They are actually calling themselves incels, they are not shameful of it. I wasn't being snarky, they are really digging the identity and the subculture, along with the rape and the mass murder. Every other post on incel forums is some variation of I'm being rejected by women, thus my bloodline ends with me, but not before I end many other bloodlines, which actually makes me a winner. Incels love violence, it's their entire thing.
      - nicoburns 4y ago
        I don’t think incels love violence or their identities. They hate their own lives and are reacting with anger.
  - smoldesu 4y ago
    There's still a number of prominent examples of chemical terrorist attacks, but they're mostly arranged by larger groups rather than 2 angry 4channers. Aum Shinrikyo injured hundreds in their sarin gas attacks, and the Rajneeshee bioterror attack left hundreds sick and dozens hospitalized. The reason we don't see more of this is pretty straightforward. Although we have active imaginations, the majority of people carrying out these attacks are not Walter White. It takes organizational power to pull off an attack like that.
- Gregaros 4y ago
  I see you’ve read the blog post by noted military historian Bret Devereaux and boiled the whole thing down to three sentences for everyone, but you’ve missed some of the nuance that makes him so fascinating to read. I recommend everyone else ignore this summary and give the link a click, acoup.blog’s always a delight.
- EarlKing 4y ago
  It's not even that. The purpose of mustard gas, for example, is principally to force unmasked troops to vacate the trenches. As a rule we don't do much trench warfare anymore. (Yes, yes, I know... Ukraine enters the chat) With most warfare over the last century having been wars of maneuver, urban conflict, aerial bombardment, or artillery duels... there's just not much use for chemical weapons. They're only useful for clearing people out of confined spaces... hence why tear gas continues to be used for crowd control in cities.
  - MichaelCollins 4y ago
    Mustard isn't like tear gas; it's persistent. It's not really a gas at all; it's actually a mist of liquid droplets. The mist then condenses on everything in the area and contaminates it for weeks. Anybody who comes into contact with it without protective gear (more than a gas mask) will suffer debilitating injuries. If you get it on your skin, your skin will fall off. This makes mustard generally useful for area denial, particularly against opponents that aren't ready to suit up and decontaminate everything. Drop a lot of mustard on a supply depot, command post, etc, and all of that equipment now needs to be decontaminated before it can be used again.
- jillesvangurp 4y ago
  It's probably more because of the horrific effects it has mainly on non-military targets and the fact that people tend to be held accountable afterwards. As happened to e.g. Chemical Ali, a general in the Iraqi regime famous for his use of chemical weapons on civilians, who was hanged in 2010 for his actions. Likewise the mere hint of such weapons being used in Syria, caused them to be isolated further. So, most modern military would be keenly aware that the use of such weapons might have long term consequences for them personally and hands the moral high ground to their opponent almost automatically almost immediately. This has mostly negative consequences short term and it's probably counter productive. If that was not the case, we'd be seeing those weapons used in e.g. the Ukraine right now by the Russians. And they seem to have no reservations about targeting civilians otherwise. But it's hard to spin gassing civilians as heroic or patriotic. Even in Russia. Kind of destroys their de-nazificaton pitch. Even the Nazis did not go there during WWII. Aside of course from committing genocide as part of the holocaust. They did actually develop chemical weapons but they never deployed them on the battle field: https://www.history.com/news/the-nazis-developed-sarin-gas-but-hitler-was-afraid-to-use-it https://www.history.com/news/the-nazis-developed-sarin-gas-b...
Am4TIfIsER0ppos 4y ago
We do. Probably every day some police force is gassing its own citizens with things that would be a war crime were they soldiers.
- socialismisok 4y ago
  Living in Seattle, I can attest that the police did riot and deploy chemical weapons.
- bigDinosaur 4y ago
