CHEMICAL WARFARE

".....And they assembled them at the place called Armageddon. The seventh angel poured his bowl into the air, and a great voice came out of the temple, from the throne, saying,
"It is done!" And there were great flashes of lightning, loud noises, peals of thunder, and a great earthquake such as had never been since men were on the earth, so great was that earthquake."
Revelations 16:16-18

In Revelations 8:10 it is said that "....a great star fell from heaven, blazing like a torch...the name of that star is Wormwood. A third of the waters became wormwood and many men died of the water..." Wormwood is a bitter plant and a member of the Artemisia genus. Could this be a reference to the effects of disasters like that at the nuclear powerstations of Three Mile Island in America in 1979 and Chernobyl in the Ukraine in 1986?

At the birth of a new decade, however, theories of doom and destruction melted away. The world breathed a sigh of relief in 1991, the year that celebrated the collapse of the Warsaw Pact and saw the Cold War effectively come to an end. No longer was the human race to live in the shadow of nuclear war - fears of an atomic Armageddon were dissolved. The end of one millennium and the dawning of another signalled a brave new world where man could live in harmony. No more would the super powers and their war-mongering leaders flex their muscles with threats of global domination. That was until India conducted five atomic explosive tests in May of this year, closely followed by a show of defiance from neighbouring Pakistan two weeks later who responded by conducting five of its own nuclear tests in the Baluchistan desert thirty miles from the Indo-Pakistan border. Unstable countries that were, in the past, not considered as nuclear powers are starting to display a worrying trend in the development of nuclear weapons.

The fact that the region lies in a territory that has been fought over for 51 years and has witnessed three wars as a result invokes greater cause for concern. South Asia's latest upsurge in atomic activity highlights the snail-like progress that the five nuclear powers have made under the 1968 and 1995 Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaties in which the US, Russia, China, France and Britain promised to disarm 'weapons of mass destruction'. Most of the condemnation came from President Clinton who threatened India with economic sanctions, which is quite hypocritical considering that America's attack on the islands Hiroshima and Nagasaki, which ended Japan's role in the Second World War, caused 120,000 instant casualties. In many years that followed thousands more were to feel the effects of long term radiation sickness.

LETHAL WEAPONS Nuclear weapons are just the tip of the iceberg. The use of chemical and biological agents date back as far as 600BC when it was recorded how the Athenians used the poisonous plant helleborus to contaminate the river Pliesthenes. The inhabitants of the besieged city of Kirrha, who used the river as a source of drinking water, were rendered helpless through diarrhoea and were no longer able to fight. A more horrific example concerning the deployment of biological warfare was in Crimea in 1346 at the siege of Caffa when the Mongols used catapults to hurl plague ridden corpses over the enemy's city walls to infect the besieged population. The twentieth century has seen numerous examples of 'alternative' warfare, right from the First World War up to the present day.

