Dr. Jan Medema, recently ‘retired’ from the TNO, continues working worldwide on many projects. One area that remains high on his agenda is documenting the success, failure and foibles that beset all of us across the NBC arena. Intel and the Media do stand out.

Military or Media, Intelligence, Science (MIS)

Jan Medema, BSee DSee
Benthuizen, The Netherlands

1. Purpose: Demonstrate that in the past 100 years:

a. the military assessment on the use of chemical and biological weapons; and,
b. the intelligence regarding an opponents capabilities; and,
c. the scientific aspects of chemical and biological weapons have often let to a wrong assessment of the threat of Biological and Chemical weapons.

            In fact misunderstandings and misinterpretations occurred so frequently in history that extreme caution should be taken when presenting new intelligence data or using the data for justifying any action to counter the supposed threat. In addition the media find it most attractive to publish stories that predict disaster rather than providing objective information.

            It will be shown that although both the scientific community and the military analysts have often wrongly assessed the capabilities of C and B weapons, the Media and Intelligence Communities have played the most important role in providing unreliable information. The word MIS in the Dutch language means missing the target, when used in a sentence it can have the meaning of: you got it all wrong

2. Historical records

2.1. The start of CW

            Despite the possibilities presented by the Brussels Convention and The Hague Conferences in the 19th century, despite the use of all kinds of chemical weapons during the early stages of World War I, and despite the information provided by several prisoners of war and defectors, the massive chlorine attack of April 1915 came as a complete surprise.

            The effect of the chemical weapon was new to the military and they were not able to  exploit the sudden advantage they received with its use. At the end of WW I experts agreed that CW is an effective weapon against an unprotected opponent but ineffective against protected troops. Actually it was considered useless to attack protected troops with chemicals.

2.2. The Mustard gas case

            In the search for new weapons that could break the protection provided by the mask, both sides screened many compounds. In 1916 the UK rediscovered a compound synthesised for the first time nearly 100 years earlier. It did cause serious blisters but the military rejected the compound as ineffective because it did not kill. Angry young scientists wanted to prove the effectiveness of the compound and placed a drop on the chair of the director of Porton Down. He had to eat his meals from the mantelpiece for a month.

            One year later the British troops were attacked with Mustard agent and in three weeks faced more casualties due to chemicals than in the all the twelve preceding months. The German scientific community, not aware of the fact that the UK had produced the compounds, told the military they did not have to fear retaliation because it was difficult to find out what the exact structure was. The UK had established the correct formula within a week. In those years Mustard gas was called the king of the war gases. Still today it is one of the most effective CWAs.

2.3. After WW I

            In the aftermath of WW I, analysing the outcome, the scientific community argued that the Chemical Weapon is effective and humane. Based on the WW I statistics the following numbers were provided:
• 250 kg HE ammunition was required to make one casualty with one in three dead.
• 100 kg of asphyxiating gases were required to make one casualty with one in ten dead
• 3-10 kg of Mustard agent was required to make one casualty with one in 50 –100 dead.

            In addition it was estimated that every Mustard agent casualty needed two month of hospitalisation requiring the support of medical personnel. Overall the number of man-months lost due the various weapons was the highest for Mustard agent. The scientists overlooked the fact that there is a lot of additional suffering involved once being exposed to CW. Examples from the more recent history are the Iranian Mustard agent casualties show that, amongst other developing ailments, many of them turned blind or developed forms of cancer, particularly on the skin.

2.4. The period in between WW I and II

            Irrespective of activities to ban CW, first together with submarines in 1923 and then via the Geneva protocol of 1925, many scientists developed new chemical weapons, e.g., Lewisite and nerve agents. The military analyst published books on the catastrophic effects of air warfare combined with CW and the intelligence community in all potential opposing countries, cried out loud about the other’s huge CW stockpiles. Horror movies were made showing soldiers loosing all the skin within seconds due to Lewisite poisoning. However, pictures of CW casualties in Northern Africa and Ethiopia were not met with particular horror in Western countries.

