That depends on whether it can still be *used * as a weapon of mass destruction. An unloaded gun is still a gun.
Hmm. Now that is interesting; surely mustard gas when used as a weapon is in gas form? How does the liquid become a gas? (I’m not doubting you in that it has a liquid form, just wondering how it is changed from that to it’s weaponized form).
It needs to be aerosolized.
I was sloppy with my adjectives. Sulfur mustard is not caustic in its most literal sense. “Corrosive” is only slightly more appropriate. “Blistering”? How does one best describe the action of a “vesicant”? “Irritating”, while literally correct, seems kind of lightweight, while “blistering” connotes heat.
Although it does seem to be a common tactic lately to make claims that an issue isn’t basically settled. E.g., it is the same method used by some conservative groups on the issues of global warming and evolution.
Yeesh. I go looking up vesicants, and they can be described as reactive, caustic, corrosive, etc. No reference to pH, just used as synonyms for “does nasty things to tissues” I guess.
Call me Mr. Traditional, but I’d consider a mustard gas shell - actually, any shell - “expired” when it’s no longer considered usable for its intended purpose, that of being loaded into an artillery piece and fired at at target without being a bigger danger to the gun crew than to the intended target.
In practical terms, ordnance has a shelf life. Ordnance beyond its shelf life is expired.
The found munitions, of course, appear beyond “expired”. It sounds like “decrepit” is a better description. In practical terms, these shells are as much a “weapon” as the dud WWI mustard gas shells that are occasionally still found. Dangerous ? Yes. Potential to be converted into primitive weapons ? Perhaps. But in their current state, they’re weapons in the most contorted sense of the word only.
Ta, but I meant rather “what happens inside the weapon to make it from a liquid to a gas?”. Is there a…heater of some kind? Does the explosive reach temperatures enough to get it to the required temperature?
Here’s the CDC page for sulfur mustard:
Well, yeah, but I was looking for a pithy one-word description with a little more punch than “irritating”. Seems “corrosive” or “caustic” can work, the former perhaps more than the latter…
The warhead’s dispersal charge will vaporize some of the agent and disperse the rest in the form of smaller or larger droplets. Larger droplets can enter the body through the eyes and exposed skin, smaller droplets (aerosol) or fumes can be inhaled. The agent is dangerous in that it can persist in a contaminated area for weeks.
If I recall my lessons on chemical warfare correctly, mustard gas’ lethality is considerably lower than such unpleasant stuff as nerve gases - more of a disabling agent than a lethal one. Even with the relatively primitive medical services of WWI, well over 90% of the cases survived.
So in order for mustard gas to be an effective weapon, the explosive charge needs to be working. Ok, thanks.
I guess that means the barrels of the gas in the story I cited weren’t a W.M.D.; there being no explosive charge, they would be more waste than a weapon.
I agree. Liquid mustard gas though is a loaded weapon, all by itself.
Contrary to what Squink says you don’t heat it, because it breaks down if you cook it.
How do you weaponize it? Well, you can just spray it and render whatever you spray unusuable for a while. You can put it in a cropduster, a fogger, a dehumidifier, or a freakin’ water balloon for that matter.
What happens in a shell is that when exploded it basically makes a fog out of the mustard gas. Picture dropping an m80 in a ziploc bag full of water. Some of it dissolves into the air, some of it is in tiny droplets, etc etc. It’s not particularly solvent in water so you can’t wash it away, but it’s very soluble in fat which makes it particularly dangerous.
A beat up old shell is still a pretty damn dangerous weapon.
I’ve been reading about the deminers in France who go around and dispose of the old shells from the first great war. We’ve seen that those shells contain viable mustard gas, we’ve seen that the stuff from WWII is still viable, and I found a report labelling Iraq’s mustard gas as high quality and still viable after twelve years (from the UN.)
Our stuff made in 1968 is still viable. In fact, if you mix it with seawater and just leave it out it forms a polymer which is still dangerous five years later.
So, as long as the shell is intact, I’d say it would be extremely likely that the liquid inside is still plain old sulfur mustard. Your boy in China simply opened a barrel and he died (if I’m reading the article correctly,) and a bunch of other people got wounded. That’s without anybody spraying it around or “weaponizing” it.
You really don’t need to do anything to weaponize it, spray it or disperse it. That’s it.
Once again, I don’t particularly make anything over the fact that these shells exist. They aren’t what we went there for and it doesn’t change anything. The fact is that mustard gas is easy. The chemistry is simple and well known and I’ll bet a determined undergrad in chemistry could whip some up without too much fuss.
But it is bad bad shit, and it lasts a long long time. I’m not in this one for the political part of it, but I think belittling mustrard gas as degraded or expired is extremely ignorant and very bad jou-jou.
WWI disposal stuff in France:
http://edition.cnn.com/2001/WORLD/europe/04/15/Vimy.munitions/index.html
I’d think they are a WMD.
Put in a cropduster, drop an m80 in it, pour some into a buildings ventilation system. Shit, fill up a water balloon and throw it into a crowd.
One dead and sixteen wounded from just opening a can?
Wikipedia calls it a level I (highest rating) chemical weapon. It is the most feared chemical weapon out there, and rightly so.
Mustard gas is a WMD all by itself.
Ok, one last question before i’m convinced; as has been said, these shells are likely to be unsafe. How hard would it be to move, maintain, or prepare the mustard gas for those using it? If I found a shell myself and wanted to use it as a weapon, how likely is it that i’m going to accidentally kill/injure myself?
Revenant:
I’d say it’s really likely that somebody messing with this stuff would end up killing themselves.
The most likely scenario that I would guess would be that Joe Terrorist finds a shell, and fails to recognize it as a mustard gas shell. When he attempts to demine it for the explosive to make an IED he exposes himself to the mustard gas and does us all a big favor by eliminating himself from the gene pool.
A bad scenario would be Joe terrorist grabbing one of these, not recognizing it, but incorporating it into an IED.
A really bad scenario would be it getting it in the hands of somebody who would recognize it and have the skills to extract it and put it to use.
But, I’d say the first it the most likely. My reading today shows that even these expert deminers fuck themselves and die from time to time. The combination of mustard gas and old explosive is a pretty volatile one.
Ok, thanks. Consider me convinced, then; these shells are likely to be still dangerous, and can pose a threat to a large amount of people in one go. I’d say they’re W.M.D.s. I doubt, though, that they pose too much of a threat (aside from anyone finding one) and as Diogenes and Scylla and so on pointed out earlier, they certainly aren’t the weapons used as a rationale for invading Iraq.
I’d still be interested in an answer from Shodan on my pinch of sarin question.
Damn. That should have been “aside for anyone finding one”.
First of all, the Scheduling system you refer to is like the one for drugs–Schedule I chemical weapons are not necessarily more dangerous, they just have less industrial use. This is why cannabis is a Schedule I drug. Cite.
Most feared? Worse than VX? Worse than sarin? With an alleged 90% survival rate (Spiny Norman’s figure)?
Your third scenario is impossible. The sulfur mustard in these shells is too degraded to weaponized as gas. That’s what the offical reports say. That’s what the experts say. That fact is not in dispute. If you’d like to dispute it, please provide a cite that any the chemical agents in these shells are still viable.
Your first scenario isn’t very likely either. Your hypothetical insurgent might burn himself but is unlikely to kill himself.