  Obviously different laws apply to different groups. The police can also do things (arrest people) that would usually be a crime for soldiers to do. Tear gas use by police is either right or wrong, useful or not useful, justifiable or not justifiable, but it's not really related to why chemical warfare is banned in war. We also don't justify the ability and legality of police to kill based on the legality of killing enemy combatants in war, either.
  - thatcat 4y ago
    We can compare them and see that the police force oversteps its civilian role. Your point about the requirements to kill enemy combatants strenghtens that arguement.
    - bigDinosaur 4y ago
      My point is that we don't define what police do based on what soldiers do, so it's a red herring in terms of politics and legalities. We define whatever the limits on policing are separately, and tear gas is specially carved out for use by the police. My point isn't that that's right but that it's again not defined by the reasoning used to prevent escalatory chemical warfare in an actual war.
- justapassenger 4y ago
  There’s a “slight” difference between tear gas and chemical weapons. Ones cause temporary (but very strong) inconvenience (of course there maybe some one off complications), others are designed to kill you, as efficiently as possible.
ALittleLight 4y ago
This makes me think of an observation from (I think) the web-serial Worm. Being a super hero who shoots fire is very tough. Either your opponent is someone who is vulnerable to fire, in which case your power would burn them to death (which is not very heroic) or your opponent is not vulnerable to fire, in which case your powers are useless. Similar thinking seems to apply here. Either your target is a modern, mobile, equipped army of professionals who will take minimal damage from chemical weapons, or they are a vulnerable population of civilians who will be massacred horribly if you use them.
- derefr 4y ago
  War isn't like superhero/kaiju duels, though. Duels are generally about the opponent themselves — you can only win by disabling them. But a large part of war is about the logistics of moving soldiers and supplies around and through places; and so it can be critical (even war-winning) to deny your enemy the use of territory. A "superhero that shoots fire" (i.e. a guy with a flamethrower) — or a rolling cloud of nerve gas — isn't there to actually harm anybody; it's there to be a thing your enemy sees and stays well clear of. It's an https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Area_denial_weapon https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Area_denial_weapon. The threat of it prevents your opponent from coming within range of it; and thereby locks them out of the area it threatens. And, as it happens, a flamethrower is a much safer area-denial weapon than a cloud of nerve gas — as, whenever the enemy isn't around, you can immediately shut the flamethrower off, and use the area yourself.
StanislavPetrov 4y ago
> The other large-scale use has been in the Syrian Civil War, by the Assad regime against both military and civilian targets (but mostly civilian targets). False propaganda unfortunately according to the OPCW inspectors who actually went to Syria, including the director of the OPCW. But you can ignore them and take the CIA's word for it instead like the author of this article did. https://hitchensblog.mailonsunday.co.uk/2020/02/a-and-b-respond-to-the-opcws-attacks-on-them-the-full-rebuttal.html https://hitchensblog.mailonsunday.co.uk/2020/02/a-and-b-resp... >Quite frankly, we don’t use chemical weapons for the same reason we don’t use war-zeppelin-bombers: they don’t work, at least within our modern tactical systems. Also false, we used white phosphorus extensively in Iraq and elsewhere.
- free652 4y ago
  That's article is absolute garbage, it doesn't convey any rebuttals of any kind. So you are just mudding the waters with he said / she said.
  - StanislavPetrov 4y ago
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZgIDlgD_txM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZgIDlgD_txM
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- samatman 4y ago
  White phosphorus is neither a war-zeppelin-bomber nor a chemical weapon. Not sure which one you were under the misapprehension that it was. It's neither.
  - StanislavPetrov 4y ago
