Kerry and Iraq

[bloodhound]

I think after reading all this i have to side with sayo and phi. Its true and Biological and Chemical weapons ARENT weapons of mass destruction. The thing is , the secutiry pple are prepared enough, to deal with it. At max about 50 people will die. Then everyone will be evacuated. The site will be quarantined. etc. The only true WMD in my opinion is Nuclear weapons. (which come to think of it USA is the only country to have used it. But lets not get into that )

[Phi for All]

There are very few developed cities with only 50,000 people in them.

Very few cities with less then 50' date='000 in them? There is thousands of them in the USA. [/quote']Read what you quote, please.

of course you cant go running thru a place with a pesticide plant on your back' date=' but you could use one already in use.[/quote']So you want our own existing chemical plants listed as WMDs? What about our tall buildings, nuclear power plants and jumbo jets?

 

Keep focused on what we're discussing, please.

 

The only true WMD in my opinion is Nuclear weapons.

THIS is the truth! I think the bio/chem classification is officials covering their butts. A small, portable nuke has long been our biggest fear, with good reason.

[Mad Mardigan]

So you want our own existing chemical plants listed as WMDs? What about our tall buildings' date=' nuclear power plants and jumbo jets?

[/quote']

 

Missed the point again, EXISTING PLANTS CAN BE USED AS SOURCES TO RELEASE AN EFFECTIVE CHEMICAL ATTACK, not to list them as WMDs. What would you classify a hijacked load of nuclear waste? I would say it is a chemical weapon, now take that and release it into, a lake, a river, a major street, etc. How effective would a fully loaded truck of 50 gallon barrels be?

[Phi for All]

I would say it is a chemical weapon, now take that and release it into, a lake, a river, a major street, etc. How effective would a fully loaded truck of 50 gallon barrels be?

If no one reported the truck missing, and the lake/river/street fed into the public drinking water, and no one witnessed terrorists emptying a truckload of 50 gallon drums into a tributary leading to a restricted municipal site, and all of our current safeguards failed simultaneously, and tens of thousands of people drank several gallons of water at the same time, and no one reported any ill effects, and no reporters got wind of it to warn others, and all the hospitals decided to go on vacation at the same time, then I suppose you'd have some mass destruction.

[LucidDreamer]

Obviously nuclear weapons are the biggest threat. One could kill hundreds of thousands with a blast and more with the contamination. It is of course difficult to build a nuclear bomb and terrorists would most likely have to buy one from one of the former Soviet Union countries or wherever they ended up.

 

I am convinced that a biological agent could be a potentially disastrous weapon if they could ever devise a means to obtain and disperse it. This would require more resources and planning than a bomb and I am not sure the terrorist have the ability to successfully carry out this plan. However, since the terrorists proved their resourcefullness with 9/11 and becaue there is so much destructive potential this should be watched for.

 

The Bhopal disaster is relevant. It shows the effect of a toxic chemical under the right circumstances. The chemical that killed thousands wasn't even designed to kill people; it was a pesticide. It would require a much smaller concentration of gas specifically designed as a lethal agent. The correct chemical agent with an effective form of deployment could be disastrous. Of course producing chemical warfare, like nuclear weapons and biological agents, requires a certain degree of technological advancement. It's much easier to make a simple bomb and blow up a building.

 

I guess my point is that chemical and biological weapons, even though we have not yet seen their full destructive power used effectively, have enormous potential to kill and we should not dismiss their threat lightly. Though I do believe that some people have used the threat of these weapons and overblown the likelihood of mass destruction with them for their own benefit.

[Sayonara]

Very few cities with less then 50,000 in them? There is thousands of them in the USA.

I actually said "only", not "less than", but for the sake of argument over here we would call a population of 50,000 a town. The point does not really relate to any specific number, but rather to the percentage killed.

 

 

Missed the point again, EXISTING PLANTS CAN BE USED AS SOURCES TO RELEASE AN EFFECTIVE CHEMICAL ATTACK, not to list them as WMDs.

Then why bring them up in a discussion about WMDs? Virtually anything involving technology or abiotics can be abused, but that's not the same as being weaponised.

[Sayonara]

The Bhopal disaster which was a release of methyl isocyanate which happened because water got into the storage tanks and they used substandard safety equip. But the release of the gas was good enough to kill 50000 and hurt 600000 people. So yes a release of chemical gas could kill a mobile city.

By the way, the Bhopal disaster actually resulted in 2000 deaths, not 50,000. Most of them were caused by insufficient access to emergency services rather than exposure per se to the chemicals. The damage was compounded by the fact that in India the cities are massively overcrowded and poorer segments of the population do actually live right in industrial and commercial sectors, depending on their means.

 

Also, your assertion that the safety equipment was "substandard" is not true - it was simply not capable of handling the build-up that occured.

 

Not that this has anything to do with WMD, there's just no excuse for throwing exagerrated red herrings around.

[jattaway]

Chemical and biological weapons are most effective against civilians rather than modern troops, but there are a lot of different uses for them that seem to be being ignored, or perhaps just not thought about.

 

One of the chief tenants in war is to disable and not kill the enemy. It is better to wound rather than kill. The reason being that it takes more soldiers out of the fight in that healthy soldiers have to care for injured ones. The fatality rate of some of these agents may not be that high due to a number of reasons, but you can still incapacitate an attacking or defensive force making it easier for your conventional forces to secure an area.

 

In addition to this, there are other uses. Defoliating food sources with the intent of starving the enemy into submission. Contaminating water supplies. Killing ill protected civilians as listed above. Removing cover and concealment from the enemy making it easier to strike at them as well as many others that I have forgotten from my NBC training 15 years ago...

 

Development of chemical and biologic weapons has been slow since the Geneva Convention was signed. That does not mean that there are not a lot of ways to use the current methods or that more effective ones can not be developed.

 

The Sarin nerve gas used in Japan in 1995 is a good example of how to use nerve agent. It killed 12 and injured 6000. Spread terror and had a large negative effect on Japanese moral.

 

As pointed out many times in this thread, these weapons are not that great at killing. My entire reason for posting is that they are very dangerous when used as part of a larger plan, to cause terror or incapacitate troops than they are in and of themselves. Please don't think they are less than deadly just because they do not make the kills themselves. Also, things like Sarin are the poor mans weapons, things like botulinum toxin are listed as 100,000 times more deadly. This used in a subway could kill thousands and hospitalize 10 times that. (this won't be something likely to be mixed up by anything other than State sponsored terrorists, however, hence the importance of destroying nations that have a history of assisting terrorists).

[YT2095]

Chem and Bio weapons are only a means of Area Denial and seldom fatal unless the conditions are right within this area, other than that, most of the figures quoted with regard to toxcicity are Theoretical maximums only