            In the late thirties many countries started to invest large sums and a huge effort to protect the civilian population by issuing masks. Italy developed dusty agent in the Libyan dessert. As it became clear in the years after WW II, Japan had practiced Chemical and Biological warfare in China but Germany had hardly shown any interest in biological agents and instead focussed on nerve agents. The Soviets showed interest in HCN, which is dispersed, as HCN snow.

2.5. The WW II period

2.5.a. The Dusty agent case

            The Italian forces in Libya introduced Mustard agent adsorbed onto a fine clay powder in 1938. The purpose was to increase the persistence of the Mustard agent in the hot desert and to facilitate dispersion by spraying. The clay and idea were sold to their Nazi German allies. We were later to find that investigations on the effectiveness of the dusty agent were carried out in the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute in Berlin. A hand written report from 1944 (Historical archives of the Wehrmacht in Freiburg, Germany) mentions that although the investigators who carried out the experiments had their hands and arms protected by impermeable material, they did develop blisters in the wrist area.

            This finding led to the claim that dusty Mustard was much more effective than ordinary Mustard agent, ignoring the fact that the deposition of dusty Mustard in the opening between hand and arm protection on a very wet skin, might have contributed significantly to the severity of the effects. So far no studies have been published demonstrating that Dusty Mustard is more aggressive for humans than ordinary Mustard agent or would cause more severe effects at a lower dosage. Dusty Mustard agent was never introduced into the German army. Nevertheless, the dusty agent problems pops up from time to time, most recently in the attacks on the Kurds in the late 1980’s (Prof. Christine Gosden CBRN Symposium Shrivenhan, UK Oct 2004). It is true that the particles loaded with Mustard are of such a size that they easily penetrate present day protective clothing. However, how much is deposited on the skin determines the hazard, not the quantity that penetrates. The smaller the particles the lower the deposition.

2.5.b. The Lewisite case

            At the end of WW I, Lewisite was synthesised in the US and selected as a potential CWA. Many studies have been performed to prove the effectiveness of the agent and its superiority over Mustard agent. Even a horror movie was made based on the use of Lewisite. However during WW II field trials were carried out in Edgewood, Maryland showing that the stability of the Lewisite in the humid environment was very poor. Within 15 minutes after a serious contamination with Lewisite personnel could walk unprotected through the field without having any effects, the Lewisite had been hydrolysed in a matter of minutes and the hydrolysed product is not volatile. Consequently at the end of WW II the US took the decision to destroy the Lewisite stock by dumping it in the Gulf of Mexico in 1946.

            Lewisite disappeared from the prominent threat agent lists and materials are no longer screened for the protection against Lewisite. The suspicious Soviet Union (SU) then starts the production of Lewisite and produces 7000 – 8000 tons, which are partly stored as pure compounds in Kambarka and partly mixed with Mustard agent. Analysis showed that the product, even after 50 years of storage, was very pure and decomposition had not occurred to any significant degree. When the SU showed its CW arsenal to the world in the late 1980s one of the surprises to NATO was the large stock of Lewisite

2.5.c. The HCN cases

            Although the HCN case is mentioned under the WW II period, it stretches over many years even to WW I and the Napoleon Wars. In the latter case a German Pharmacist suggested stopping Napoleon troops by dipping the bayonets of the Prussian soldiers in cyanide. During the screening of potential CWA in WW I, one of the first agents that came up is HCN. Actually there appeared to be quite some difficulty in weaponising the agent (HCN explodes or burst into flames), but finally the French army succeeded in finding a usable form. In order to raise a sufficiently high concentration they used a rapidly firing 75-mm gun.

            Porton Down advised very much against the use of HCN because in their opinion it is extremely difficult to raise a sufficiently high concentration of HCN in the field. A brave professor who went in the gas chamber together with a dog carried out one very illustrative experiment. When the chamber is loaded with HCN the professor is quietly reading his book and the dog dies in a matter of minutes. (According to some records the dog was unconsciousness and when left on a dump site recovered after some hours and walked away) The professor knew that dogs were much more sensitive towards HCN poisoning (at least ten times) than humans. The French form of HCN was not very effective, as the record showed the German troops once they smelled the HCN did not bother to mask, they liked the smell.