    Scientists and chemists around the world are going to be stunned to hear that phosphorus isn't a chemical. >White phosphorus munitions are weapons that use one of the common allotropes of the chemical element phosphorus. >In munitions, white phosphorus burns readily with flames of 800 °C (1,472 °F).[74][75] Incandescent particles from weapons using powdered white phosphorus as their payload produce extensive partial- and full-thickness burns, as will any attempt to handle burning submunitions without protective equipment. Phosphorus burns carry an increased risk of mortality due to the absorption of phosphorus into the body through the burned area with prolonged contact, which can result in liver, heart and kidney damage, and in some cases multiple organ failure.[76] White phosphorus particles continue to burn until completely consumed or starved of oxygen. In the case of weapons using felt-impregnated submunitions, incomplete combustion may occur resulting in up to 15% of the WP content remaining unburned. Such submunitions can prove hazardous as they are capable of spontaneous re-ignition if crushed by personnel or vehicles.[77] In some cases, injury is limited to areas of exposed skin because the smaller WP particles do not burn completely through personal clothing before being consumed. >Due to the pyrophoric nature of WP, penetrating injuries are immediately treated by smothering the wound using water, damp cloth or mud, isolating it from oxygen until fragments can be removed: military forces will typically do so using a bayonet or knife where able. Bicarbonate solution is applied to the wound to neutralise any build-up of phosphoric acid, followed by removal of any remaining visible fragments: these are easily observed as they are luminescent in dark surroundings. Surgical debridement around the wound is used to avoid fragments too small to detect causing later systemic failure, with further treatment proceeding as with a thermal burn.[77] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_phosphorus_munitions#Burning https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_phosphorus_munitions#Bur...
DubiousPusher 4y ago
Good to see this posted again. I see a concurring example in aerial bombardment policy of the US and the UK throughout WWII. I even wrote a paper regarding it in college. Both the US and the UK wanted to target the war making capacity of the Germans. The Americans sought to achieve this with strategic precision bombing. The UK sought to do so with mass bombing campaigns targeting industrial workers. The disparity for example manifested in the reluctance of the US to fly bombing missions at night which for obvious reasons was preferred by the British. Near the end of 1944 however, Allied High Command became concerned that the war might stretch into autumn 1945 and they were hoping the Soviet winter campaign could end the war early. So they initiated their own indiscriminant bombing campaign. In his autobiography, James Doolittle wrote that he opposed the bombing campaign of Berlin because it would , “...violate the basic American principle of precision bombing of targets of strictly military significance...”. In the end, the US adopted the UK's bombing regime and would pursue similar and even more liberal approaches later in the Cold War. And it is not as if urban bombing wasn't a subject of moral discussion. In WWI the dropping of a grenade upon Paris by a pilot had made it clear that aerial bombardment would probably become a thing. There was a great deal of discussion through the interwar period. In the end though, it seems practicality will triumph over ideals given enough stress and time.
- nautilius 4y ago
  Ooh, nice! "Targeting industrial workers to target the war making capacity" sounds so much nicer than "indiscriminate mass killing of civilians". Don't get me wrong, the Germans had it coming, but let's stop lying to ourselves, shall we?
  - swayvil 4y ago
    If we trust our leaders. And our leaders feed us a bunch of bullshit. And then, motivated by that bullshit, we nazi up. Does that make us bad people? This stuff has been researched deeply. Something like 96% of the population. Nice people. Not idiots. Will swallow absolutely anything that the leader feeds them. It may be unfixable. Or maybe the only way to fix it is to destroy all forms of mass media.
User23 4y ago
How do we actually know that “we” don’t? From the reporting of obviously cooperating media? Or what?
mikem170 4y ago
Funny, he never mentioned the chemical weapons that are used all the time, domestically, on protesters. Here's a couple articles I found: https://www.thecut.com/2020/06/tear-gas-is-a-chemical-weapon-why-can-cops-use-it.html https://www.thecut.com/2020/06/tear-gas-is-a-chemical-weapon... https://www.newsweek.com/richmond-chemical-weapons-protests-1520531 https://www.newsweek.com/richmond-chemical-weapons-protests-... My two cents: In general, shouldn't our elected "leaders" arrange to meet with protesters, people who are obviously very frustrated, and spend the time to talk to them, instead of sending in the police to gas them?
