Poisoned Battle -- A Guide to Chemical and Biological Weaponry

Introduction

With the end of the Cold War, the spectre of chemical and biological warfare (CBW) largely vanished from the front row of concerns in Western militaries. The dangers presented by chemical weaponry (CW) and biological weaponry (BW) rarely registers in the minds of the general public. This is despite any numbers of diverse groups and the recent use of nerve gas in an attempt to murder thousands of people in Tokyo.

In Iraq, Saddam Hussein has inflicted countless hardships on his people as the price for the continual resistance to UN weapons inspectors. For the record, Iraq is the World's most flagrant user of chemical weapons since the late 1930s, and the Iraqi people have paid a heavy price to keep (and expand) Saddam's capabilities. Yet when Washington rings alarm bells over Iraqi obstructions, this is often interpreted around the World as American bullying. This unwillingness to confront the reality of the situation may ultimately prove to be expensive.

Chemical and biological weapons are little understood in the Western World. Although the US and the UK (with Canadian help) invested heavily in these technologies in the 1940s and '50s, chemical weapons are dismisses as an aberration of the First World War and biological agents are regulated to science fiction. Indeed, general references to CBW are largely absent from public and specialist libraries. Few people in public life understand what these weapons are capable of now -- or in the future.

Lastly, with the end of the Cold War and the abatement of the Soviet threat, training and preparation for chemical and biological warfare has fallen off. Even an elite unit like America's 101st Air Assault Division avoids prolonged CBW exercises, while the level of training for individual protection in the Canadian military has dropped severely. Large scale training exercises and stockpiles of defensive equipment to emergency measures organizations have likewise fallen off.

There are international treaties to restrict the production and use of biological and chemical weaponry. But, should the treaties become treated as "mere scraps of paper", production of all types of weapon could begin with little delay. Moreover, recent and coming advances in science will make some truly nightmarish weapons become manifestly real.

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On Poisoning the Enemy

In Western thinking, chemical and biological agents are considered to be "weapons of mass destruction", and are thereby lumped in the same general class as nuclear bombs and warheads. This classification was partly defensive -- when NATO destroyed its stocks of biological agents in the 1970s and let chemical arms dwindle, an increased reliance on nuclear arms was necessary. However, these substances are capable of causing immense loss of life and are far cheaper than conventional weaponry. The distinction is deserved.

Moreover, the prospect of poisoning raises a sense of apprehension and horror that bullets and shell fragments do not match. There is something visceral, perhaps instinctive, in this fear. Even trained soldiers tend to be very nervous about lethal CB weapons -- elite soldiers who mistook training agents for real ones have been observed to panic in peacetime exercises. The author, on a 1980 CBW exercise (without even training gas), noticed that civilians who strayed into the area fled immediately when they noticed troops in full masks and suits. The fear of endemic (disease being the busiest of all the horsemen) is also buried closed to the surface of our psyches.

The purpose of biological and chemical weaponry is, of course, to kill or inconvenience enemy personnel. Although most CB weapons can be extraordinarily lethal, they can rarely be used in ideal circumstances.

Chemical and biological weapons have been used to great effect on the defenceless -- in incidents of mass murder (such as perpetrated by Hitler and Imperial Japan) or in counter-insurgency operations. The Soviet "Anti-Bandit" campaigns in Central Asia, the Italian conquest of Ethiopia, Hanoi's repression of Laotian tribesmen and Iraq's war on the Kurds provide examples of the latter.

Generally, chemical weapons are less effective against soldiers who are trained and equipped to protect themselves. In the First World War, for example, 27% of all British/Empire battle casualties were from chemical weapons -- but these accounted for only 3.2% of fatalities. Details about the Iranian experience with Saddam Hussein's chemical weapons are still hazy, but the general impression is that the imbalance between injuries and deaths has continued.

Chemical and biological weapons usually swamp even prepared defenders with massive numbers of casualties. Most casualties will need extensive hospital care and many (depending on the agent used against them) will never regain their full health. Defenders -- even those who are unscathed -- will need to don protective gear. Respirators and special protective clothing are hot, clumsy and tiring to wear. Readers who care to experience the price of safety are invited to don a snowmobile suit, clinging rubber facemask with goggles, and to breath through a filter. For a special treat, save the experiment for a hot summer day and do the yard work ... enjoy.

Some weapons, especially Blister and V-series nerve agents and biologicals like anthrax are "persistant" in that they can contaminate an area for a long time after release. Those who enter the area must don full protective gear or will become casualties.

Knowing the exhausting effects of protection and decontamination, chemical (and some biological) weapons have been used to harass an enemy. The psychological anxiety caused by these activities is also welcomed as a means of contributing to the morale exhaustion of an opponent through fear.

Non-state actors -- a term that excludes formal militaries but includes terrorists, armed criminal cartels, religious cults and others -- are aware of CBW's physical and mental effects. Against an unprotected population, chemical and biological agents can cause tremendous loss of life for comparatively little expenditure. Additionally, the survivors and other potential victims are likely to be even more terrified than would be the case in more conventional means of low-intensity warfare.

