Comment by jstarfish
2 years ago
> this presents additional risk from non-state actors, but there's no fundamentally new risk here.
This is splitting hairs for no real purpose. Additional risk is new risk.
> By the mid 1920s there was already enough chemical agents to kill most of the population of Europe. By the 1970s there were enough in global stockpiles to kill every human on the planet several times over.
Those global stockpiles continue to be controlled by state actors though, not aggrieved civilians.
Once we lost that advantage, by the 1990s we had civilians manufacturing and releasing sarin gas in subways and detonating trucks full of fertilizer.
We really don't want kids escalating from school shootings to synthesis and deployment of mustard gas.
Wiki has a pretty nice article on what went into the sarin attack. [1] A brief quote:
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"The Satyan-7 facility was declared ready for occupancy by September 1993 with the capacity to produce about 40–50 litres (11–13 US gal) of sarin, being equipped with 30-litre (7.9 US gal) capacity mixing flasks within protective hoods, and eventually employing 100 Aum members; the UN would later estimate the value of the building and its contents at $30 million.[23]
Despite the safety features and often state-of-the-art equipment and practices, the operation of the facility was very unsafe – one analyst would later describe the cult as having a "high degree of book learning, but virtually nothing in the way of technical skill."[24]"
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All of those hundreds of workers, countless experts working for who knows how many man hours, and just massive scale development culminated in a subway attack carried out on 3 lines, during rush hour. It killed a total of 13 people. Imagine if they just bought a bunch of cars and started running people over.
Many of these things sound absolutely terrifying, but in practice they are not such a threat except when carried out at a military level of scale and development.
[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tokyo_subway_sarin_attack
>We really don't want kids escalating from school shootings to synthesis and deployment of mustard gas.
I mean, you can make chlorine gas by mixing bleach and vinegar.
> by the 1990s we had civilians manufacturing and releasing sarin gas in subways and detonating trucks full of fertilizer.
How does actual and potential harm from these incidents compare to harm from common traffic accidents / common health issues / etc? Perhaps legislation / government intervention should be based on harm / benefit? Extreme harm for example might be caused by a large asteroid impact etc so preparing for that could be worthwhile...
> We really don't want kids escalating from school shootings to synthesis and deployment of mustard gas.
They’d probably end up killing fewer people with a lot more effort. Chemical weapons are not really all that effective.
What you're saying is true but needs context. Chemical weapons aren't very effective in war because you need high concentrations spread over large areas, the wind is your enemy, full body clothing is common and and gas masks are cheap.
But if your target is an unsuspecting small population in an enclosed space who's spending a lot time there the calculus changes a bit. Sarin for example is odorless and colorless, mustard gas can also be colorless, doesn't hit you immediately and unlikely to be detected by smell.
It actually happened in Iran and it's lucky the people responsible either didn't know what they were doing or were actively trying to not kill people because they easily could have.
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>Those global stockpiles continue to be controlled by state actors though, not aggrieved civilians.
How much death and destruction has been brought by state actors vs aggrieved civilians?