- danuker 4y ago
  But you see, listening to people would be politics. Why do politics when you can just selfishly squeeze what you can before you get kicked out of office? After me, the flood.
- justapassenger 4y ago
  There’s a difference between tear gas and sarin.
- merely-unlikely 4y ago
  Legal for police use but banned in warfare. I agree with your point though. > The 1925 Geneva Protocol categorized tear gas as a chemical warfare agent and banned its use in war shortly after World War I. > In 1993, nations could begin signing the U.N.'s Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC) that outlawed the use of riot control agents in warfare. > A database by the International Committee of the Red Cross shows the ban of riot control agents in war went into effect in 1997, but still made it legal for law enforcement use. The Senate approved the CWC in a 74-26 vote on April 25, 1997 https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/factcheck/2020/06/06/fact-check-its-true-tear-gas-chemical-weapon-banned-war/3156448001/ https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/factcheck/2020/06/06/fac...
- girvo 4y ago
  Because the article is about the why of militaries, and in case you didn’t read it, the article explicitly calls out the use of tear gas by police etc. as chemical weapon use, but as being orthogonal to the point they wanted to discuss.
aaron695 4y ago
MonkeyMalarky 4y ago
The UK planned on using them if Germany ever tried landing on their shores in WWII. Basically just dumping chlorine and mustard gas off the top of cliffs and watching it sink down hill. Anyone on the beaches would've been trapped between that and the ocean.
GartzenDeHaes 4y ago
0. For chemical and biological weapons, there's in inverse relationship between dispersal characteristics and ease of force protection. For example, oily liquids such as VX disperse well, but personnel can be projected with simple charcoal lined protective clothes and gas mask filters. On the other hand, viruses and microtoxins are difficult to protect against, but they also have poor dispersal characteristics from bombs and projectiles. 1. The armed forces of major countries spend a lot of effort to LOOK as if they are prepared to operate under chemical and biological conditions. This includes large stockpiles of protective gear and regular exercises that include chemical weapons scenarios. 2. Chemical and biological weapons aren't used militarily because there's little reason to think that they would be effective. 2.
- sillystuff 4y ago
  The US did quite a bit of experimentation in dispersal of biological weapons. The US Navy dispersed a microbe off the coast of SF to test natural wind dispersal of biological warfare agents. The microbe was harmless to healthy people, but hospitals contain unhealthy people-- some of whom the navy managed to kill. In the midst of an international mosquito eradication effort that (temporarily) rid much of the Americas from disease carrying mosquitoes, the US Army was breeding and releasing mosquitoes within the US. The Army was testing mosquitoes as a vector for spreading weaponized biological pathogens. I'm not sure if this was a "success" i.e., proved it would have killed a lot of people or not. When I was in university, there was a physics professor at UC Berkely who was trying to call attention to the UC system getting 1/3 of their funding from the military. Some of that funding was probably accounted for by the University of California being the entity that manged the national labs developing nuclear weapons. But, some of that funding was going into research into creating new strains of pathogens e.g., gain of function research which seems pretty much exactly the kind of research you would do when developing a biological warfare agent. I guess <adjusts tin foil hat>, I'm not 100% convinced the US abandoned biological weapons. While I'm not convinced that they didn't abandon them either the US has invested a lot into them, and that gain of function research funded by the military was not that long ago. And, non-nuclear states can more easily get the precursors for chemical and biological weapons than nukes. E.g., Iraq's chemical weapons program (mainly used against Iran) used some production equipment sourced from the US, and precursor chemicals sourced from Germany and the UK. And, the, apparently believable, cover story was that they were manufacturing pesticides. I'd be surprised if a lot of militaristic smaller countries didn't have this sort of weapons program.

