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Explanation: A brilliant fellow by the name of John Doughty during the US Civil War suggested getting a head start on the atrocity carousel by initiating mass chemical warfare about 50 years early. This is by no means a concerning idea, and Mr. Doughty was doubtlessly a wholly sane and stable individual. Luckily, the suggestion was not adopted.
Funny enough, the Lieber Code adopted by the Union during the Civil War, dealing with the rules of warfare, DOES actually prohibit the use of poison, so this idea would have been illegal even at the time.
The first recorded modern proposal for the use of chemical warfare was made by Lyon Playfair
Hmmm…
Playfair? I think he’s lyon’.
What was the cost of chlorine at this point? Were they doing chloralkali at any reasonable scale? If so, this would plausibly have changed the entire evolution of warfare in the late 19th century.
Quick wiki search suggests that they knew about the process at this point, but it wouldn’t be done on a commercial scale for another 30 or so years.
Shoot, I probably should have just searched it myself. I guess I was trying to start a conversation.
Depending on how successful chemical warfare hypothetically would have been, it may have helped the process get going faster. To do electrolysis you need DC electricity. At first, the only real source was primary-cell batteries, which are at least as expensive as the materials they’re made out of, but Micheal Faraday built the first homopolar generator in 1831 and practical industrial-scale dynamos appeared (simultaneously from multiple inventors) right around the time in question.
chortles maniacally in Canadian
“See Lisa? Because of me, they have a warning.”
There are no such thing as laws of war. War is the loss of authority and civility. Laws require both. Sure, we can make laws of war, but as we’ve seen time and time again, nobody follows them. Violence is the only law that nature knows.
Okay Cicero, let’s get you back to your isolated country estate
The reason chemical weapons are banned is because (they’re monstrous and) they’re useless. You can fire a chlorine shell and if the wind is juuust right, it’ll kill anyone within a few meters. You know what else will kill anyone within a few meters? A normal artillery shell.
Except, chlorine gas can be blocked by an airtight gas mask and a chemical suit. They cost less than $500 for complete immunity to the weapon. Good luck finding a $500 flak vest that’ll stop a mortar though. And meanwhile, if you want to press the attack and benefit from your chemical weapons, there’s one slight problem before you advance: there’s a bunch of chlorine gas in the way.
In other words, it’s an unreliable and inferior weapon that gets in the way of modern military doctrine. Although there are some good niches in shitty armies by dictators who are too paranoid of coups to give their junior officers any independence or proper kit. Like the Iraq army that the US army utterly steamrolled in 2005.
Far from useless against unprotected troops - especially in area denial and degrading enemy combat effectiveness. The real issue of practicality is that they’re a matter of mutual deterrent - if Side A starts using chemical weapons, Side B may decide to start as well. But as you mentioned, we’ve solved the issue of protective equipment pretty thoroughly, so in all but the most lopsided of conflicts (Iran-Iraq War, Syrian Civil War, police against protesters), escalation does not actually give either side an advantage beyond the initial shock, and introduces a lot of unnecessary defensive and offensive logistics, the total effect of which is likely difficult to determine. How many millions of dollars of chemical shells are worth keeping a platoon of soldiers in gas masks for a few hours longer? How many millions of dollars of chemical shells are worth the enemy shelling you in turn and forcing you to spend valuable resources and logistics lines on NBC gear? Who comes out with the advantage in this asymmetric exchange - the one with more resources, or the one with fewer? Nightmare to tell.
Russia currently is using chemical weapons effectively in Ukraine - namely, tear gas. Great for disabling dug-in enemies so
mobik meat cube ingredientsmass infantry assaults can advance. We (the West) also use chemical weapons effectively - we claim WP as a smokescreen, but its application tends to be very, uh, ‘dual-use’ in smoking troops out of entrenched positions. In both cases, the effectiveness relies on deniability and prevention of escalation.Fun fact about tear gas - they’ll spray down protesters with it, but if it was used in warfare it would pretty obviously break the principal of not using maiming weapons, which was laid down in the Hague convention and mostly continues to be respected by big militaries.