Note: Purists actually talk about three general classes of weapons: Chemical, Toxin and Biological. Toxins are agents that are natural in origin, but are handled in effect like chemical weapons. This report sticks with the more conventional methodology of lumping the toxins back in with the biologicals. "Germ Warfare" is an old and inaccurate term for biological warfare, as it is too limited in scope.

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Chemical Weapons

Chemical weapons are just that. They are derived from chemical sources and are designed to kill or incapacitate personnel within a target area. There are a wide variety of these agents, some of which are extremely toxic, others of which are intended to have a specific non-lethal effect. LSD, for instance, has been investigated as a chemical weapon.

Chemical weapons are roughly divided into lethal agents (choking, blood, blister/vesicants, nerve gases) and a complex variety off non-lethal agents. The most common non-lethal agents are the riot gases such as CS tear gas.

All of these weapons can be released in any number of ways -- spray tanks, artillery and rocket shells, released from canisters, or even contained in hand grenades and land mines. They can be carried by short-range ballistic missiles, but this isn't an overly effective means of delivery. Most older agents have distinctive odors, but some weapons cannot be detected by human senses until casualties start to appear.

Choking Agents induce asphyxiation by corroding the lungs and interfering with the exchange of gases in the alveoli. The suffocating victim who has inhaled a lethal dose will be able to go through all the motions of breathing, except for an inability to take in new oxygen. Death is neither rapid or painless. The Chlorine Gas that marked the dawn of modern chemical warfare in 1915 was a choking agent. The most common modern choking agent is Phosgene.

Phosgene is not difficult to make. It was first produced by the Germans in the First World War and remains useful today. During the Second World War, it was stockpiled by the UK for use by the Allied bomber fleets in the event of German chemical weapons use. It was allegedly used by the Egyptians in Yemen in the 1960s, and appeared to have been among the agents used to murder the Kurdish inhabitants of the Iraqi town of Halabja in 1988.

Most choking agents appear to have a long shelf-life and are cheap to produce. In terms of lethality, they are less effective than blood agents and much less effective than nerve agents.

Blood Agents, like choking agents, must be inhaled to be effective. Their most lethal effect is to block the enzyme in red blood cells that is responsible for removing carbon dioxide from human tissue. A fatal casualty will be poisoned by the waste products of his own body -- with a very large dose, this can happen within a very few minutes. Even small doses can have an immediate debilitating effect on their victims.

The two most common blood agents, cyanogen chloride and hydrogen cyanide, made their debut during the First World War. Hydrogen cyanide has a long history in United States prisons as an agent of execution in gas chambers. It was often used in the 1980-88 Iran-Iraq War, and was also among the agents used in the Iraqi destruction of Halabja. A hydrogen cyanide derivative, Zyklon B, is even more infamous for its role in the gas chambers of Nazi extermination camps.

Choking and blood agents act quickly and behave as a gas proper, which means they can rapidly seep into bunkers and buildings, or through dense vegetation. However, kilo for kilo, hydrogen cyanide is much more lethal than phosgene (if the weather isn't too cold). It is also cheap to produce. From the attacker's point of view, another good property of hydrogen cyanide is that most respirator filters are not efficient at absorbing the agent. The Soviets were said to have generated large stocks of hydrogen cyanide -- especially for Scud missile warheads for attacks on airfields and other critical points.

Blister Agents (aka Vesicants) are perhaps better known as Mustard Gases. Like Phosgene and Hydrogen Cyanide, these were first used in World War One. Blister agents (and nerve gas) come as a mist or aerosol rather than as a gas. Droplets which land on damp human tissue or are inhaled create large vesicle-type blisters. Temporary blindness is an extremely common effect because eyes are easily affected. Blisters on the skin are very painful and run a high risk of severe infection if untreated. Fatalities tend to be rather few -- except for those who have inhaled the agent during the attack -- most casualties will require hospitalization and a long recovery time.

Mustard gas and its arsenical vesicant derivatives Lewisite and Sequimustard tend to be persistent and are very useful as area denial or harassing agents. Long after the aerosol droplets have settled onto the ground, passing through a contaminated area may harm people. Symptoms of mustard gas poisoning take 12-36 hours to develop fully while Lewisite starts to take effect immediately.

Blister agents became extremely common in 1917-1918, and the British especially tended to fire large stocks of it at the Germans. During the Second World War, the Allies kept stocks of it on hand for retaliation in case the Germans initiated chemical weapons use. The thinking was that it would create considerable civilian casualties -- most of whom would eventually recover -- and would inhibit industrial production in attacked cities for some months. A 1944 Luftwaffe raid on Naples set an American cargo ship and its load of mustard gas on fire, fortunately without much harm to the city.