52 points by troops_h8r 4y ago

Because they're not really useful. It's very difficult to keep chemical weapons contained so that they only damage your target and not your own soldiers or your allies or a bunch of civilians whose gruesome deaths will not play well in the media. In general, conventional weaponry is more effective at accomplishing military objectives.

Comevius 4y ago
Also because of a lack of imagination. Imagine using these puppies in large cities. The world lacks a better class of terrorists. Saudi Arabia used to do some wild stuff with planes back in 2001, prompting the United States to kill a million people in completely unrelated countries, but now we are back to car bombs and incels running with guns when we have a whole spectrum of biological, chemical and radioactive agents waiting to be unleashed.
- ceejayoz 4y ago
  I am both baffled and relieved that most terrorists seem to lack creativity.
  - worthless-trash 4y ago
    I don't think its creativity limiting the actions, its factors of capability, reliability and gullibility of those carrying out the actions. Batman style "poisoning the water supply" isnt really a viable option due to the complexities of pulling it off successfully.
    - adolph 4y ago
      Something something fluoridation of water supplies . . . precious bodily fluids.
    - bombcar 4y ago
      Anyone who is not directly involved in the various things like water supply doesn’t realize all the safety measures and such that in place to prevent accidental contamination- which also help detect and prevent intentional damage. The total number of terrorists is small, and their ability is limited. But that may not always be the case.
      - worthless-trash 4y ago
        Exactly this.
  - girvo 4y ago
    Typically if you’re creative and smart enough to attempt certain horrific things, that seems to be self limiting. Those who can’t, don’t want to, for various reasons, and those who want to and would, can’t. It’s fascinating. Where that gets dangerous is when the horror under discussion becomes democratised. TATP is simple to synthesise (though incredibly dangerous when done clandestinely), and so we saw a rise of bombings and attempted bombings using it as that knowledge spread, for example.
  - alan-crowe 4y ago
    Every-one needs to be a hero in their own head. So you are fairly safe. You can only fall victim to heroic terrorist attacks. But not as safe as that sounds. It is about being a hero according to the attackers head cannon, not your head cannon. Terrorist attacks are down stream from culture. Keep an eye on what movies, novels, religions, and preachers call heroic. The terrorist attacks of 2052 will be distorted versions of what is heroic today.
- worthless-trash 4y ago
  Its funny how the modern social commentiary associates "incels" with the classes of people they disagree with. It is evident that these people do reproduce.
  - socialismisok 4y ago
    Incels and "lone wolf" shooters had/have a significant overlap.
    - Jensson 4y ago
      In one direction perhaps, not many incels become lone wolf shooters.
  - Comevius 4y ago
    They are actually calling themselves incels, they are not shameful of it. I wasn't being snarky, they are really digging the identity and the subculture, along with the rape and the mass murder. Every other post on incel forums is some variation of I'm being rejected by women, thus my bloodline ends with me, but not before I end many other bloodlines, which actually makes me a winner. Incels love violence, it's their entire thing.
    - nicoburns 4y ago
      I don’t think incels love violence or their identities. They hate their own lives and are reacting with anger.
- smoldesu 4y ago
  There's still a number of prominent examples of chemical terrorist attacks, but they're mostly arranged by larger groups rather than 2 angry 4channers. Aum Shinrikyo injured hundreds in their sarin gas attacks, and the Rajneeshee bioterror attack left hundreds sick and dozens hospitalized. The reason we don't see more of this is pretty straightforward. Although we have active imaginations, the majority of people carrying out these attacks are not Walter White. It takes organizational power to pull off an attack like that.
Gregaros 4y ago
I see you’ve read the blog post by noted military historian Bret Devereaux and boiled the whole thing down to three sentences for everyone, but you’ve missed some of the nuance that makes him so fascinating to read. I recommend everyone else ignore this summary and give the link a click, acoup.blog’s always a delight.
EarlKing 4y ago
It's not even that. The purpose of mustard gas, for example, is principally to force unmasked troops to vacate the trenches. As a rule we don't do much trench warfare anymore. (Yes, yes, I know... Ukraine enters the chat) With most warfare over the last century having been wars of maneuver, urban conflict, aerial bombardment, or artillery duels... there's just not much use for chemical weapons. They're only useful for clearing people out of confined spaces... hence why tear gas continues to be used for crowd control in cities.
- MichaelCollins 4y ago
  Mustard isn't like tear gas; it's persistent. It's not really a gas at all; it's actually a mist of liquid droplets. The mist then condenses on everything in the area and contaminates it for weeks. Anybody who comes into contact with it without protective gear (more than a gas mask) will suffer debilitating injuries. If you get it on your skin, your skin will fall off. This makes mustard generally useful for area denial, particularly against opponents that aren't ready to suit up and decontaminate everything. Drop a lot of mustard on a supply depot, command post, etc, and all of that equipment now needs to be decontaminated before it can be used again.
jillesvangurp 4y ago
It's probably more because of the horrific effects it has mainly on non-military targets and the fact that people tend to be held accountable afterwards. As happened to e.g. Chemical Ali, a general in the Iraqi regime famous for his use of chemical weapons on civilians, who was hanged in 2010 for his actions. Likewise the mere hint of such weapons being used in Syria, caused them to be isolated further. So, most modern military would be keenly aware that the use of such weapons might have long term consequences for them personally and hands the moral high ground to their opponent almost automatically almost immediately. This has mostly negative consequences short term and it's probably counter productive. If that was not the case, we'd be seeing those weapons used in e.g. the Ukraine right now by the Russians. And they seem to have no reservations about targeting civilians otherwise. But it's hard to spin gassing civilians as heroic or patriotic. Even in Russia. Kind of destroys their de-nazificaton pitch. Even the Nazis did not go there during WWII. Aside of course from committing genocide as part of the holocaust. They did actually develop chemical weapons but they never deployed them on the battle field: https://www.history.com/news/the-nazis-developed-sarin-gas-but-hitler-was-afraid-to-use-it https://www.history.com/news/the-nazis-developed-sarin-gas-b...