            Despite this experience HCN came up again in WW II. The German contra-intelligence (Hirsch Report) found out that the SU used aircraft to spray HCN. In view of the boiling point this seemed physically impossible. Germany carried out an experiment in Munsterlager, which failed. Once they capture the SU spray aircraft the experiment is repeated this time with great success. The trick was that very large drops were sprayed. Part of the HCN evaporated during the free fall and cooled the agent to such a degree that it froze as water/ice from the atmosphere was condensed onto the drops. The agent was described as HCN snow. Experiments were carried out using dogs and the effectiveness of the agent was derived from the number of dogs that were killed. In some experiments actual concentrations and dosages were measured. Seldom was a concentration or a dosage found that would kill a human. Nevertheless HCN remained on the threat list. In a 1969 study from the DDR, NATO was accused of possessing HCN snow weapons.

2.5.d. Protection of the civilian population during WW II

            Many nations have invested substantial time and money to protect the civilian population from aerial attacks with CWA. These attacks were expected to be the rule in the coming war and were based on the capability assessment of the opponent. However after the war it became very obvious that none of the potential belligerents had a fraction of the CWA required to start a chemical war. The total amount of CWA in the possession of UK, France, Germany, Italy, SU and US together in 1939 was less than 10,000 tons. Estimates in the US for the stock needed in the first two months of chemical war were 25,000 tons. So none of the belligerents actually was prepared to carry out offensive chemical warfare.

            Despite their own lack of capability and lack of detailed intelligence, it was suspected that the other party would be fully prepared to wage CW, which obviously was not the case. The CW protection of the general population was completely superfluous.

2.5.e. The German Biological capability

            It was assessed as highly likely that Hitler Germany was involved in the research and development of biological weapons. This induced similar work in the UK and US. The UK developed anthrax weapons and the long lasting contamination of the island for the coast of Scotland is well known. A thorough German study after the war has pointed out that only at the end of WW II there was a small but insignificant research activity regarding biological weapons in Nazi Germany (Geisler, Hitler und die BIO Waffen)

2.5.f. The nerve agent case

            The first nerve agent was synthesised by Schraeder and co-workers in 1936. Industrial production of Tabun and Sarin started in 1941 –1942 time frames. Several thousand tons were weaponized but fortunately never used. The British counter intelligence received some reports about the German developments. After careful analysis, including scientific screening the conclusion in 1944 was that such highly toxic agents do not exist and that the reports must be viewed as Nazi propaganda. One year later the British troops were involved in the demolition of the storage bunkers in Munsterlager and the dumping of CWA in the Baltic Sea. The next group of even more toxic nerve agents the V-agents was developed in the UK some ten years later.

2.5.g. The case of Japan from 1933-1945 unit 731

            Reading through old newspapers, the war in China is mentioned from time to time but the references to chemical or biological warfare are very scarce. The activities in Japan are kept secret after the war because of interest in the results of the studies of what is called Unit 731. Many years after the WW II, it becomes apparent what these study involved. Besides disgusting experiments with humans to investigate the effects of biological agents, biological warfare was practised against the Chinese population. It is largely unknown how many victims resulted but it seems that unit 731 is at least responsible for 3,000 victims as a result of human experimentation. It took about 50 years before these facts became common knowledge in the Western world.

2.5.h. Setting active carbon on fire.

            On several occasions the possibility of setting carbon on fire to destroy the protection provided by a mask is mentioned. During WW II actual research in this direction was carried out in Germany. The most oxidative compounds are made, e.g., oxygen trifluoride. In test reports from the Wehrmacht archives in Freiburg, Germany, it becomes clear that one could set water on fire when a torpedo filled with the compound was fired at a ship but the concentration in the field was never high enough to set charcoal on fire.

