The Dirty Little secret about NBC warfare

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evlstu RE:The Dirty Little secret about NBC warfare 8/5/2001 11:31:18 PM

Actually, there are 3 reasons why the "great powers" haven't used any NBC weapons: 1)political backlash, 2)your opponent might start using them as well, 3)using NBC weapons hinder will slowyour own troops down to the point where the enemy can bring up reserves to plug any hole you just made in their line.

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pfd RE:The Dirty Little secret about NBC warfare 1/2/2002 12:00:04 PM

To me the real problem about such weapons is the long term effects. I agree that the short term effects are primarily (SP) psychological. The long term ones are bio-hazards that can harm future and uninterested human beings. Par example-you can still get a fairly severe burn caused by Mustard gas that was used in WWI. Be careful where you put your hand on that stone wall in Verdun! Forget Mr Aquifer. If industrial by-products can be considered horrific to those who must co-habitate the same grounds, imagine living at ground 0 of a major cbw incident.

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mbailey@mail.sdsu.edu RE:The Dirty Little secret about NBC warfare 3/17/2002 12:14:15 PM

I must respectfully disagree. Conventional weapons, when used properly can never match the destructive power of WMD if THEY are used properly. The Japanese subway was merely an example of people not knowing how to use them properly. Problem is, if they are halfway intelligent, they learned what they did wrong, and may not make the same mistake again.

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Moffmaster RE:The Dirty Little secret about NBC warfare 3/18/2002 3:08:00 AM

Military research has always gone into weapons that are immediately fatal or incapacitating. There are however many substances that will cause lingering health problems and death which could be used by terrorist factions who are not interested in immediate fatalities (However the media effect would be much smaller even if TOTAL fatalities where higher). Think Gulf war syndrome. A weapon otimized for this effect could be very dangerous in the long run, especially if it causes cripples. Imagine 10 million people are taken from the work force and need continuing health care. The economy would be in ruins within years. "Dirt" bombs are the nuklear approach to this end and they are very dangerous as well. Uranium and Plutonium are not only strong alpha radiators but also deadly poisonous. The attack could be performed on drinking water (especially in Europe because water quality is much higher there and people trust the water that comes out of the tap). Moffmaster

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Jeff from Michigan European water quality 3/18/2002 8:57:53 PM

Water quality better in Europe? I lived there for 3 years and let me tell the stuff is rank. Nobody drinks out of the tap anywhere unless they don't have a choice. Here in the states we get a glass of water gratis. There in Europe they charge you. (In Poland the custom was to have the waiter open the bottle in front of you so you wouldn't be getting half drunken bottles from prior patrons.) You are seriously off base on this statement. Getting back to the statement of putting these items in the drinking water I really don't know if putting heavy metals would work. Wouldn't the filtration system get most of it? I know that the water supplies have been guarded as a source of chemical attack but I don't know about radiological attack.

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bsl RE:European water quality 3/18/2002 10:21:54 PM

Varies from place to place, as it does in America. People tend not to drink the water in the Boston suburbs, either, which is why bottled water is so big.

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Moffmaster RE:European water quality 3/19/2002 2:47:39 AM

You are right it differs in Europe as well as in America but from what I have heard it is better in Europe than in America. In Germany it's nice wherever you go and in the parts of France i have been it was good as well. In the eastern countries it might be different. Attacking the watersupply itself is (in my opinion) not to difficult in itself. All pipe access and pumping stations are locked but that has never kept anyone out has it? The real difficulty will be to make the stuff spread without it being noticed. It takes almost forever for the water to reach your victims and if someone sounds the alarm no one will use tap water anymore. Such an opperation would require many people to poison the water at many places at once to be effective. In countries where water is scarce however it could be practicable. If you poison a river or other main watersupply there would be nothing left to drink. A terrorist could use large amounts of nuklear waste which can be procured rather easily (it was much easier in the past though). The waste is groud into powder and dumped into the water. Moffmaster

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bsl RE:European water quality 3/19/2002 9:54:46 PM

I'll only go so far in this sort of essentially anonymous, public discussion about workable terrorist tactics. As far as contaminating a water supply goes, that turns out to be considerably more of a practical problem than some might realize, and more so as you deal with larger and larger supplies for larger, and infinitely more juicy, public-relationswise, targets. Essentially, it's a combination of a target which is set-up to deal with biological agents, and, as far as chemical agents go, presents a "inkdrop in a swimming pool" problem. It's Public Health 101 that public water supplies are disinfected to destroy infectious agents. That's what chlorination is about. Trying to stage a bio attack on a public water supply tends to resemble a frontal attack on a prepared defender. I don't say it's impossible, but it's not easy. As for a chemical attack, what you need to think about is just how MUCH water is in a public water system. Any poison you want to put in is diluted, a LOT. It's a matter of dosage. Not how much stuff you dump in, but how large the effective dosage to a person at the other end of the system is. Some of the most deadly poisons known to man have benign uses, in very small doses. Even botulism toxin, is enjoying a fad in cosmetic surgery, as a sort of instant face lift chemical. It doesn't really matter what Osama bin Evil wants to dump into the reservoir. If he can't dump a LOT in, it won't kill people. "A lot", in this context, involves quantities which would herniate a caravan of elephants. And, that's where I'm going to draw the line, on this subject.

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fred79 RE:European water quality 3/28/2003 7:25:12 AM

lets get back to the original subject the usefull ness of WMD's let me put it this way the major reason not to use chemical or biological weapons in a war are that it is easy to turn back and bite you in the arse. This happened in WW1. But that hasn't stopped them from being used the Japanese originated Bioweapons and used them in china with effect. and there is a reason we keep all of our stores of chem bio weapons. also as for useing water to affect people drinking it the use of a chemical, or heavy metal could be used in some tyoe of denial of service attack against water supplies rather than poison the water to the drinkers, slow the production of clean water to the point of a water shortage. if they could acces the water beyond the point of cleansing they could inffect alot of people with a communicable disease(even if it wasn't leathal it would affect the city a great deal) terrorism has become more than just killing people its about bothering people casing uproar and comotion.