Am4TIfIsER0ppos 4y ago

We do. Probably every day some police force is gassing its own citizens with things that would be a war crime were they soldiers.

socialismisok 4y ago
Living in Seattle, I can attest that the police did riot and deploy chemical weapons.
bigDinosaur 4y ago
Obviously different laws apply to different groups. The police can also do things (arrest people) that would usually be a crime for soldiers to do. Tear gas use by police is either right or wrong, useful or not useful, justifiable or not justifiable, but it's not really related to why chemical warfare is banned in war. We also don't justify the ability and legality of police to kill based on the legality of killing enemy combatants in war, either.
- thatcat 4y ago
  We can compare them and see that the police force oversteps its civilian role. Your point about the requirements to kill enemy combatants strenghtens that arguement.
  - bigDinosaur 4y ago
    My point is that we don't define what police do based on what soldiers do, so it's a red herring in terms of politics and legalities. We define whatever the limits on policing are separately, and tear gas is specially carved out for use by the police. My point isn't that that's right but that it's again not defined by the reasoning used to prevent escalatory chemical warfare in an actual war.
justapassenger 4y ago
There’s a “slight” difference between tear gas and chemical weapons. Ones cause temporary (but very strong) inconvenience (of course there maybe some one off complications), others are designed to kill you, as efficiently as possible.

ALittleLight 4y ago

This makes me think of an observation from (I think) the web-serial Worm. Being a super hero who shoots fire is very tough. Either your opponent is someone who is vulnerable to fire, in which case your power would burn them to death (which is not very heroic) or your opponent is not vulnerable to fire, in which case your powers are useless. Similar thinking seems to apply here. Either your target is a modern, mobile, equipped army of professionals who will take minimal damage from chemical weapons, or they are a vulnerable population of civilians who will be massacred horribly if you use them.

derefr 4y ago
War isn't like superhero/kaiju duels, though. Duels are generally about the opponent themselves — you can only win by disabling them. But a large part of war is about the logistics of moving soldiers and supplies around and through places; and so it can be critical (even war-winning) to deny your enemy the use of territory. A "superhero that shoots fire" (i.e. a guy with a flamethrower) — or a rolling cloud of nerve gas — isn't there to actually harm anybody; it's there to be a thing your enemy sees and stays well clear of. It's an https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Area_denial_weapon https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Area_denial_weapon. The threat of it prevents your opponent from coming within range of it; and thereby locks them out of the area it threatens. And, as it happens, a flamethrower is a much safer area-denial weapon than a cloud of nerve gas — as, whenever the enemy isn't around, you can immediately shut the flamethrower off, and use the area yourself.

StanislavPetrov 4y ago

> The other large-scale use has been in the Syrian Civil War, by the Assad regime against both military and civilian targets (but mostly civilian targets). False propaganda unfortunately according to the OPCW inspectors who actually went to Syria, including the director of the OPCW. But you can ignore them and take the CIA's word for it instead like the author of this article did. https://hitchensblog.mailonsunday.co.uk/2020/02/a-and-b-respond-to-the-opcws-attacks-on-them-the-full-rebuttal.html https://hitchensblog.mailonsunday.co.uk/2020/02/a-and-b-resp... >Quite frankly, we don’t use chemical weapons for the same reason we don’t use war-zeppelin-bombers: they don’t work, at least within our modern tactical systems. Also false, we used white phosphorus extensively in Iraq and elsewhere.