Blister agents are easy to produce and also have long shelf lives. Trawler men in the North Sea and Baltic have been known to be injured by blister agents that were dropped in the sea after both World Wars. Seawater corroded the bomb and shell casings, and the contents burned fishermen who picked the objects out of their nets. The Iraqis often used blister agents in the 1980-88 Gulf War to seal off Iranian penetrations of their defences. One happier result of a blister agent attack occurred when the Libyans attempted to use mustard gas on guerrillas in Northern Chad in 1987. The wind blew the agent back onto the Libyan forces.

Nerve Agents are the deadliest of all chemical weapons. Even a simple nerve agent such as Tabun is four times as lethal as inhaled mustard gas. The nerve agent Sarin is four times as lethal as tabun, and VX is four times as lethal as sarin. Nerve agents are derived from organophosphate insecticides like malathion and parathion. When inhaled or absorbed through the skin, they block or inhibit neural transmissions by binding acetycholesterate enzymes. More simply, a casualty's nervous system is blocked. With a large dose, death from asphyxiation may come within a minute. Other symptoms may include paralysis, vomiting, incontinence, dizziness, blindness and muscle spasms.

Nerve agents are most efficient when inhaled -- 10 milligrams of VX will kill anyone this way. Nerve agents can also kill when absorbed through the skin, although a higher dosage is usually required and evaporation rates often exceed absorption rates with non-persistent agents. Still, six milligrams of VX is enough to kill through skin absorption -- if treated with additive chemicals such as dimethylsulphoxide to both thicken the agent and act as a skin penetrator. A respirator (gas mask in the common parlance) provides adequate protection from choking and blood agents, and may keep one from being killed by blister agents. Against nerve agents, a respirator will slow down the absorption of a lethal dose, but will not prevent it. Protection is required for the entire body.

German chemists discovered nerve agents before the Second World War. One of the great mercies of that conflict was the German belief that the Soviets and Western Allies knew about these weapons too. By the time the Germans were disabused of the notion, Allied strategic air supremacy prevented their military planners from seriously considering the deployment of their novel weapon. With the end of the war, nerve agents entered the arsenals of the Soviet Union and the NATO allies -- but other countries have since learned how to make their own. Indeed, formulae for some nerve agents are available on public documents.

Iraq used nerve agents on Iran. The Soviets (or their proxies) may have used some in Afghanistan and in sub-Saharan Africa. Sarin also has the dubious distinction of being used by the Aum Shinrikyo Cult in 1994/95 -- including their attack on the Tokyo Subway in which 10 people were killed and some 5,500 were injured. Had conditions been a bit better, or their release system been more efficient, thousands might have been killed in the attack.

In the late 1970s, German police are said to have found a terrorist laboratory stocked with 400 kgs of precursor chemicals. A Chilean hitman arrived in the US in 1976 with sarin concealed in a perfume sprayer, in search of a former member of the Allende Government. An Austrian chemist also mixed an amount of sarin and offered it for sale, but police closed the deal. Organophosphate insecticides have been used in lieu of nerve gas in assassination attempts by Apartheid-era South African police, and allegedly by the Guatemalan government on pro-rebel villages

Nerve agents can be both persistent and non-persistent. Under some conditions, a persistent nerve agent can travel for up to 100 km from its release point (temperature about 15C, at night with a gentle breeze). About 100 to 1,000 kilos is normally required to kill 50% of the people in a square kilometre. In a cool damp environment away from the sun, VX might persist for about six months.

Shelf-lives for stored nerve agents are not especially long (after a few years, the agent loses effectiveness), but some agents are very cheap to make. In the 1950s, the US manufactured sarin for as little as $1.50 per kilo. In the 1960s, concerned with the short storage life of their VX stocks, the US invented binary chemical weapons. These separate the agent into two inert components for safe handling and longer storage life. When about to be delivered, both components are tucked into the same shell or bomb, only to become mixed when the delivery system explodes over the target.

Comparitive Toxicity (Lethal Dose for a 75 Kg man)

Non-Lethal Chemical Weapons

The use of irritating chemicals and noxious substances in warfare is as old as any other form of harassing and annoying the enemy. The Mongols are said to have used some mysterious smoking substance to break up enemy formations -- although one might suppose that being downwind of a horde of unwashed steppe nomads would do the trick anyway. Anecdotes from history include beehives being lofted into camps, noxious substances being burned to blind defenders before an assault, and other tricks. Predictably, modern chemistry allows new ways of engaging in traditional behaviours.

The so-called Tear Gases predate the First World War and were used widely used to harass soldiers during it -- starting from the very beginning of the conflict when conscripted French policemen showed up with riot gases. The first lethal agents of 1915 (chlorine and T-Stoff) were a derivation of these irritant gases. Interestingly, some tear gases are more lethal than chlorine if the concentration of the agent is high enough -- and people have died from over-exposure.

