Plausibility Check: Chemical WMDs

hey, all. one thing i decided on a long time ago for my ASB ATL (which i've mentioned once or twice in different threads) is that nukes don't exist and the main weapon which is generally abhorred is chemical weapons (like poison and nerve gas)

anyway, one idea came to me earlier today after remembering the nuke detonation in Call of Duty 4. the idea is that a chemical-based WMD called a "chemical dispersal bomb" (abbreviated ChDi, pronounced and sometimes spelled "chiddy") exists, and is basically a chemical-based version of a dirty bomb

i just wanted to ask if anyone think this is at all plausible. in the final version it may not be a bomb at all but some other means of dispersal to a similar effect as a dirty bomb, but with toxic rather than radioactive materials. bonus points if these chemicals don't affect the environment for extremely long periods of time after detonation
 
Nerve agents such as VX, Sarin, or Tabun might be the sort of thing you're after. Non-persistent agents break down fairly quickly but are adequately lethal; persistent agents will give you the long-term contamination effects of fallout (but via a different mechanism, obviously).
They can be dispersed by explosives (a bursting charge on a bomb or projectile), but for "best" results an aircraft with a spray mechanism is what you want I think.
 
Less destructive though than a nuke or bioagent (at least in the short-mid term) unless you can find something really potent.
 
one of the potential uses of these would be to clear people out of a city while leaving the infrastructure intact for subsequent occupation or resettlement

what i had originally thought with the idea of a "chiddy" is that it would basically have the area effect of a small nuke and having absolutely horrid effects on organic life (with plants perhaps being an exception for whatever plausible reason; otherwise, they'd be just as affected). to make another COD comparison, think of it like Nova 6 delivered via explosion rather than gas canister or chamber

when it gets to that, i'd probably use a fictional nerve agent in any case ;)
 
Less destructive though than a nuke or bioagent (at least in the short-mid term) unless you can find something really potent.

More lethal than bioweapons in the short term, I think - bioweapons have an incubation period, which chemical weapons don't require. Once you get past the first few days the effectiveness of bioweapons ramps up considerably, but at least in the short term chemical weapons are extravagantly lethal.

oshron said:
one of the potential uses of these would be to clear people out of a city while leaving the infrastructure intact for subsequent occupation or resettlement

what i had originally thought with the idea of a "chiddy" is that it would basically have the area effect of a small nuke and having absolutely horrid effects on organic life (with plants perhaps being an exception for whatever plausible reason; otherwise, they'd be just as affected).

Nerve agents don't affect plants for the adequate and simple reason that plants don't have a nervous system to be affected by them. They will, however, kill the insects required to fertilise and pollinate them; and probably the worms that aerate the soil (and anything else with a nervous system as well). Without those, agriculture in the affected area will probably be impossible. They won't have the blast or thermal effects of nukes; but if you want to kill civilians while leaving buildings standing these are a very effective way of doing exactly that. Not so good against military units, though - with a bit of warning they'll have time to get into their protective gear. In general, though, nerve agents do indeed have horrid effects on animal life. Look them up, I think they're the sort of thing you want.
 
in all honesty, it wasn't so much the chemicals themselves but their delivery system, with my hypothetical "chiddy" containing enough of said chemicals and enough firepower behind them to spread it into the area around it almost instantaneously (again, like a nuke or any other traditional bomb; like Gunnarnz's suggested, the after-effects of the nerve agents being spread around by the explosion and then weather conditions is basically the equivalent of fallout)

another idea, incidentally, occurred to me: the nerve agents in question affecting people not only through inhalation but also through skin contact (similar to mustard gas) as well as potentially being transferred to liquid, perhaps in the form of precipitation (toxic rain, basically) or polluting water sources to the point where they may well be untouchable for years. this is probably where the "fictional nerve agent" comes in, in that it would be based on something realistic and otherwise be the same as an OTL nerve agent, but it would have the additional fictional property of staying effective for a much longer period of time when exposed to liquid. for an added scary factor, the nerve agent in question would probably also affect the human body differently than a known agent, perhaps more similarly to anthrax or some kind of natural, horrific-effects venom than anything else (maybe like a komodo dragon: it could cause sepsis)
 
More lethal than bioweapons in the short term, I think - bioweapons have an incubation period, which chemical weapons don't require. Once you get past the first few days the effectiveness of bioweapons ramps up considerably, but at least in the short term chemical weapons are extravagantly lethal.
Only the gas-based ones, and they have rather irregular (and on calm days very limited) dispersal rates, and basically have to be so lethal that even a tiny volume getting into the bomber would be lethal to the crew in very short order. Another way to do it is to drop something which will get into the water supply and thus achieve a fairly universal spread, but that will take longer. A third way perhaps is a dirty-bomb, but these are extremely local, unless you get some in say the underground, and then you have the same problem as gas, irregular dispersal rates and huge lethality.

in all honesty, it wasn't so much the chemicals themselves but their delivery system, with my hypothetical "chiddy" containing enough of said chemicals and enough firepower behind them to spread it into the area around it almost instantaneously (again, like a nuke or any other traditional bomb; like Gunnarnz's suggested, the after-effects of the nerve agents being spread around by the explosion and then weather conditions is basically the equivalent of fallout)
That depends on a lot of unknowns, and again, the big one is that even the tiniest leak will kill the bomber crew (and probably the ground crew too).

Basically any chemical weapon is going to be much more dangerous to the people handling it than to the intended targets.
 
