AHC: What's the earliest "effective" chemical and biological weapons can be developed

Which Country Could Do It First?


  • Total voters
    30
OTL certain precursors are tracked. Libya was caught out working to make mustard gas as it ordered quantities of a certain precursor, ostensibly to make ink for ball point pens, which they did not manufacture in Libya. However major industrial countries will be able to make what they will internally.
 
OTL certain precursors are tracked. Libya was caught out working to make mustard gas as it ordered quantities of a certain precursor, ostensibly to make ink for ball point pens, which they did not manufacture in Libya. However major industrial countries will be able to make what they will internally.
It depends on the process used.
Sulphur Mustard (HS and variants) can be made in several ways, three of which are.
1. The Meyer process; reacting ethene (ethylene) with hypochlorous acid (bleach) and sodium sulphide. This produced an intermediate (β,β'-dihydroxy-methyl sulfide.) which is reacted with hot hydrochloric acid, yielding sulphur mustard.
2. The Levenstein process; the ethene is reacted with disulphur dichloride (a scheduled material used in vulcanisation and sulphuration).
3. Another method involves reacting ethylene oxide and hydrogen sulphide to produce bis-(2-hydroxyethyl)-thioether which is then reacted with hydrochloric acid to form sulphur mustard.

The first of these techniques, while not producing as pure or high a yield, requires only common precursors.
 
Though this would be counterbalanced to a degree by the need for a reasonable level of chemical industry to produce large quantities of most agents.
Simplicity is a bit relative. You're right, not easy, but by comparison to nukes, dead easy. It suggests two things: more nations with CW arsenals &, coincidentally, a safer world than with nukes. If more nations have got 'em, & are willing to use 'em, it would seem to discourage anybody from doing anything rash.

OTGH,:openedeyewink: the prospect of terrorists (of whatever stripe) having easy access to CW...:eek::eek:
I was thinking of having the Wickham expedition to Brazil (an attempt to break the Brazilian control of the rubber market) in 1876 fail and alert the Brazilians to the dangers of bio-piracy. Hence there are no British rubber plantations created and supply is restricted to a degree. Of course eventually Brazil would lose control of the trade but it could last another few decades (I'm thinking of Fawcett's expedition in 1906 being another try) with the economic benefits (it was a very profitable trade) and social consequences (slavery and brutality, land clearance). Maybe they move to a plantation system for the Para trees and increase production dramatically (rather than tapping naturally isolated trees). Mix in Fordlandia a few decades later.
Perhaps it'd make a better RPG scenario than timeline.
Yeah, I see an RPG module or story (film?) less than a full TL.

I also see it being more probable than less: given the value of rubber, I'd picture more countries trying to steal, along with trying to develop artificial rubber. Work in that area has all manner of interesting knock-ons, from better tires to neoprene wet suits to...IDK what all.
There certainly seemed to be a greater adherence to such agreements back then. It's also possible that it's seen as "uncivilised", fine for use against "natives" but not allowed against more "civilised" enemies. In much the same way as expanding ammunition was OK for use in colonies but never really used in (say) WW1.
That's true. I wonder how much is *MAD: when your enemy has the ability to answer in kind, & perhaps more than, it tends to deter...;)
I really doubt agreements would be that comprehensive. Once a country has industrialised it's quite capable of manufacturing cyanides, arsenites, mustard, phosgene et cetera itself,
True. I guess I'm thinking more of limits on access by the likes of AQ (or, TTL, the IRA or FLQ), or Libya or North Korea.
 
“Effective”. In regards to biological weapons and effectiveness set high, I voted Germany and Japan, although I could have taken SU as well.
If they had known they wanted it, human experimentation is the key, and they were potentially cynical enough.
The French had the experience in selecting biological agents for particular traits, but Germany had access to this experience as well.
 
The first isolation of a bacterium for a specific disease was Mycobacterium Tuberculosis by Robert Koch in 1882. Prior to that (1867-1882) you had antisepsis, an understanding (limited) of bacteria with disease, but specific agent/disease connections had to wait for Koch. Viral agents as causes for disease came much later. The use of disease before, such as contaminating wells or catapulting disease victims bodies over city walls, "gifting" blankets of smallpox victims all occurred without real knowledge of how disease was transmitted. While smallpox vaccination was discovered in the late 18th century, preventive vaccinations for various diseases began to happen in the last 2 decades of the 19th century but very few compared to what we have today. Antibiotics against diseases, the first were sulfa drugs, showed up in the late 20s/through the 30s - and these had limited uses.