Common tear gases include Chloroacetohenone (CN) and its more potent cousin 2-chlorobenzalmalonitrile (CS). Lately, these have been joined by a more distilled version of Capsaican -- or pepper gas. Exposure to these lachrymators and sternutators induces server irritation to the eyes as well as to mucus covered membranes (such as the nasal passages). CN is widely used as a training gas, CS and pepper gases are used as riot agents around the world. The author has been dosed with all three and found pepper gas an immediate (and painful) incapacitant. CS has been widely used in battle, especially by the US during the Vietnam War.

A field of non-lethal chemicals that the author has no experience with involves hallucinogens -- and it can stay that way. LSD, for one, could be used as a military gas and other psychotropic agents have been investigated. The US military was on the edge of producing an agent called BZ (possibly based on an benzilate ester of an amino alcohol) in the early 1960s, but only some 10 tons entered the arsenal. The effects of hallucinogens on a fighting force are easy to imagine.

Other non-lethal chemical weapons that have apparently been investigated since the Second World War include anesthetics, emetics, temporary vision blockers and paralysants. However, none appear to have entered into production in Western arsenals, although a German company recently aired the idea of producing a purgative gas as a riot control device. German police poo-pooed the idea. Anecdotes from the 1979-89 Afghan War suggest Soviet field tests with anesthetic gases. It is also possible that these were tests with bioregulators and peptides -- a field of research for biological warfare.

One last use for chemical weapons, in an indirect sense, is as a defoliant. In the Vietnam War, the use of Agent Orange and other derivatives of 2,4-D (2-dichlorophenoxyacetic acid) were intended to deny space and resource to the enemy -- by stripping areas of cover and exposing guerrillas to attack from conventional means. The agent was widely used and quite effective. However, there is a wide belief that dioxin based agents have secondary effects -- dangerous tumors and hideous birth defects -- and this soon mitigated against the use of Agent Orange.

Post War allegations that these herbicides were deliberately used to cause tumors and birth defects is so much tripe. For a start, thousands of US servicemen were exposed to the agent on a daily basis -- and the men of the Ghost Rider squadrons remain slightly healthier than is average for US men of their age. Additionally, areas that were sprayed with Agent Orange usually sprang back into life six months to a year later. However, the outcry against the use of Agent Orange was so strong that most nations have eschewed the use of dioxin based defoliants for now.

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Biological Weapons

Famine and epidemic normally stay leashed in with the dogs of war. When all are let slipped, disease normally proves to be the most fearsome member of the pack. World War One was probably the first war where more soldiers died from the actions of the enemy than from those of Generals Bacteria and Virus. Yet the influenza epidemic that raced around the world in 1918-19 took far more lives in eight months than the war did in 51.

The long partnership between disease and warfare was recognized in antiquity. The contamination of wells with corpses and excreta is one example, the catapulting of diseased corpses into besieged towns is another. Many chroniclers believed that the Black Death began with such an incident in the Tartar siege of Caffa on the Crimean Peninsula in 1347. Dying Italian merchants are supposed to have carried the disease to Western Europe. The conquest of the New World was accompanied by several waves of smallpox. One began accidentally as the Spanish invested Mexico City in 1520 and another may have begun deliberately as a means of ending the Pontiac Rebellion in 1763. It is certain that the British discussed the deliberate 'gift' of blankets from British army smallpox victims to the restive natives, but there is no record of them actually executing this plan.

In a loose sense, biological warfare can be defined as an attack (direct or indirect) on an enemy to cause injury or death in a target species through the use of a pathogenic microorganism, or infectious or toxic materials derived from such organisms. While chemical weapons are inherently designed and fabricated by man, biological weaponry lets nature take a role in forging the implements of destruction.

Biological warfare has three forms of attack:

1. Exposing targets to a virus, bacteria, natural toxin, or other primary agent -- usually by using an aerosol spray from canisters, tanks, or high-drag bombs and cluster munitions to deliver it. Ballistic missiles and simple artillery shells can be used, but are not very efficient and may severely degrade the performance of the agent. This is the most immediate and dangerous form of biological warfare and may become the most common threat in coming decades. These are agents of direct attack.
   
   
2. Introducing a disease vector (the natural host of a disease) into a target area. An example might include introducing infected Colorado Beetles into a potato growing area to attack a crop, or spreading Dengue fever carrying mosquitoes over a city. This isn't an easy attack to deliver or control, and rarely yields immediate results. However, it may be useful at a strategic level as a form of economic warfare. This is the style of indirect attack.
   
   
3. Using natural toxins to infect casualties on an individual basis through injection or ingestion. At one level, smearing a punji-stick with excrement to cause an infection is biological warfare, as is jabbing a defector with a ricin-filled pellet, or sprinkling a powerful natural hallucinogen. This sort of activity isn't overly useful in conventional battle, but appears in clandestine warfare and has a very ancient, if dishonorable, history.