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giblets RE:European water quality 3/28/2003 8:50:14 AM

I agree, water differes throughout europe, in the UK, virtually everyone drinks tap water, and many 'blind' tests have shown the majority of people prefer the tap water to the bottled stuff. AS commented,t he easiest way to threaten the population would be to poison the resevoirs.

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Kalashnikov RE:The Dirty Little secret about NBC warfare 4/10/2003 6:29:12 PM

It would be rather foolish of an invading army to use Chem/Bio weapons, lest he contaminate the ground he wishes to invade (A key reason as to why the Germans didn't use many chemical or biological agents in WWII, at least not on the battlefield). It should be noted, however, that these weapons CAN work and to extremely devastating degrees. There may have been few casualties in sarin attack on Tokyo, yet dozens were no-doubt stricken with the agent and are now paralyzed, brain-dead or have other side-effects of the disease.

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Animal13 RE:The Dirty Little secret about NBC warfare 2/7/2004 9:44:30 AM

I am a bit dismayed by the comments here, they do not reflect the proven effective history of CB warfare to date. You cannot reference WWI cases and say, see, these weapons are no good. The major reason chem weapons were not very effective in WWI is because they weren't used ENOUGH or in combination with combined arms attacks - i.e., you can't rely on chem alone to win the day, which is what many powers were doing. Little known fact, the Germans and Austrians cracked Capporetto in 1917 due to their use of chemical agents to attack the poorly equipped Italians in the seventh campaign. The first six failed because of the mountainous terrain and strongpoints. During WWII and the Cold War, there was extensive improvements on CB weapon delivery systems which made them much less susceptible to weather conditions. The Germans didn't use chem/bio in the later years because they knew the Allies would cream their cities with strategic bombers. The Allies didn't use it because they didn't have to, although Churchill really wanted to and the US nearly used chem on Japan in plans for an invasion of the homeland. In 1972, Nixon stopped the offensive bio weapons program and halted the modernization of the chem weapons not due to morality issues but because of the NSC's misguided report that said "you don't need chem bio when you have the nukes." Trust me they are effective. It's a misguided sense of "chem is nasty" that foolishly prevents military professionals from seeing the value-added of effectively placed chem-bio agents. Oh and by the way, what is the new AF MOAB if not a WMD??? think about it.

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eatmee RE:The Dirty Little secret about NBC warfare 10/22/2005 10:40:34 AM

"of chemical and biological weapons is that they don't work. " Did u forget the N in there? From your NBC? and dont talk such complete and utter f***ing rubbish. NBC weapons are the most horrific and lethal weapons ever imagined. Nuclear weapons have the ability to wipe out and 'now' vapouris entire cities horrendous civilian or military casualties instantly sustained. Leaving massive areas affected by damage, nuclear storm, and radioactive aftermath. Vast swathes of land could potentially be left waste and radioactively poisened for hundereds of years, th implications are so great. Accompany that with the long term affects on human beings, radiation sickness, cancers deformed children and animals, whole areas a radioactive scorched earth. U only have to think about the effects of the old A bombs dropped on Hiroshima And Nagasaki, and what death they caused to get a glimpse , and of course the effects of chenobyl (still radioactive no?) remebering that todays nukes could be made to such high yeild specifications (20 times greater power than the Abomb atleast) and then u begin to understand the destructive power. That was just nukes, then there is the vile potential of chem and biological weapons. Gas attacks capable of killing thousands. Ypu think they dont work?? Ask Saddam then there are even worse modern nerve agents capable of paralysing and suffocation of peoples in seconds. Old style gas which corrodes the lungs and you die in thick blood, you drown in your own blood. You cough it up. Then biological warfare capable of engineering virusus so dangerous they are capable of exterminating the entire human race, they are so dangerous that if released they could quickly go out of control and kill everybody. Thats why they dont use them. But they have to create and research them so see what they would be up against if attacked by a random state. If all the world went to war tomorrow with every weapon in its arsenal, every dirty little quarrantined germ, everything from megatonne bombs to anthrax and smallpox, this planet would look like the apocalypse freak show.

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jlb RE:The Dirty Little secret about NBC warfare 11/4/2005 1:36:41 PM

Chemical weapons ARE effective, even against trained and well-protected troops. The problem is, they're much more complicated to manufacture, store and use than HE to get the same result. The only example of extensive use of chemical weapons in history was by Germany in late 1917 and 1918. During the latter stages of WWI, they used about 50% gas shells and combined with proper tactics they got good results out of them. But they did it mostly because of the British blockade which prevented them from importing enough - I think it was potash but I'm not sure - to manufacture enough HE to fill all their shells whereas they had more chemical factories than the rest of the world combined which could be used to make gas. The main problem with chemical weapons is they're 90� off the KISS principle. You don't use them if you've got a simpler way.

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bobfall RE:The Dirty Little secret about NBC warfare 12/26/2005 11:49:20 AM

"If pouring large quantities of nerve agent into the Tokyo subway at rush hour results in a single-digit death toll, what's the point? Barrels full of high explosive and nasty bits of metal would have been much more devastating." The tokyo is not an accurate measure of how effective chemical weapons can be in an enclosed space. We are talking a bag, a sharp object, and a low powered-homemade nerve agent. The agent was not state of the art,nor was the delivery system. The whole device was carried in backpack. Replace that with an effective sprayer, and a modern-pure nerve agent. The results would be very different. Bob

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