The importance of all of that is biological warfare can only be effective if you can reliably protect your own military, civilian, and livestock from the disease(s) you unleash on the enemy and have some chance to protect against agents your enemy may use on you. Absent self protection, all you do is to give yourself the same problems you give the enemy. So effective biological warfare is really WWII or later.
 
I'd like to point out too that the proposals for chemical weapons during the US Civil War envisioned them rather differently than how they were used in WWI. The Civil War proposals seem to indicate that they would be used more like a WWII flamethrower, strategically used against fortifications and bunkers to drive the enemy out. The idea of mass dispersal across a battlefield never seems to have cropped up, probably because it was seen as logistically impossible.
 
I'd like to point out too that the proposals for chemical weapons during the US Civil War envisioned them rather differently than how they were used in WWI. The Civil War proposals seem to indicate that they would be used more like a WWII flamethrower, strategically used against fortifications and bunkers to drive the enemy out.
That actually fits really well with the first "modern" use of chemical agents, which IIRC was in 1912 by France: they used tear gas to clear a bunker.

And thinking of pre-modern, there's another take on it: I don't recall when, but burning poppies were used much the same way well before the 19th Century. The smoke was at least irritating, at worst poisonous.
 
I'd like to point out too that the proposals for chemical weapons during the US Civil War envisioned them rather differently than how they were used in WWI. The Civil War proposals seem to indicate that they would be used more like a WWII flamethrower, strategically used against fortifications and bunkers to drive the enemy out. The idea of mass dispersal across a battlefield never seems to have cropped up, probably because it was seen as logistically impossible.
This was similar to the planned employment of sulphur fumes in the Crimea. In fact in 1914 the UK revived the idea, along with the weaponisation of tear gases.
Far from the post-war myth of the UK and the allies being reluctant to employ such a "frightful" weapon there was great interest in chemical agents; for example William Ramsay[1] in Britain and Charles Moureu and Charles Dufraisse in France[2].

That actually fits really well with the first "modern" use of chemical agents, which IIRC was in 1912 by France: they used tear gas to clear a bunker.

And thinking of pre-modern, there's another take on it: I don't recall when, but burning poppies were used much the same way well before the 19th Century. The smoke was at least irritating, at worst poisonous.
August 1914, ethyl bromoacetate and chloroacetone filled grenades, the first from police stocks (who'd used it since 1912) and initially used without command authorisation. Completely ineffective even at bunker clearing.


[1] The Nobel winning discoverer of argon, neon, krypton and xenon.

[2] Who, in one of those weird side-tracks so interesting to students of history, accidentally discovered antioxidants (used as food preservatives, lubricant and fuel stabilisers et cetera) while trying to weaponise propenal (acrolein) as a cheap tear gas. Such is life...
 
Chemical and Biological warfare has been going on for centuries. The contaminating of wells with poisons, carcasses or feces or the burning of various chemicals to create clouds of toxic gas was done prior to 0 BC. If your definition of "effective" CB agents is for delivery methods similar to modern times, it is the development of artillery, aircraft and rockets that can deliver the agents.

Agreed - basic biological or chemical attacks have gone on for centuries if not millennia. What makes these attacks more potent are "modern" laboratory equipment and techniques coupled with modern delivery methods.
 
Tabun was first synthesized in 1898 and the correct structure was published in 1903. I'm not altogether confident that it could be made in quantity before WW1, particularly as it must be vacuum distilled to remove HCN from the product, and also because the product is extremely toxic in small amounts, meaning that near-perfect containment is required during synthesis. With a concerted political effort it probably could, but that would only happen if the military knew they wanted large amounts of tabun.


Not quite correct. The analog was discovered in 1898, and that was not even correctly identified. True “tabun” is much later.

Organophosphates toxicity was not discovered until ‘32 and the “toxicity” of tabun was not discovered till ‘36, while further investigating these insecticides.

The chemical production is not hard. Germany produced 12,500 tonnes. Considering the much lower safety standards in WW1 with the production of sulphur mustand, (regular production gassing and deaths), this 12 kilotonnes might have been higher.
 
That sounds like what I was thinking of. (I'd forgotten it was police, but I suspected somebody would know. You've proven me right.;) )
IIRR the troops who used it were formerly police who got the idea that th stuff would be useful and 'borrowed' it.
 
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