Just as the 19th Century revolution in chemistry paved the way for chemical warfare in 1915, the revolution in medicine suggested possibilities for biological warfare. There were sundry reports and alarms -- all unsubstantiated -- about attempts to induce biological warfare during the First World War. Although research into BW began in several countries in the interwar period, the technology was still in its infancy -- and was partly driven by popular conjecture about germ warfare.

Modern biological warfare techniques were developed in the Second World War. The Japanese led the charge, and appear to have attempted to induce Plague and Cholera epidemics on the Chinese. A Japanese research team, Unit 731, also conducted extensive and cruel experiments on live human subjects with chemical and biological agents. The Western Allies also invested in biological research (without using Japanese testing-techniques) and were producing two agents when the war ended. Comparatively little is known about Soviet programs, but they appear to have proceeded apace. The Germans appear to have placed more faith in chemical arms but launched more research programs late in the War as defeat loomed.

The Western Allies continued to do extensive research into biological warfare until the late 1960s. In the United States, part of the research included live tests of fairly innocuous materials on several North American cities to test dispersion methods. However, biological weapons were seen as a strategic weapon at once less reliable and less controllable than nuclear arms. By the late 1960s, opinion in the US Military was forming to the effect that it would be wise to put biological weaponry up on the arms control block. One result was the American unilateral ban on biological weapons in 1969, which culminated in a 1972 Convention banning the production of biological and bio-toxin weapons. A number of nations signed onto this Convention, including the USSR -- evidently without good faith. As the agreement lacked verification mechanisms, it really wasn't worth the paper it was printed on except to accountable democratic governments.

Direct Biological Agents

There is a vast gulf between the unholy promise of biological weapons and their current potentials. For example, a tablespoon full of Botulin Toxin A contains enough to give a lethal dose (of which the average person has a 40% of surviving) to every man, woman and child on Earth. Getting everyone to queue up for their dose of .00003 micrograms per kilo of body weight from this hypothetical spoon would be problematical.

Bacteria, viruses and toxins have some vulnerabilities. Most of the poor sensitive things don't take well to being spewed out of supersonic artillery shell or missile warhead, or even to being transported in a spray tank under an airplane. Sudden changes in temperature, humidity and light conditions can kill them. Anaerobic bacteria like Botulin are extremely sensitive to the presence of free oxygen. As a result, active biological agents normally are freeze-dried to protect them from the shocks of transport and delivery, and are carried within a slurry to protect them in storage and to deliver them in an aerosol spray. By the time that Botulin Toxin A has been so treated, over 7 tons of slurry are needed to affect everyone standing in the open in a square kilometre area under ideal weather conditions.

For the record, Botulin toxins have been widely investigated as a biological weapon. Canada played a major role in the Western allies' experiments. However, it proved too fragile and too expensive to be widely deployed. All the same, the awesome lethality of the pure toxin and the ease with which samples can be acquired still attracts attention. In 1980, French police raided a Red Army Faction safe-house and found evidence that the terrorists had been attempting to manufacture Botulin.

Anthrax is one of the few "perfect" biological weapons. Unlike most, it is extremely robust. It is relatively easy to make and was the first mass produced agent in general deployment -- the Western Allies produced large amounts of in the late 1940s. The Japanese experimented with it in China, and the Soviets (despite signing the 1972 biological weapons ban) lost 79 people -- according to the post --1991 official account -- in 1979 when anthrax leaded out of a military plant in Sverdlosk. At the time, the Soviets admitted to a natural outbreak but stayed quiet about the details. The Iraqis are said to be currently producing anthrax and are alleged to have tested it on live victims. Although this report comes from the Israelis, considering the nature of Saddam Hussein's Iraq, it seems perfectly plausible.

Anthrax can be ingested, inhaled, or even injected. Within two to five days of exposure, victims will experience pulmonary edema (if inhaled) and severe toxemia (blood poisoning). Those who have inhaled the spores are doomed without massive doses of powerful antibiotics. Those infected in other ways have a better chance at survival. Some refining skill is necessary to make the agent lighter and smaller, in order to improve the airborne infection rate.

Under some circumstances, anthrax is extremely persistent. A 1941/42 test site for the agent, the tiny Scottish island of Gruinard was hopelessly contaminated until an incredibly detailed and expensive cleaning-up of the entire island in the 1990s. Gruinard was cool and damp, and perfect for the spore, but even a city in a hot dry environment (Tel Aviv for example) might take weeks to decontaminate after a mass attack. One ton of slurried anthrax could infect 30-40,000 citizens in a target city.

Ricin is a poison derived from castor beans and can be cheaply produced. Its possibilities were first considered during World War One and Canadian scientists closely investigated it during the Second World War. Pioneering work on carrying the agent in a slurry for aerosol delivery was done in Canada. Ricin is best known for the 1978 murder of Bulgarian defector Georgi Markov in London. In this case, it was injected into the Markov's leg by a compresses air gun built into an umbrella.