            On the other hand there are reports stating that active carbon in a filter was set on fire. In almost all cases this happened with larger filters during testing with chloropicrin, a measure for the physical adsorption capacity of the filter. When the filter after the testing is closed and put aside the chloropicrin reacts and produces heat. Due to the perfect insulation there is a considerable heat built up and finally the filter explodes and the carbon is set on fire. It is obvious that a very large amount of chloropicrin has to be adsorbed on the filter to produce this effect. In fact several very heavy attacks (more than 10) have to be directed to that filter to achieve this situation.  

2.5.i. Making it impossible to wear a mask.

            One of the developments during WW I was to attack with an agent that would induce vomiting, which would prevent the proper wearing of the mask, followed by an attack with a more lethal agent. Hemmingway in his book ”A Farewell to Arms” already described that soldiers quickly learned to vomit in their mask. In the course of history several other possibilities are mentioned. Lewisite, phosgene oxime or mycotoxines when mixed with nerve agents, would cause such pain on the skin that wearing a mask would become intolerable. The promoters of these ideas forgot one important aspect of a CW attack: when a shell with CW explodes it forms a cloud of a limited size. The size is determined by the ratio in CW and HE. More HE makes a larger cloud but of a lower concentration. Soldiers that are outside the multiple clouds will have the time to mask and in doing so also protect the skin. Soldiers inside the clouds will fall victim to the nerve agent in an earlier stage when the cloud is not diluted by another agent. So those inside the cloud will face a more diluted cloud and get some more time to mask. Those outside the multiple clouds are not affected at all. Adding the mentioned compounds to nerve agents only reduces the effectiveness of the weapons.

Note: DDR scientists would publish in open literature the threat of peculiar agents like HCN snow and PFIB, the latter long before it was considered in the western countries. Retrospectively these publications carry all the signs of a warning that the agents were considered by the former SU

2.6. The cobweb case

            In 1939 some guards at the southern coast of the UK reported a phenomenon with potential implications for biological warfare (75 years of Porton Down). Cobwebs were floating through the air. The UK scientist quickly ascribed this as natural phenomena; every fall spiders  migrate by floating in the air. This phenomenon sometimes takes unusual proportions, in the 1890’s the sky around Chicago was blackened from cobwebs and Darwin, during his trip to the Galapagos islands discovered migrating spider webs, on board of a ship 100 km outside the Rio Plata. Nevertheless Cobwebs appeared once more as potential agents during the Serbia-Croatia conflict in the 1990’s. Even the cobwebs were collected and in the analysis a man made compound (PEG) is found. However neither the sample taking or the analysis complied with the strict rules of the OPCW. The cobwebs as biological warfare agents once more must be rejected as fairy tales.   

2.7. The PFIB case

            In the 1969 DDR study book on medical countermeasures against NBC weapon effects, the threat of PFIB as a potential NATO CWA was mentioned also. Three references were given to prove the nasty NATO efforts. One is an advertisement for Fluor Chemical from 1946. Two is the smoke camouflage operation from the allied troops in southern Italy in 1944 and three is a reference to the toxicity of organic fluorine compounds in the Journal of Physical Chemistry. However the toxicity as quoted in the DDR study book is at least 40 times below the value mentioned in the J. Phys. Chem. study. The particular hazard of PFIB is that it penetrates the mask canister relatively easily. Organo fluorine compounds can be toxic if they are reactive. But when they are reactive the impregnated carbon in the filter will stop them. Non-reactive compounds might be less well stopped by the filter but they do not possess a harmful toxicity.

2.8 The SU Biological Weapon program

            As soon as President Nixon declared stop to all activities in the biological weapon program and to sign the Biological Weapon Convention, the former SU started a program to develop biological weapons. According to Ken Alibek, a former prominent co-worker in the program, the suspicious mind saw the Nixon declaration as just a trick to secretly develop biological weapons. At the same time also, the SU signed the Biological Weapon Convention. In the next 20 years no intelligence information regarding this huge program, with tens of thousands of co-workers is presented to the western world. In 1978 there were however indications mentioned that the SU allies used biological warfare in the form of Yellow rain (see below). In 1979 there was the Sverdlovsk incident in which at least 63 people die from anthrax intoxication. The explanation given by the SU was that the hungry people consumed contaminated meat. However, a US intelligence briefing that was recently declassified pointed to the fact that a forbidden biological weapon development is a distinct possibility. It took several defectors, amongst them Ken Alibek, and some visits of western experts before the SU admitted that they had a small but insignificant biological weapons program. Later President Yeltsin, leader of the communist party in Sverdlovsk in 1979, declared that indeed an accident had happened in a military installation with anthrax. But some years earlier US investigators carried out investigations that led to the same conclusion. 

