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100 Years of Chemical Weapons
MTorrice writes This year marks the 100th anniversary of the first large-scale use of chemical weapons during World War I. Sarah Everts at Chemical & Engineering News remembers the event with a detailed account of the day in 1915 when the German Army released chlorine gas on its enemies, igniting a chemical arms race. Read the diaries of soldiers involved in the first gas attack. By the end of WWI, scientists working for both warring parties had evaluated some 3,000 different chemicals for use as weapons. Even though poison gas didn't end up becoming an efficient killing weapon on WWI battlefields—it was responsible for less than 1% of WWI's fatalities--its adoption set a precedent for using chemicals to murder en masse. In the past century, poison gas has killed millions of civilians around the world: commuters on the Tokyo subway, anti-government demonstrators in Syria, and those incarcerated in Third Reich concentration camps. Everts profiles chemist Fritz Haber, the man who lobbied to unleash the gas that day in 1915.
If you don't want to get gassed, stay the fuck out of our country.
When the Germans first gassed the French, the French were not in Germany. The Germans were in France.
Greek Fire is an incendiary, it's no more a chemical weapon than napalm is. Using the classical chemistry definition, sure, but not in the context of arms control or warfare.
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
This is Sarah, the journalist who wrote the chem weapons package. One of the interesting things (in a macabre way) about Tabun (the first nerve agent that then spawned Soman and Sarin) is that it was originally discovered by a chemist trying to create a pesticide to improve food storage. After nearly killing himself and his lab mates, he decided it was probably too potent for the food industry...
Your recollection does not align with history. DDT was far from the first significant agricultural pesticide.
In the real world, pesticides and specifically insecticides date back thousands of years. Sulfur was burned to produce a noxious gas, and various naturally occurring substances, biological and mineral, were gathered and used. Hydrogen cyanide gas was used to fumigate citrus trees in California in the 1880s. Zyklon A, which was a compound designed to release hydrogen cyanide on the application of heat and water for pesticidal purposes, dates back to before WW1. It was banned after a similar compound was used as a chemical weapon in WW1.
Zyklon-B was a cyanide-based pesticide with an irritant additive to serve as a warning, dating back to the early 1920s. It was used for delousing clothes and controlling pests in ships, warehouses and trains. It was co-opted for more infamous purposes later. One of the inventors was executed in 1946 for knowingly providing the substance to a certain evil state actor.
Organophosphates were used as pesticides, followed shortly by use as nerve "gases".