The umbrella gun wasn't some piece of eccentric spy-gadget buffoonery. Ricin is very toxic and painful. Generally, inhaling 30 milligrams of the slurry or having 1.5 mgs injected under the skin is enough to kill someone. There is no defence, and death comes within two days, attended by massive blood poisoning. With the Markov assassination, ricin achieved a degree of notoriety, although at least two other Soviet bloc defectors were attacked the same way.

Many bacteria, viruses and natural toxins have been tested for their potentials as biological weapons. Among the most promising ones were (and are):

1. Trichothecene mycotoxins from fungus in damp grain (ergot for example). These lead to severe internal hemorrhaging. The "Yellow Rain" seemingly used by the North Vietnamese in South East Asia would have been derived from this.
   
   
2. Saxitoxins from shellfish -- loss toxic than ricin or Botulin, but much more stable and fast acting. An intravenous injection of 0.1 micrograms per kilo of body weight induced fatal food poisoning in monkeys.
   
   
3. Q-Fever, Tularemia, Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever, and Psittacosis were stocked by the US in the 1960s. While these were not particularly dangerous (less than 1% lethality), they had the virtue of being extremely infections and thus allowing casualties to spread the attack. Venezuelan Equine Encephalitis was likewise harnessed for being highly infectious and about 3%l lethal with aerosol delivery.
   
   
4. The pneumonic version of Pasteurella pestis (the Plague) was widely investigated for its extreme lethality (over 99%), but the bacteria is too fragile for effective aerosol delivery.
   
   
5. Anaerobic bacteria such as those present in Streptococcus pyogenes (a cause of necrotizing fasciitis -- the "flesh eating disease") have been investigated -- including, apparently, by Iraq.
   
   
6. The active constituents of Salmonella and Staphylococcus were developed as non-lethal incapacitants. Staphylococcus infections tend to target one or two points (including the eyes, skin, throat, heart, etc.) and dissolve them if severe and untreated.

The world is full of interesting microscopic inhabitants, and the new hemorrhagic fevers such as Ebola that have been discovered since the 1972 Convention banning biological warfare would be excellent weapons themselves. No doubt, someone, somewhere, is looking into that very issue. The novelist Tom Clancy used a strain of Ebola in one of his recent "Jack Ryan" novels, and showed how the virus could be prepared and used as a biological weapon. As always, Clancy paid very close attention to the technical details.

Indirect Biological Agents

While direct delivery of most biological weapons requires tons of material to protect the bacteria or toxin, indirect attacks can be made using the natural vector for the weapon. For example the Bubonic Plague is difficult to harness as a direct agent. Japan's Unit 731 is believed to have bred dozens of kilos of Pulex irritans (the flea that hosts Pasterurella pestis) to induce outbreaks of the plague in wartime China. Records in China from the 1940s are scanty, but the distribution seems to have triggered minor outbreaks in some communities.

The use of biological agents to infect crops and livestock has been extensively researched, and many allegations have been made of attacks during the World Wars and the early Cold War years. This avenue of approach made wide scale covert biological warfare possible but, hysterical allegations from North Korea and Cuba aside, they may never have been used. Sample agents investigated by Britain and the US before 1969 include:

• Scelerotium rolfsii for soya beans, sugar beets, cotton and sweet potatoes;
  
  
• Phytophtera infestans (potato blight), normally carried by the Colorado Beetle and responsible for the Irish potato famine;
  
  
• Helminthosporium oryzae for brown spot disease in rice;
  
  
• Pyricularia pryzae and Puccinia gramius triici which attack wheat;
  
  
• Animal diseases that were potential agents include Rinderpest, Brucellosis, Glanders, Newcastle Disease, and Fowl Plague Virus.

Vectored diseases that have been investigated for direct use against humans include mosquito transmitted diseases such as Yellow Fever, Venezuelan Equine Encephalomyelitis (dropped in favour of an aerosol delivery), and Rift ValleyFever. The Plague has been attractive to more countries than just Japan. The lice associated with Typhus and the ticks that carry Lyme Disease, Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever, Tularemia, sundry hemorrhagic fevers, and Siberian Tick Virus were also of interest.

Vectored diseases are not as promising as they were 50 years ago. For a start, most of them would be almost useless against a modern nation with a functioning medical/veterinary system. Building codes, water filtration systems and hygiene practices also mitigate against widespread exposure to lice, ticks and fleas. Most attacks on crops and livestock are likely to be met with swift and decisive action. An infected area would soon be hemmed in by immune animals and protected crops. Underdeveloped countries often lack this protection and thus are more vulnerable to attack.

Vectored diseases are also slow to act and hard to control. There is no guarantee that an infected area could be long isolated in underdeveloped nations and an attack would be quickly noticed in most developed ones. Against troops in the field, tick-born diseases might have some effect, but not quickly enough to gain an immediate advantage. Moreover, the attacker's troops might become infected as well.