2.9 The Yellow rain case

            In the late ninetenn seventies and early eighties, on several occasions the use of Yellow rain as a biological warfare agent was mentioned. Based on a much disputed analysis of a sample from South East Asia, indicating the presence of trichotecene mycotoxins, the Secretary of State of the US, Alexander Haig, accused some countries being involved in biological warfare. In the book Yellow Rain by Seagrave, several incidents were described but independent investigative teams could not come to the same conclusion. The debate goes on for some time until an alternative explanation for the Yellow rain was presented, namely bee droppings. Swarms of bees let their droppings, containing a lot of yellow pollen, fall in a rainstorm. Due to the surface tension the pollen is concentrated in the outer shell of the drop and turns it yellow. The likelihood of this explanation is further enhanced when the Russian expert on mycotoxins, Joffe, living in Israel declared that the effects mentioned by the victims could not be due to mycotoxins. (Joffe, personal communication). In addition some years before Joffe obtained the most virulent strains for the production of the toxins by mail from the SU. He was working with those compounds in a not very well equipped laboratory right across the Israeli parliament without any special protective measures. 

            Three years ago another Yellow rain incident was reported. This time in India 60 km north of New Delhi. Because at the time considerable tension existed between India and Pakistan, rumours about Biological warfare started to circulate. In a matter of a few weeks, scientists in India declared that the phenomenon was due to yellow pollen from bee droppings. However some investigators still believe that in another reported incident, Kurds were attacked with mixtures of mycotoxins and mustard agent. The evidence that is presented is not very convincing. (Prof. Christine Gosden during VII CBRN conference in Shrivenham, UK, 2004)

            The book of Seagrave also mentions the use of a compound called Blue X by Soviet forces in Afghanistan, as described it freezes the victims; it is very fast acting. The description of the effects shows some similarity with the gas used in the Moscow theatre incident however; no attention is paid to this similarity.

2.10 The Angola case

            In the late nineteen eighties, accusations were made that the Angola government, supported by Cuban and Russian troops, used an agent against the rebel forces (UNITA) which were supported by South Africa. Medical personnel from South Africa found indeed a number of victims all with paralysed extremities. Despite thorough investigations no reasonable explanation was found.

            A year after the reported incidents a toxicologist from Belgium investigated some of the victims. On television he showed that one-year after exposure the Chemical Agent Monitor gave a positive response towards nerve agents. No one could duplicate this finding but many believe the findings to be correct. Until today there is no absolute proof for any exposure to whatever agent. A more likely explanation is that the rebel forces prepared their food in gun oil or oils from tanks, armoured vehicles or shot down aircraft. These oils contain tri-ortho-cresyl phosphate a compound known to cause paralysis of the extremities. Similar things happened in the Swiss army in 1939 and in Spain and Morocco when criminal merchants mixed olive oil with machine oil.

2.11 DMMP transport to Israel

            In 1993 a Boeing 747 cargo plane left Amsterdam airport for Tel Aviv. Close to Amsterdam it lost two engines. When it tries to make an emergency landing on Schiphol it flew into an apartment building. The resulting blaze is devastating. Many of the survivors and personnel from the emergency services show serious after effects from this traumatic experience. For years it was tried to ascribe the effects to certain dangerous goods on the plane. The first is depleted Uranium, but experts can safely say that exposure to depleted uranium in what ever form could not have caused these effects. After some time a newspaper reports that dimethylmethylphosphonate, DMMP, in total 300 kg, was on the cargo plane and rumours started to circulate that Israel was involved in production of nerve agents. DMMP is on the schedules of the CWC as precursor for nerve agent.

