Chemical Weapons V: Locations
Written by Translator on July 23, 2008 – 9:10 pm -Crossposted at Dailykos.com
The United States chemical weapons stockpile is distributed all around the country. There was one outside of the Continental United States, but it is done will all operations now. Some of the facilities are finished and closed, but most others are not.
This will be a comparatively short diary to show where the stockpile is, or was. Some of those locations may be near you. Effort will be made to tell what kinds of materiel was located there. In no particular order they are:
Tags: chemical agents, Chemical warfare, Locations, Teaching
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Chemical Weapons IV: Delivery
Written by Translator on July 21, 2008 – 8:13 pm -Crossposted at Dailykos.com
For any weapon to be effective, a means of delivery must be devised. This is particularly important for chemical weapons, because, even with protective gear, there is extreme risk to the forces using them if off normal cases occur.
The first delivery system in World War I was to open a valve on a cylinder of chlorine (chlorine is a gas at normal pressures, but a liquid in the high pressure cylinder) and let the wind carry it towards the target. That works OK for materials like cyanogen chloride, hydrogen cyanide, chlorine, and phosgene that are gases, but obviously will not work for solid and liquid materials. In addition, a shift in wind direction can be a disaster.
Tags: BZ, chemical agents, Chemical warfare, Delivery systems, GB, Mustard agent, Teaching, VX
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Chemical Weapons I. They are still in our world. Overview II
Written by Translator on July 17, 2008 – 9:49 pm -Crossposted at http://Dailykos.com
This will conclude the overview part of chemical weapons. Once again, I focus only on the ones that have been developed and stockpiled by primarily the United States and the Soviet Union.
Most of the information here is about really scary agents, the nerve agents, but there was or is an inventory of other agents, and a considerable amount is in the hands of the civil authorities.
Tags: chemical agents, Chemical warfare, lachrymator, nerve agent, sternutator, Teaching
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