Gas agents were first used by the Germans against the French in 1914 when they used irritant tear gas in the battle of Neuve Chapelle. Three months later the Germans fired shells containing xylyl bromide at the Russians. However, widespread damage was kept to a minimum as the freezing conditions dampened the effects of the gas. There are a wide variety of NBC (nuclear, biological and chemical) weapons in use today: from police using CS gas to control rioting mobs to the Iraqi army who used mustard gas against the Kurds in the town of Halabja killing around 5,000 people. The Japanese were said to be masters at developing biological agents and worked on typhus, cholera, tetanus, typhoid and gas-gangrene among others during the Second World War. The Soviets also took a keen interest in lassa, ebola and marburg fever each with their own very high mortality rates. The effects of the different agents in use today range from minor symptoms like vomiting and disorientation, to more harrowing effects such as skin lesions and plague meningitis and internal organ failure. Here are just some of the worst offenders: DISTILLED MUSTARD(Chemical) Fatal? Uh Huh. What's it do? - Gives you skin blisters and destroys tissue. When was it first used? -The Germans used it against the British during the First World War on the 12th July 1917. Is there any protection? - A respirator and NBC outfit. (Unfortunately, the Kurds didn't happen to be up to date with the latest in chemical warfare fashions) Decontamination? - Bleach slurry or caustic soda if you happen to have any lying about. PHOSGENE (chemical) Fatal? You betcha! (If exposed to enough of it) What's it do? - Damages lungs, causing tissue to turn into a fatty pulp, and floods them to produce a 'dry-land drowning' effect. When was it first used? - Again the Germans used it against the British in 1915 causing over 1000 casualties and 116 deaths. Is there any protection? - A respirator will save your bacon. Decontamination? None needed if you're lucky enough to be alive. SOMAN(chemical) Fatal? - Very. What's it do? - A range of horrible things including violent muscular activity, malfunction of major internal organs and brain shut-down. When was it first used? - The Germans used it at the end of the Second World War. Is there any protection? Respirator and full NBC outfit. Decontamination? - Amonia with live steam, bleach slurry and caustic soda. CS GAS(chemical) Fatal? - No, just bloody annoying. What's it do? - Irritation of the eyes, mouth and open pores. When was it first used? - The British used it in Cyprus in 1958 against rioters. It was also seen as a necessary evil by the security forces in Northern Ireland when dealing with civil unrest on the streets of Belfast and Derry. Is there any protection? Respirator or NBC suit if you find yourself in a confined area. Rioters on the Falls road discovered that a cloth soaked in booze would do the trick. ANTHRAX(biological) Fatal? - If exposed to their music for long enough. The disease is much more fatal, more or less killing everything in its path. What's it do? - Enters the body through inhalation or open cuts. Can also be ingested through eating infected meat. It causes blackening of the skin, swelling and malignant pustules. These symptoms can also affect the lungs. When was it first used? - Anthrax is believed to be the fifth plague that was mentioned in Exodus 9 which affected cattle in Egypt. It was isolated by Casimir Davaine in 1850. The disease also gathered a lot of interest between Japanese wartime scientists, but its first use in bombs was on the Scottish island of Gruinard in 1943. After the war the island had to be decontaminated by fire and sea water and was not safe enough to visit until the early 90's. Is it contagious? - Thankfully not. You're not likely to come across anyone to catch it from. Decontamination? - Live steam or dry heat at 159šC or alternatively by burning all their records. PLAGUE(biological) Fatal? - Haven't you read your history books? What's it do? Bubonic plague causes swelling of the lymph nodes which contain oxidised blood and dead bacteria turning the skin black(black death). The swellings burst open leaving massive sores. These can lead to plague meningitis or secondary pneumonia leading to shock and respiratory arrest. Septicaemic plague causes fever, malaise and overall weakness whereas pneumonic plague causes pathogenic lung congestion or pneumonia leaving its victims prostrate within hours. When was it first used? - There are no recorded cases of military use. However, it wiped out a quarter of Europe in the fourteenth Century and a good proportion of the London population in the mid-17th Century. Is it contagious? - As a football terrace chant. These are just some of the NBC agents that we know of. Who knows what scientists are working on behind closed doors. Some say that the spread of the AIDS virus was the result of an accident at a biological research lab - This may or may not be true. Even if it isn't, what would happen if an airborne virus similar to AIDS was released into the atmosphere? The effects wouldn't bear thinking about. One thing's for sure; the human race are getting better every day at developing methods to wipe each other off the face of the Earth.

Nuclear power, although providing numerous benefits such as an economically sound alternative to electricity, is surely the most terrifying energy to be harnessed by mankind. A nuclear explosion is caused by uranium being bombarded with neutrons which results in the release of new atoms resulting in a chain reaction on a parallel with one kiloton of TNT. The first atom bomb was exploded in the New Mexico Desert in 1945 and had an explosive force of twenty kilotons.

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