            When an expert gives his opinion that he would not hesitate to consume DMMP together with a cup of tea, this is very much to the disliking of the media who think they finally have the source of all the troubles of the victims. It is quite obvious however, that 300 kg is not much of a chemical weapon in military terms. It would be just sufficient to attack a target of a platoon size. On the other hand DMMP had and probably still has a perfect legitimate use, it is use in testing the quality of active carbon in filter canisters of respirators. After the liberation of Kuwait, Israel had to replace about 4 million mask canisters. During production 1 in 1000 or so is tested against a DMMP challenge as simulant for nerve agents. Instead for active CW, DMMP was used for passive defence of the civilian population. In 1993 transport was a legitimate activity; now the compound would fall under the trade restrictions imposed by the CWC, as long as it involves non-signatory states.

2.12. The case of BZ  

            The agent BZ with an effect of mentally confusing the attacked troops was introduced by the US. During production and filling of shells with the agent, an accident occurred creating a large cloud of agent. The commanding officer Col. John Appel expected a large number of casualties amongst his troops but actually  none were affected. This made him write a report to his superiors doubting the effectiveness of the BZ that was filled into the shells. (Private communication of the late Major General John Appel)

            In 1995 the Human Rights Watch accused the Serbia faction in the Bosnia Civil war of shelling Bosnian Muslims fleeing from Sebrenica with BZ. This was because several thousand Bosnian Muslim men troops were slaughtered without a fight. There is, however, only circumstantial evidence presented. There should have been clear indications of poisoning amongst the surviving troops and residual contamination with BZ on the path taken by the troops should have been sampled. Even one or two years after the alleged incident when the area became accessible again, it should have been possible to find traces of residual contamination or remains of shells that have been used.

2.13. The case of the Novichoks

            In the 1990s the media mentioned that a man was arrested for revealing secret activities related to CW from the Soviet era. The agent said that an institute in Moscow was working on were called Novichoks, translated as new comers or new boys on the bloc. After being released from prison, bits and pieces of information are released in open publications. What is said is that there are several forms with particular code names, that some are 7 times more toxic than VX and that the compounds were developed to circumvent the Chemical Weapon Convention. Later rumours circulate that the compounds would escape detection, etc. A thorough literature search based on the scarce information gives a possible structure of one compound. (In order not to promote any illegal activity reference to this study is omitted)

            If this is correct then the compounds are a new class of nerve agents that escaped Western Intelligence and are not mentioned  in the CWC schedules. In that way they would escape verification and could possibly be used as a CWC break out capacity. Again, if the review is correct ,the synthesis of the compounds dates back to the seventies and completely escaped earlier reviews. The remark that the compound escapes detection must be taken with a pinch of salt. Being a nerve agent it inhibits the enzyme cholinesterase. Many detectors are based on this principle. So it would be a small wonder if the agent inhibits the cholinesterase in the human body, but not the one in the detectors.

2.14 The case of Iraq

            The SIPRI yearbooks of 1974-1976 mentioned the CW activities in Iraq. But when the first CW attacks occur in the war with Iran, little attention was paid in the Western world. Some even declared that the Iranian casualties were caused by accidental exposure of Iranian workers during illegal operations with CW. It took several investigations from the UN before Iraq was identified as the user of chemical warfare. Most of the supplies and equipment to produce the agents came from the Western world and it took several years before the supplies were stopped and the companies involved were prosecuted. However, only a few people in the Western world got excited over the use of CW by Iraq even when it was used against its own Kurdish unprotected population. The call for sanctions was very limited.