free652 4y ago
That's article is absolute garbage, it doesn't convey any rebuttals of any kind. So you are just mudding the waters with he said / she said.
- StanislavPetrov 4y ago
  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZgIDlgD_txM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZgIDlgD_txM
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
samatman 4y ago
White phosphorus is neither a war-zeppelin-bomber nor a chemical weapon. Not sure which one you were under the misapprehension that it was. It's neither.
- StanislavPetrov 4y ago
  Scientists and chemists around the world are going to be stunned to hear that phosphorus isn't a chemical. >White phosphorus munitions are weapons that use one of the common allotropes of the chemical element phosphorus. >In munitions, white phosphorus burns readily with flames of 800 °C (1,472 °F).[74][75] Incandescent particles from weapons using powdered white phosphorus as their payload produce extensive partial- and full-thickness burns, as will any attempt to handle burning submunitions without protective equipment. Phosphorus burns carry an increased risk of mortality due to the absorption of phosphorus into the body through the burned area with prolonged contact, which can result in liver, heart and kidney damage, and in some cases multiple organ failure.[76] White phosphorus particles continue to burn until completely consumed or starved of oxygen. In the case of weapons using felt-impregnated submunitions, incomplete combustion may occur resulting in up to 15% of the WP content remaining unburned. Such submunitions can prove hazardous as they are capable of spontaneous re-ignition if crushed by personnel or vehicles.[77] In some cases, injury is limited to areas of exposed skin because the smaller WP particles do not burn completely through personal clothing before being consumed. >Due to the pyrophoric nature of WP, penetrating injuries are immediately treated by smothering the wound using water, damp cloth or mud, isolating it from oxygen until fragments can be removed: military forces will typically do so using a bayonet or knife where able. Bicarbonate solution is applied to the wound to neutralise any build-up of phosphoric acid, followed by removal of any remaining visible fragments: these are easily observed as they are luminescent in dark surroundings. Surgical debridement around the wound is used to avoid fragments too small to detect causing later systemic failure, with further treatment proceeding as with a thermal burn.[77] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_phosphorus_munitions#Burning https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_phosphorus_munitions#Bur...

DubiousPusher 4y ago

Good to see this posted again. I see a concurring example in aerial bombardment policy of the US and the UK throughout WWII. I even wrote a paper regarding it in college. Both the US and the UK wanted to target the war making capacity of the Germans. The Americans sought to achieve this with strategic precision bombing. The UK sought to do so with mass bombing campaigns targeting industrial workers. The disparity for example manifested in the reluctance of the US to fly bombing missions at night which for obvious reasons was preferred by the British. Near the end of 1944 however, Allied High Command became concerned that the war might stretch into autumn 1945 and they were hoping the Soviet winter campaign could end the war early. So they initiated their own indiscriminant bombing campaign. In his autobiography, James Doolittle wrote that he opposed the bombing campaign of Berlin because it would , “...violate the basic American principle of precision bombing of targets of strictly military significance...”. In the end, the US adopted the UK's bombing regime and would pursue similar and even more liberal approaches later in the Cold War. And it is not as if urban bombing wasn't a subject of moral discussion. In WWI the dropping of a grenade upon Paris by a pilot had made it clear that aerial bombardment would probably become a thing. There was a great deal of discussion through the interwar period. In the end though, it seems practicality will triumph over ideals given enough stress and time.

nautilius 4y ago
Ooh, nice! "Targeting industrial workers to target the war making capacity" sounds so much nicer than "indiscriminate mass killing of civilians". Don't get me wrong, the Germans had it coming, but let's stop lying to ourselves, shall we?
- swayvil 4y ago
  If we trust our leaders. And our leaders feed us a bunch of bullshit. And then, motivated by that bullshit, we nazi up. Does that make us bad people? This stuff has been researched deeply. Something like 96% of the population. Nice people. Not idiots. Will swallow absolutely anything that the leader feeds them. It may be unfixable. Or maybe the only way to fix it is to destroy all forms of mass media.