Individual Attacks

Mother Nature has a poisonous side and there is no shortage of interesting toxins that may be employed to kill or incapacitate human beings. The problem with most of them is that they must be ingested by their target or injected under the skin. There have been experiments (again, most notably with Unit 731) in poisoned bullets and shell fragments. For the most part, these haven't been all that efficient -- while hot lead and steel can normally speak for themselves without additives.

All the same, in clandestine warfare (or terrorism) toxins may allow quiet and discreet killing, while letting the attackers get away. Besides their interest in Ricin and concealed air-pellet guns, the Soviets were interested in other agents and the Red Army Faction was experimenting with Botulin toxins. Both Ricin and Botulin can be used to tip weapons and ensure death from a tiny injury. To kill a 75 kilo man, the following amounts of toxin would be required (in micrograms):

Comparitive Toxicity (Lethal Dose for a 75 Kg man)

Every toxin has its own properties and disadvantages. Some act immediately, some take several days. Botulin, small as the amount need be, isn't necessarily quick or lethal, but a good wallop of Curare invariable is. Some toxins can survive exposure to air, but the three most lethal ones won't. Some can be safely stored for long periods, and others need to be freshly made. The criteria for selecting a toxin are complex indeed.

Ingested toxins have a long history too. The deliberate contamination of food and water have been attendant to warfare since time immemorial, and individual poisonings have also been common. While chemical or even mineral materials (e.g. arsenic or ground glass) are widely known, the truest and most fatal poisons are from nature -- saxitoxins, Botulin and Salmonella being cases in point.

Toxins do not necessarily have to be lethal poisons either. In some cases, particularly in clandestine warfare at the political level, it might be enough to induce illness, fatigue and disorientation in a political leader at some critical time. The Soviets used to drug (with chemicals) troublesome diplomats and reporters inside the USSR in the 1960s, and then arrange for compromising photographs of the target to ensure co-operation or disgrace.

The Frightening Future

A biological/genetic revolution is just beginning, and it promises to be just as influential as the computer revolution now in full flood. Within a decade, the complex genetic codes for human beings may be fully mapped, and patents have already been taken out on amended or altered life forms. The new technologies promise wondrous transformations in industry, medicine, agriculture and the environment. But ever coin has two sides and every blade has two edges.

Despite signing onto the 1972 Biological Weapons Convention, the Soviets appear to have persisted in extensive research and development until the collapse of the USSR (and afterwards). Few details leaked out from under the heavy security blanket, but they appeared to be developing new and more reliable delivery systems to overcome the usual fragility of most BW agents. They were said to be very interested in bioregulators and synthetic peptides, as well as in exploiting developments in recombinant DNA to produce new and more effective agents. With the collapse of the USSR, many of its military secrets and the labours of its leading scientists have become available to the highest bidders. While the Western nations are unwilling to investigate new bioweapon technologies, there are others who probably do have the money and interest. The new dawn of biological warfare may be already here.

The main hurdle to biological warfare involved the fragility of chosen agents except when suspended in bulky slurries for aerosol delivery. Only Anthrax seems robust enough to be easily used yet even VX appears to be more reliable as a killing agent. In the immediate future, fragility may no longer be as much of a problem. Imagine if plague or Botulin, for example, become tough enough to survive a few minutes of exposure before being inhaled.

Or else, imagine traditional biological weapons with tougher effects -- say Streptococcus pyogenes altered to become far more contagious, faster in reproduction, and more resistant to antibiotics. Now, imagine the same bacteria coded to attack only Chinese, or Nilotic Blacks, or blonde-haired people, or... Imagine an entire race or nation slowly dissolving in a hideous infection -- with the rest of the world too horrified to offer help and too frightened to admit the survivors. Alternatively, image a virus that irrevocably renders or both of the sexes sterile (again perhaps picking on a specific human population) and which can bypass the immune system.

Understanding of our biology has increased dramatically in recent years, and bioregulators and peptides have been isolated, duplicated and even synthesized. These have the potential to be turned into weapons as well. Agents might be developed that could, for example, alter emotional states (thus suppressing the will to fight or greatly magnifying it), or which could trigger specific reactions in the human body such as sending soldiers to sleep. Note: the needs of Hollywood scriptwriters notwithstanding, there is no such thing as sleeping gas -- for now. Alternatively, in political warfare, agents could appear that would completely disorder the mind and/or character of a public figure on a temporary or permanent basis.

These weapons sound like the stuff of science fiction. However, the wherewithal to produce such weapons is rapidly approaching and some might appear within the next 20 years.

[INTRODUCTION] [On Poisoning the Enemy] [Chemical Weapons] [Biological Weapons] [Proliferation & Terrorism] [TOP of PAGE]

Proliferation & Terrorism

CB Warfare has been rejected by the publics of the Western democracies, but this repugnance is not universal. In 1969, President Nixon promised that the United States would cease making chemical weapons and announced a unilateral moratorium on biological weaponry. This later led to a 1972 convention banning biological warfare -- but the agreement lacked any verification measures. The Soviet Union neither honored its signature on the convention nor bothered to follow the American lead on chemical weapons. In response the Reagan Administration began the production of binary nerve gas in the 1980s.