            After the invasion of Kuwait and the war to liberate Kuwait, the world decided that the weapon programs in Iraq should be destroyed. UNSCOM was set up and many inspection missions were carried out. It was not too difficult to find the CW related programs and equipment because it involved installations of considerable size and tons of precursors. After years of painstaking checking, it can be declared that except for some minor quantities of precursors that there is no longer a CW related program in Iraq. The inspectors were even willing to take some risks when they removed a safe from a destroyed storage bunker. The safe contained clear indications that Iraq had had a program to make VX, something they had denied for years. Some years after the inspections have been stopped, a new series of inspections was carried out. No evidence of a CW program was detected. Despite these findings by qualified inspectors, the US and UK government declared with great certainty, based on conclusive intelligence, that Iraq had chemical and biological weapons. Obviously the qualified inspectors of UNSCOM and UNMOVIC had their eyes closed during the investigations. In the months and years after the defeat of Iraq, no traces of a chemical or biological weapon program have been found by the even more qualified US and UK investigative teams.

2.15. The case of Sudan

            During the UNSCOM inspections in Iraq, it was noted that there was a frequent contact between WMD scientists from Iraq and Sudan. (Private communications from the late Jack Ooms). There is no proof for any illegal activities except for breaking through the no-fly zone. When Osama Bin Laden gets involved in a new large pharmaceutical plant in Sudan, some people get worried. When a sample taken from a disposal site in the vicinity of the plant reveals the presence of a potential nerve agent precursor, a compound mentioned in the CWC schedules, the US decides to destroy the plant. Later the analysis done by a single laboratory is much disputed and it seems that a slightly different compound was involved, which had a perfect legitimate use in a pharmaceutical industry

3. Conclusion

            In an allegation of use an assessment on the reliability of the information should be made. In some cases an analysis was disputed or samples were not taken. First of all, if there are any samples, preferably with a clear chain of custody, the samples should be analysed by at least two OPCW designated laboratories in case of CW and WHO designated laboratories in case of BW.

            If CW or BW has been used, there must have been a release. The release results in casualties for CW within minutes to hours and for BW from several hours to days. Every release results in a foot print of contamination and potential casualties. If there are casualties, they should be distributed over the attack area in accordance with the foot print. If there is no clear point of release, or clear distribution of casualties over the area, it is highly unlikely that any form of CBW can be proven. In that case there is no reasonable indication to take samples. In some exceptional cases blood or tissue samples from victims might be used for retrospectively determining the exposure to nerve agents.

            In many cases the threat of CW and BW has been wrongly assessed. Overestimation and underestimation of opponent’s capabilities have both occurred. Often hardly any attention has been paid to real incidents, whereas artifacts like Cobwebs and Yellow Rain get much attention. It must be concluded that military analysts, the Media, intelligence information and scientific assessments often lead to misunderstanding, misinterpretation, anything that starts with MIS.

            This is at least partly due to the mythic perceptions of Chemical and Biological warfare. Often the casualty potential from an agent is derived from the total amount of agent divided by the lethal dosage per individual, disregarding all losses due to dissemination and dispersion. Actually WW I statistics, as well as modern computer simulation, show that in a military scenario one million times an effective dosage must be released to produce one casualty.

            For terrorist incidents this is estimated to be a factor 100 – 1000 smaller. Casualty production for toxic industrial chemicals requires tons of agents. Recently a truck containing ten tons of chlorine caused an accident in China killing 27 and producing 450 casualties.

            Casualty production for nerve and Mustard agents requires kilograms of agent. The Tokyo incident of ten years ago causing 13 lethal exposures and 1000 exposures requiring medical attention involved about one kilogram of Sarin.
Casualty production by toxins requires the release of gram quantities. Casualty production by pathogenic microorganism requires the release of milligram quantities. Anthrax is a pathogenic microorganism of moderate infectivity. Around 50,000 spore is required for a LD50. However, the probit slope is very low and even at exposures below ten spores lethalities might occur. The amount released in the Sverdlovsk incident is estimated to be in the order of one gram causing at least 63 lethalities. The amount in the letter incidents in 2002 is likely to be somewhat smaller causing 5 lethalities and 15 other casualties.

            In order to view the effectiveness of the Chemical, Toxin and Biological weapons in proper perspective it should be we must remeber that hundreds of kilograms of high explosive are used to produce comparable numbers of casualties.   

Sources of Information

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