User23 4y ago

How do we actually know that “we” don’t? From the reporting of obviously cooperating media? Or what?

mikem170 4y ago

Funny, he never mentioned the chemical weapons that are used all the time, domestically, on protesters. Here's a couple articles I found: https://www.thecut.com/2020/06/tear-gas-is-a-chemical-weapon-why-can-cops-use-it.html https://www.thecut.com/2020/06/tear-gas-is-a-chemical-weapon... https://www.newsweek.com/richmond-chemical-weapons-protests-1520531 https://www.newsweek.com/richmond-chemical-weapons-protests-... My two cents: In general, shouldn't our elected "leaders" arrange to meet with protesters, people who are obviously very frustrated, and spend the time to talk to them, instead of sending in the police to gas them?

danuker 4y ago
But you see, listening to people would be politics. Why do politics when you can just selfishly squeeze what you can before you get kicked out of office? After me, the flood.
justapassenger 4y ago
There’s a difference between tear gas and sarin.
merely-unlikely 4y ago
Legal for police use but banned in warfare. I agree with your point though. > The 1925 Geneva Protocol categorized tear gas as a chemical warfare agent and banned its use in war shortly after World War I. > In 1993, nations could begin signing the U.N.'s Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC) that outlawed the use of riot control agents in warfare. > A database by the International Committee of the Red Cross shows the ban of riot control agents in war went into effect in 1997, but still made it legal for law enforcement use. The Senate approved the CWC in a 74-26 vote on April 25, 1997 https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/factcheck/2020/06/06/fact-check-its-true-tear-gas-chemical-weapon-banned-war/3156448001/ https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/factcheck/2020/06/06/fac...
girvo 4y ago
Because the article is about the why of militaries, and in case you didn’t read it, the article explicitly calls out the use of tear gas by police etc. as chemical weapon use, but as being orthogonal to the point they wanted to discuss.

aaron695 4y ago

MonkeyMalarky 4y ago

The UK planned on using them if Germany ever tried landing on their shores in WWII. Basically just dumping chlorine and mustard gas off the top of cliffs and watching it sink down hill. Anyone on the beaches would've been trapped between that and the ocean.

GartzenDeHaes 4y ago

0. For chemical and biological weapons, there's in inverse relationship between dispersal characteristics and ease of force protection. For example, oily liquids such as VX disperse well, but personnel can be projected with simple charcoal lined protective clothes and gas mask filters. On the other hand, viruses and microtoxins are difficult to protect against, but they also have poor dispersal characteristics from bombs and projectiles. 1. The armed forces of major countries spend a lot of effort to LOOK as if they are prepared to operate under chemical and biological conditions. This includes large stockpiles of protective gear and regular exercises that include chemical weapons scenarios. 2. Chemical and biological weapons aren't used militarily because there's little reason to think that they would be effective. 2.

sillystuff 4y ago
The US did quite a bit of experimentation in dispersal of biological weapons. The US Navy dispersed a microbe off the coast of SF to test natural wind dispersal of biological warfare agents. The microbe was harmless to healthy people, but hospitals contain unhealthy people-- some of whom the navy managed to kill. In the midst of an international mosquito eradication effort that (temporarily) rid much of the Americas from disease carrying mosquitoes, the US Army was breeding and releasing mosquitoes within the US. The Army was testing mosquitoes as a vector for spreading weaponized biological pathogens. I'm not sure if this was a "success" i.e., proved it would have killed a lot of people or not. When I was in university, there was a physics professor at UC Berkely who was trying to call attention to the UC system getting 1/3 of their funding from the military. Some of that funding was probably accounted for by the University of California being the entity that manged the national labs developing nuclear weapons. But, some of that funding was going into research into creating new strains of pathogens e.g., gain of function research which seems pretty much exactly the kind of research you would do when developing a biological warfare agent. I guess <adjusts tin foil hat>, I'm not 100% convinced the US abandoned biological weapons. While I'm not convinced that they didn't abandon them either the US has invested a lot into them, and that gain of function research funded by the military was not that long ago. And, non-nuclear states can more easily get the precursors for chemical and biological weapons than nukes. E.g., Iraq's chemical weapons program (mainly used against Iran) used some production equipment sourced from the US, and precursor chemicals sourced from Germany and the UK. And, the, apparently believable, cover story was that they were manufacturing pesticides. I'd be surprised if a lot of militaristic smaller countries didn't have this sort of weapons program.