In 1991, the US resumed its moratorium and began (in concert with Russia) the destruction of its chemical stockpile. During a 1997 visit to the Rock Island Arsenal, the author saw empty mustard gas containers waiting to be melted down for lawn mower parts -- not quite swords to ploughshares, but close enough.

As of January 1993, over 160 nations have signed the Chemical Weapons Convention to ban the development, production, stockpiling, and use of chemical weapons. Unlike the 1925 Geneva Protocol, there is a challenge inspection regime to ensure compliance. The 1972 Convention on biological and toxin weapons still lacks a verification mechanism, but signatory nations are considering implementing one in the near future.

Although what remains of NATO and Warsaw Pact stocks are being destroyed at considerable expense, these were built for what seemed to be good reasons at the time. For both parties, these weapons were seen as rungs on a "Ladder of Escalation" that lay between ordinary conventional warfare and the introduction of nuclear weapons. For thier part, the Soviets sought advantage in the offence (and geared themselves to fight in a CB environment) and NATO was determined to fight fire with fire.

There was also a covert side to CB weapons in the Cold War. The Soviets and their proxies used them as tools of assassination, while the Americans (who got their dirty laundry aired in public hearings in the 1970s) considered doing the same. Some terrorist groups had an early interest in chemical and biological arms -- particularly the Red Army Faction/Baader Meinhof Group. The group did have connections on the far side of the Iron Curtain and may have acquired some technical support and supplies there.

Although the Cold War is over, many other nations have grasped the idea that CB weapons lie in between conventional and nuclear warfare; and if one hasn't joined the nuclear club, the CB club is a good one to brandish. Moreover, chemical and biological weapons are more accessible than nuclear arms. Even a nation that is a signatory to the 1972 Convention in biological weapons and the 1993 Chemical Weapons Convention could, if it so chose, surreptitiously produce both types of weapon in small amounts. Large stockpiles generally beg for discovery, but could be easily produced during wartime.

To put chemical weapons in perspective -- most "modern" choking, blood and blister agents appeared during or just after the First World War. The first nerve gases appeared during the Second World War, and even binary VX is a product of 1950s technology. Any nation with a large textile or fertilizer plant can make the older chemical weapons. To make nerve gas, an insecticide plant is also necessary. Even for non-state actors (say, a weird religious cult with a doomsday fixation), precursor materials for nerve gas can be acquired without attracting much attention. The Tokyo subway attack may not be a unique event within another decade.

Biological weapons are even simpler. Admittedly, five or six experts with post graduate training and a safe production facility would be nice, but are not essential. One or two trained individuals are necessary -- as is the active agent itself and a growth medium to replicate it. Some substances like anthrax, plague, ricin, ergot and even Staphylococcus can be found in nature by anyone with the know-how. Other, more exotic, biological agents may have to be acquired through medical/biological supply houses. This carries a high risk of attracting the attention of authorities -- but not in all countries.

The industrial capacity to freeze-dry an active agent and prepare it for aerosol delivery isn't all that sophisticated. The basic principles were invented in the 1940s, and haven't changed too much since then.

Despite the ease with which CB weapons can be made, proliferation does appear to have been checked with the 1994 and the revised 1972 conventions. Even so, it can be safely presumed that Iraq, Libya, North Korea and Syria have stocks of chemical weapons and even some biological ones. One might also suspect that CB arsenals exist in China, India, Iran, Israel, Pakistan and Taiwan. In this Post Cold War world, these nations are discreet about their holdings (if any exist), but everything could change overnight when circumstances warrant it.

Aside from some nations, the most severe danger is the attraction that CB weapons have for terrorist groups. The Tokyo Subway gassing (and several related incidents) marked the first major use of these weapons by non-state actors. They will be used again. Many terrorist groups and organized crime cartels can command significant resources and have government connections.

Since the early 1970s, various terrorist groups, religious cults and organized criminals have expressed an interest in chemical and biological weapons. Besides the incidents already mentioned in this paper, chemical and biological terrorism has been undertaken by as diverse a set as an infuriated American university professor (who prepared a hydrogen cyanide bomb), and followers of Bhaghwan Rajneesh who dumped Salmonella typhimurium in some Oregon restaurants. Incidents and threats of chemical and biological contamination of food have originated from extortionists, Palestinian terrorists, jailed convicts, and the Animal Liberation Front.

There are dreamers on the loose in the world -- and some dreams are nightmares. The great fantasy of American white supremacists (The Turner Diaries) ends with a spree of chemical, biological and radiological elements "purifying" the planet of non-Whites. Various members of the deep environmentalist movement have ruminated about using biological agents to achieve their ends. Some Islamic Fundamentalists have already given clear notice of their contempt for human life and have been dwelling over more efficient methods than simple bombs. In the near future, some of these deadly visions may undergo a conversion to reality.