Tear gas was one of the first chemical weapons deployed in WW1, even.
“Can’t be a war crime if it’s not during war time!” - Cops
(unironically I actually understand the rationale, but it remains absurd on its face)
Yeah, “mostly” was pretty load bearing there, haha. It’s just odd that enemy soldiers end up having more rights than civilians in certain contexts.
Prison escapes being highly illegal in some jurisdictions is another example.
Disagree. Gas is perfect for underground bunkers. Being heavier than air it will sink down into the bunker and displace oxygen. Sure you can wear a suit, but for how long? And do you have enough suits for everyone?
On the bright side, think of how clean all our pools are going to be with all this chlorine everywhere.
I really enjoy the smell of a perfectly balanced pool in the summer.
I mean, if you have undisputed access to the ventilation that’s far from your only option to flush people out.
Clearly you’ve never been in the military. Let’s say the enemy one day drops leaflets saying they will gas your position every 12 hours at 8 AM and 8 PM every day. You’re prepared with your gas mask and full NBC gear every 12 hrs. No danger at all right? Wrong. Even if nobody dies at all from the gas, the act of putting that stuff on twice a day will quickly give someone PTSD.
What if I forget or lose my suit?!? What if I oversleep my alarm?!? Are those army dudes at the treeline? I can’t see out of this thing! I can’t breathe! Fuuuuuck!!! The psychological effect is arguably worse than the weapons themselves seeing as the psych patients don’t even have to be hit by it to feel lifelong damaging effects.
Well, if there’s an element of surprise you can do some serious damage. This is also why nobody uses bright green, smelly chlorine anymore. PugJesus covered the real logic.
You were close to right, though. Upvote just to offset all the downvotes.
You clearly have never fought and don’t know that supply lines and order are crucial to war. If combat devolved into some inhumane, amoral tragedy for every interaction, nothing would be accomplished. But war is about forcibly stopping an opponent, not about going crazy and ignoring all sense or rules. Chemical weapons require an insane amount of discipline to make, move, store, use, and dispose of some of the most dangerous ordinance imaginable.
“War is lawless” is what the naive say. Experience knows better.
Just because organized lawlessness looks pretty, doesn’t mean it stops being lawlessness. Israel and their genocide on Gaza for example. Great - they’re organized. They’re also violating civility and ignoring authority of the people who supposedly make the laws of war. Blocking aid, killing and targetting civilians…
Organization is simply enhancing the efficiency of your violence.
War is lawless is what people can simply observe. Experience apparently doesn’t know shit, because you’re way off the mark; you didn’t even understand the argument correctly.
Laws not stopping murder doesn’t mean laws against murder are useless
They’re not even against murder. You can explode or bury people all you want. It’s just rules especially really nasty or unnecessary murder, where people have managed to agree to give it up, and it holds up reasonably well in many cases.
So why are we not seeing CBRN weapons in Ukraine if nobody follows them? They are all far more effective than conventional weapons.
I’m fairly certain they were talking about Ukraine using them if nobody followed the laws of war.
Ukraine is the defender in a war waged against them. This isn’t their war.
And that’s relevant because…?
You’ve lost the plot.
Yes, we all saw. It’s still not clear what you mean.
A one time use, if at all, of a substance that is also a pesticide can hardly be compared to an actual use of serious chemicals on a broad front. If that actually happened, it could very well have been a single officer finding the pesticide in a farm and letting them drop it with drones.
It is like saying airbags do not help because once one person was killed by them. The obviously do help.
You follow the rules of war because it’s in your interests to do so. You treat POWs fairly, because you want your opponent to treat your own captured people fairly. You don’t pull a false surrender move, because that will come back to haunt you when you need to actually surrender. You don’t use chemical weapons, because using them would mean your opponent starts using them.
Granted, this tends to work better with peer powers. When there’s an imbalance, the larger power often gets to do whatever they want.
