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Comment by amelius

4 years ago

They go against the Geneva Protocol, and it's not even allowed to stockpile them so not even useful if you are a terrorist with a death wish because then there are simpler ways to end your problems.

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amelius

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csee  4 years ago

Russia used them extensively in Syria quite recently, so the concerns are valid.

  • ceejayoz  4 years ago

    Given that the Syrian war is still ongoing, that seems to debunk the idea that it's as easy as "Drop nerve gas on a city, walk in a couple days later."

  • mardifoufs  4 years ago

    What?! This is not true! I've never heard anyone claiming russia did it. The mainstream consensus is that the syrian government did it, while a minority thinks it was either old stock getting released by accident or the rebels doing it.

    Do you have a source? Because even with all the controversy surrounding international investigation and the theories that have spawned around that, russia wasn't even a possible suspect.

  • someotherperson  4 years ago

    The allegations by OPCW are politicised[0] and based on theoretical chemistry, i.e hexamine as an acid scavenger.

    That is to say: neither the Syrian government nor Russia have used chemical weapons in Syria. They haven't used them because they are -- for all intents and purposes -- useless. If you want to take down a group of people in flip flops and have access to a thermobaric[1] MLRS[2] you're not going to break international law so you can give one or two of them a scratchy throat with chlorine payloads (if you're lucky).

    [0] https://wikileaks.org/opcw-douma/

    [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermobaric_weapon

    [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TOS-1

    • RobertMiller  4 years ago

      > They haven't used them because they are -- for all intents and purposes -- useless.

      To your point, some numbers from wikipedia:

      The LD50 of sarin is 39 micrograms per kilogram, so 0.0039 grams to kill a 100kg man half the time in theory.

      Now consider the worst of the gas attacks in Syria was in Ghouta. Fatality estimates vary considerably, but the highest estimate claims 1729 fatalities. The attack is claimed to have been performed using at least 8 rockets, likely more, each with at least 50 liters of liquid sarin. That's a lower bound of 400 liters of liquid sarin, for an upper bound of 1729 kills. Liquid sarin's density is roughly the same as water, so that works out to more than 230 grams of sarin per person killed. And if you use the lower fatality estimates or the higher rocket count estimates, the numbers are even worse.

      Conclusion? The delivery/dispersion of poison gas is incredibly inefficient. In practice you need tens of thousand times more nerve gas than the LD50 figures would have you naively believe.