I mean, sure, they’re bad … but are they really any worse than incendiary weapons or simple explosives? Let’s face it, if Aum Shinrikyo had just set off an ordinary bomb, a lot more people would have died. That guy in Korea only needed a milk carton full of flammable liquid too kill 120 people.
Chemical weapons, while their lasting effects were horrible, were also comparatively ineffective in WWI. Why are we so worried about chemical weapons, when cheap, easy-to make explosives can kill people so much more effectively?
I’ve actually been wondering the same thing, as I have little understanding of chemical weapons. I mean, as toadspittle says, their area of impact seems to be comparable to a regular explosive. Also, unlike conventional explosives, you can protect against chemical weapons with a $25 gas mask. Finally, chemical weapons cause no property damage, reducing the overall impact of your assault.
So why are we so nervous about chemical attacks, given that they’re harder to implement and execute and do less damage?
During the previous Gulf war I looked into this question a bit. The general opinion seemed to be that you could actually get a larger “footprint” with cluster-bombs. There is a serious “creep factor” about poisoning someones air though.
Compairing WWI chemical weapons to the ones available today is like comparing WWI fighter planes to the ones available today.
As for the rest of the argument I suppose it comes down to this:
Would you rather be blown up or have a building fall on you, or would you rather suffer horribly for several hours or days with the knowledge that there’s no treatment or cure?
Would you rather take your chances with a bomb that misses its mark and blows up civilians a few miles off target, or with a chemical cloud that drifts a few miles and indiscriminately sickens or kills everyone in its path?
It was a general (William Tecumsah Sherman) who coined the phrase “war is hell.” Who better to know?
Chemical weapons are also comparable to nukes in that chromosome damage can cause birth defects and other ailments for the next generation, extending their effects far beyond just the people in the blast area. The toxins can also linger for years, poisoning crops and animals and thus destroying the local food supply.
Also, with our current arsenal, we don’t particularly need to use chemical weapons anymore. That’s probably a related reason. We’ll be sure to inform when the use of land mines becomes evil… just as soon as we develop a more devastating alternative.
Seriously though: the use of chemical weapons in this war seems especially stupid for the the Iraqis. Even if U.S. troops didn’t have protective gear and suits, the lasting effects and blowback from these weapons are going to affect not the U.S. but Iraq. It’s like using nukes in your own country to fight off invaders.
I’d have to see some references for this. My understanding was that, contrary to popular belief that giant clouds of poison gas could drift through and poison an entire city, say, chemical weapons are actually very local in their effects.
I look at it this way: chemical weapons are an “immature” weapon–their use and delivery are not yet perfected. They are difficult to produce and to deliver, and they are also indiscriminate–for now. Now is the best time to prevent them from being developed to their full potential.
Look at what happened in a few short years of World War I. Trenches on the Web offers a list of chemicals used during the war. From the first crude use of a simple cylinder-delivered wind-driven asphyxant like chlorine in 1915, within a thousand days one out of every four artillery shells fired was a chemical weapon. A 1918 battlefield was so lethal it defies the imagination–a combination of blinding, burning and choking agents designed to penetrate a mask, burn exposed skin and lung tissue, and suffocate, in addition to all that metal flying around and snagging your boots.
Even now these weapons are in their comparative infancy. Right now they serve as area-denial weapons used to hamper and slow down an enemy. But what if we are allowed to pursue chemical (and their closely related cousins, biological) weapons to their ultimate conclusion? A weapon which could eat through a resistant uniform, incapacitate and eventually kill its target, and spread to others tending the wounded would be merely par for the course. They can get far nastier than that.
Imagine what the outcome of a chemical arms race might yield: binary chemicals which could be surreptitiously planted in a nation’s water supplies, waiting only for the release of a chemical “trigger” to do their work; biochemical weapons that select by genetic markings; biochemical weapons that select by what foods you eat–or don’t eat–like, say, pork; mass-sterilization or generationally crippling weapons; crop- and livestock- killing weapons.
It’s a horrific nightmare with no end in sight if allowed to proliferate, but it’s a technology which can only be effectively pursued by massive state-funded projects. If we can get most or all nations to agree to the “rule” of war that chemical weapons are right out, we stand a chance of surviving to a social maturity which may one day preclude the use of such barbarian tactics. If we fail in that endeavor and instead pursue a path of chemical and biological weapon development, we may succeed beyond our wildest dreams in our efforts to kill one another and–everything else.
Sofa King, while that slippery slope is indeed a cause for alarm, I would like to note that pursuing pharmaceutical technology itself is on the exact same path, or at least a similar one. The difference between pharmaceutical aids and chemical weapons is, AFAIK, quite negligible if a country wants to put its mind to it. At least, let me say, the development of chemical weapons and the development of pharmaceutical compounds are more than just analagous (indeed, it is really the only way we know how to develop chemical agents for use in the human body—helpful uses or otherwise). Another case where the technology for good is easily crossed over into technology for evil. An average pharma can manufacture chemical agents as easily as it can manufacture Xanax, excepting inherent difficulties in synthesis (a matter for all molecular compounds, not just weapons or drugs), especially when the pharma is doing so with funds from the nearly bottomless pockets of the government in question… say, a rogue state?
AFAIK there are basically three things needed to address: one, the compound itself (what it targets, be that pancreatic cancer or the composition of lung tissue); two, the dosage necessary to achieve the desired result; three, the method of delivery (through the skin, ingested, inhaled, etc). Pharmas already work with such things all the time on their own positive molecules.
As with all things, the human body is easier to destroy than it is to make (or make better). I don’t think the cause for alarm is going to ever be gone.
…or you could be slashed apart by falling tiles or glass and live for a few months or years,
…or have some of your internal organs severaly damaged by crushing and just enough for you to survive for a few months,
…or you could get caught up in the blast wave and have your lungs damaged by the pressure, your eardrums blown in, you could live for a while with the constant exhaustion caused by the failure of your lungs to operate efficiently, until your body just gave out,
…or you could get caught up in the ensuing fire, or just the heat from the blast wave, and maybe lose your face and all the other horrible things that can happen to a fire casualty.
Many nerve agents kill extremely quickly, some chemical agents kill in horrifying ways, but it is hard to decide which method of killing is the most inhumane, blasts or chemicals.
I think this is what the OP is pointing out.
There again, with so many ingenious ways of wiping each other out, the world hardly needs to be routinely using yet another method.
That’s a perfectly reasonable note, erislover. One thing I didn’t note and probably should have is that modern research into chemical and similar types of weapons tends toward the non-lethal these days, as best I can tell.
(Maybe there is a better word for these weapons. Bio-active?)
A couple years back I was lucky enough to see a Marine future technology exhibit, and a lot of their work was in the direction of non-lethal chemical agents (and other devices) for crowd control and area denial. We may be seeing the use of some of these in the near future.
Similarly, although it’s a somewhat tragic example, the use of the “sleeping gas” in that Chechen hostage incident a while back was another attempt at non-lethal chemical tactics. The fact that the chemical was not as non-lethal as one could wish indicates to me that there is still plenty of room for improvement in these areas.
That is interesting, actually. The motherlode would be a chemical that could incapacitate but not kill or permanently damage in any way, but could be delivered easily. Of course, once one country found it, good luck keeping it out of the hands of others. Damn humans.