Not sure I agree with that. Chemical weapons are certainly very dangerous - I'm thinking specifically of nerve agents here - but it's by no means impossible to store or use them without gassing everyone nearby. The US maintained large stocks well into the 1990s, other nations still do. Binary agents such as VX2 are only dangerous when combined, they can be transported and handled relatively safely. Examples of such ordnance can be found here and in the links further down on that page. It's true that dispersion is something of an issue; that's usually dealt with by adminstering source concentrations far greater than necessary under optimum circumstances. An air-delivered aerosol, say from a missile warhead or artillery shell, can affect quite a large area, and of course it's not a situation where just one would be used.

With respect to the idea of a hypothetical chemical weapon affecting victims through the skin - well yes, that's one reason why nerve agents are so deadly. They do exactly that. I'm not sure about their ability to affect water sources, but I certainly wouldn't drink anything from an area that had received a chemical strike, and they can last a long time in the environment.
 
Chemical munitions in lieu of nuclear weapons

Basically any chemical weapon is going to be much more dangerous to the people handling it than to the intended targets.

Binary weapon development sort to address the concerns of leaking munitions. Essentailly two "Less nasty" chemicals which when mixed become a very nasty chemical. the mixing usually taking place as the munition is delivered either by artillery or air.
Nerve agents are lethal in very small concentrations to personal who are not protected and who have not taken a program of nerve agent medicines to help build up the bodies resistance to the nerve agent. Similarly once contaminated and expressing the systems there are some dilating agents (Atropine) that can help mitigate some of the nerve agent effects. An un prepared unprotected civilian population will suffer mass casualties from such agents. A mixture of persistent and non persistent agents will kill off and render areas un occupable for considerable periods of time. The aggressor must determie whether or not extermination of the population is the aim or merely terror and subjugation. For example rapid rocket strikes delivering blood agents such as HCN will kill off un protected people in less than 5 minutes. The area however could be occupied say less than hour later without protection. Forcing people to leave a city and causing dislocation of utilities, blocking roads with refugees and inflicting mass casualties would be achieved with the deliver of a range of persistent nerve agents such as VX. Biological agents are feared by all sides as no one would be sure that the agent used couldn't re infect the aggressor either by population movment or when they sort to occupy the won territory
 
There isn't much use for a 'dirty bomb'....because well...it's dirty. That's your plausibility check right there.


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As for if Chemical or Biological Agents could replace nuclear weapons. I doubt it.

There is a good precident for a MAD Biological Agent whereby you breed a range of superstrains and attempt to carpet the world (neighbouring countries and the attacker) with a concoction of the worst dieases known to man. Basically holding a shotgun to everybodies heads. However nobodies going to give that country sympathy.

Hence no.


Chemical weapons just simply can't do the coverage.

Hence no.
 
Have you thought about a more indirect approach?

I should say in advance, I don't have the grasp of biology to know exactly how this works...:eek:

Suppose, tho, you target crops for their ability to resist frost? Or selectively target vital pollinators, like bees, so crops don't get pollinated? Or pest predators, so you get (frex) weevil infestations, or locusts?

Too fancy? Too hard to do without genetically-engineered BWs?
 
I'd qualify Soviet новичок-nerve agents as such. They could fired from a similar system than thermobaric missiles, so that instead of firing the heavier-than-air gas, the missile instantly fills the target area with the nerve agent chemical in the form of fine powder. Heck, the stuff is so fatal that it could even be attached to regular bomb and still make the target area highly dangerous and contaminated afterwards.

Modern chemical weapons like sarin can be spread to a target with shells ranging from 250-kg bombs to 240-mm rocket artillery shells - I don't see how that excludes the possibility of putting a sarin warhead to a cruise missile?
 
Be sure not to overheat the chemicals when dispersing them. Mixing them with explosives would be bad for reasons of reactivity also, the agents mustn't react with neither the explosives nor their rest products.
 
What you need to look at is the area you want to contaminate, the type( persistant or non persistant), and how you can deliver it.

Last one first, depending on where you are attacking you can use anything from an agricultural spray aircraft, truck unit like a mosquito fogger or just plain open a valve and drive down the street for a terrorist type attack. For a conventional military type strike you can use a cluster bomb type unit, whether a bomb or dispenser unit depending on the area to attack, to put conventional explosives and chemical bomblets out with a mix of chemical types.

Type of agent is easy. How long do you want the effects to be around and what it takes to decontaminate them. Example would be a lewisite/GB mix. Lewisite for a long term agent and the GB for a short term. Lewisite is a mustard agent that would prevent quickly decontaminating the area and the GB would hit anyone not immediatly in protective gear.

Area is where you would decide how big of an area is to be hit and in what kind of pattern.
 
how about those Weapons ?

"select agents" aka "Yellow Rain"
that Toxin produce by microorganisms, nasty deadly stuff like:
ricin, staphylococcal enterotoxin B, botulinum toxin, saxitoxin, and many mycotoxins like of trichothecenes mycotoxin.
some were used during Vietnam War and Afghanistan War
this select agents use toxin to kill, not its microorganisms who produce them, but some warhead design carry the microorganisms to targets.

Radiological weapon
it use Radioactive Materials as Weapon, but not as explosive but for contamination of target, mostly in form of dust oder Gas
 
The problem with toxins is that they're complex biological molecules that are typically quite sensitive to UV-rays, low pH, high pH, chemicals and radicals.

I believe I read somewhere that Aum Shinrikyo spread enough botulinumtoxin to kill millions of people, though apparently no one died. Stability and delivery isn't trivial issues.

The fact that toxins are sensitive biological molecules could of course be a useful property. An area could become useful again much faster than after chemical bombardment, not to mention filthy nukes.
 
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