Army to make first large burn of sarin near populated area

[ET Awful]

http://www.cnn.com/2003/US/South/08/28/chemical.weapons.ap/index.html


"BIRMINGHAM, Alabama (AP) -- The Army said Thursday it will destroy about 800 gallons of sarin nerve agent in the first bulk burn of the lethal chemical at the Army's newest weapons incinerator.

Workers will begin pumping the agent Sunday from a double-walled, glass-lined holding tank into a 2,700-degree furnace at Anniston Army Depot, about 50 miles east of Birmingham.

The chemical, also known as GB, was drained from nearly 600 M55 rockets that have been chopped up and burned since the incinerator began operating on August 8. A single drop of sarin can kill a person.

Up to 173 gallons of nerve agent residue has already been incinerated, but always in small amounts, incinerator spokesman Mike Abrams said."

(click link above for more)
________________________


Am I the only one that's NOT going to be surprised if they "incinerate" this stuff and find some in Iraq next month?

[DuctapeFatwa]

1. I guess if Wolf in Atlanta starts twitching, that means they burned it

Nobody really knows what happens if you burn a bunch of nerve gas in a populated area, how far it will go.

It's never been done before where people lived.

[TAH6988]

2. Do they know how far

it will go in an unpopulated area?

[DuctapeFatwa]

3. good question. If they bothered to measure it in desert and atoll

I think they would still have to do some fancyfuzzy math since a populated area will have different factors that can affect clouds and wind drift. Factory fumes, temperature differences due to buildings and cars and industry, even stuff like towers and power lines.

The wind is out of anybody's control, but as anyone who has ever walked between two tall buildings on a windy day knows, man-made structures can affect what wind does once it gets down to people height!

[johnny_red]

4. are there inspectors watching this?

no?

than it didnt happen.

[DemBones DemBones]

5. If something goes wrong, the sarin will get me before it gets Wolf

in Atlanta. (If it's raining in Anniston, we know it'll be raining here soon.) I still can't believe they're doing this. It's insane. Our tax dollars at work.

I read in one article that these nerve agents could be destroyed by another method (dissolving them in warm water?) that wouldn't have any potential danger to the public. So of course they're going for the incinerator method and everyone in Anniston and its immediate environs has their chemical protection hood from FEMA. I guess those of us who are farther away are supposed to get our own duct tape and plastic sheeting.

[DuctapeFatwa]

6. They say that neutralizing them safely would be too expensive

The people who live nearest the incinerator aren't affluent people. It's not likely many of them will be able to afford lots of lawyers and doctors, they are actually bush regime loyalists, but very unsophisticated ones, not the kind to go calling press conferences to show their burns.

[slackmaster]

7. They should never have made the shit in the first place

Very bad stuff.

[DemBones DemBones]

8. Lots of people in Anniston will be getting money from Monsanto

now that the lawsuits about PCB exposure in Anniston have been settled. Perhaps the healthier ones (families of cancer patients) can use the money from Monsanto to sue the Army. It appeals to my sense of irony and is darkly humorous as well. The poor people of Anniston have been royally screwed over by everyone.

[kimchi]

9. What the hell do we even have sarin for?

I thought only the "terraists" had the stuff.

Does it have any conceivable use except to kill people?

[DuctapeFatwa]

10. Looks like you answered your own question :) (nt)

[ET Awful]

11. Guess who invented . . .

Sarin and VX.

Yup, the most toxic substances on earth were invented by US labs.

Now, look at the quantities listed . . . Basically, the US has a stockpile of 32,300 tons of chemical weapons sitting around. (the 32,200 number is arrived by using the 2,524 tons being 7% of the total stockpile, also that number is only chemical weapons, and does not include any biological stocks).

And Shrub chose to complain about alleged stocks of chemical weapons that Iraq kinda sorta mighta had a while back.

We have enough chemical weapons here in the US to arm every third-world country with enough to kill every human being on the planet.

[Frangible]

12. Err no

Sarin and VX.

Sarin was invented by German scientists in the 1930s.
VX was invented by the British immediately after WWII.

Now look, I'm all for some high-quality Dubya bashing, but let's at least be truthful here, people.

[ET Awful]

15. I'm repeating. . .

What I was taught during a US Army NBC Warfare class (around 1992).

I won't dispute your information if you can provide sources, but I'm just repeating what I was trained in.

[bicentennial_baby]

16. here you go

"Sarin was discovered in 1938 in Wuppertal-Elberfeld in the Ruhr valley of Germany. The compound, which followed the previous discovery of Tabun, was named in honor of its discoverers: Schrader, Ambros, Rudriger and Van der Linde. In mid-1939, the formula for the agent was passed to the to the Chemical Warfare section of the German Army Weapons Office, which ordered that it be brought into mass-production for wartime use.

A number of pilot plants were built, and a high-production facility was under construction, but was not finished by the end of World War II. Estimates for total Sarin production by Nazi Germany range from 500 kg to 10 tons."

http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sarin

"VX gas was developed in the Porton Down Chemical Weapons Research Centre, Wiltshire, England in 1952 and its devastating effects were tested. The British traded the technology of VX with the United States of America for information on thermonuclear weapons."

http://www.chem.ox.ac.uk/mom/vx/VX.htm

"Development of "G" nerve gases continued throughout the 1940's, until in the early 1950's a slightly different breed was discovered. Soviet scientists had predicted the activity of this class of compounds, and several chemical companies and independent scientists had discovered their potency, but it was a British scientist, Dr. R. Ghosh, who developed the "V" agents.

These new chemicals worked in a similar way, with similar effects, but their low volatility leads to persistence in the atmosphere, which is the key to their desirability.

Although VX gas was developed in the British chemical warfare laboratory at Porton Down, the British traded their secret with the Americans for information on thermo-nuclear weapons in 1958. The Americans went into full-scale production of VX gas in 1961, but are now attempting to destroy stockpiles."

http://www.chm.bris.ac.uk/motm/vx/vxh/frames.htm

[ET Awful]

17. Good enough for me. . .

I stand corrected.

Damn lying Drill Sergeant :)

[Frangible]

18. Here you go

Edit: lol, guess another poster posted this at about the same time I did. Removing redundant info.

[chilly]

13. Right Now

remember the Van Hagar video for the song Right Now, where the stick figure man crouches behind the legs of another stick figure man, while a third stick figure man pushed the second one over onto his back?

the caption read: right now, your government is doing something you thought only other countries do



chilly

[Capn Sunshine]

14. OR ARE THEY REALLY..

Sneaking it off to Syria, where they will smuggle it into Iraq in some desperate gambit?

Why is the Army choosing NOW to destroy a lot of chemical weapons?