Nice. Always impressed by your detailed dives. Also love any opportunity to highlight that natural things are not necessarily always good, not because I like poison, lol, but it’s important to understand the harshness of nature. The naturalistic fallacy is annoying enough to poison. More generally your gas mask illustrations remind me of hanging out with my older brother years ago. He was into military themes, particularly chemical warfare.
Really interesting piece, I wasn’t familiar with German development of chemical weapons, although it makes sense.
Ultimately while (imo) the development of chemical weapons is outright evil, the principle of prevent the movement of your opponent forward in the battle field is really genius. Obviously now war has progressed to the point where at least in America we aren’t fighting many foot solider battles and this doesn’t really have a ton of practical application in war any longer, but that was pretty smart thinking. If we ever do have foot solider wars for whatever reason I can only hope we stop people with more moral solutions lol, like what comes to mind is the dune force field stuff they put around their estates.
It was a perfectly rational way of thinking to find a way to achieve area denial by effectively denying access to clean air in that area. The French used Pepper spray to try and do this but it had no persistence in the air. Chlorine was an awful one, because it would concentrate at the bottom of trenches, and during the first attack with it, no one knew what was going on, but pretty much immediately lost its effectiveness after that because the other side knew what to do and what not to do. Mustard Gas was probably (?) the most effective in the end but even it didn't really achieve that force-field effect, despite its longer persistence. The closest thing to a force field I've seen so far would probably be Israel's Iron Dome, but that's only good for taking down rockets and the like.
The other problem with the gas was that sometimes it would be blown back across your own side's lines. That did happen a few times lol. Not great.
I'm looking forward to having foundation-like personal force fields, with the little bracelet haha. That'd be sweet.
Another great one. Scary stuff man. I didnt really know what the allies had tried. And didnt IG farben eventually get acquired by Bayer or something like that? I read something once upon a time but my memory sucks.
Thanks bro! <3 so Bayer was a subsidiary of IG, along with a bunch of other subsidiaries, and basically the subsidiaries were spun off into their own companies, while other parts were liquidated, and a lot of manufacturing plants were dismantled and taken by the Soviets.
Thank you kindly!! I got so stuck at this point, but knew I needed to get something out there, and I was already at 2100 words, so decided it was probably gonna be a multi-parter. The next part will cover how nerve agents have actually been used and why - luckily - we’re unlikely to see anything truly resembling a Doomsday Weapon in Chemical or Biological form.
Nice. Always impressed by your detailed dives. Also love any opportunity to highlight that natural things are not necessarily always good, not because I like poison, lol, but it’s important to understand the harshness of nature. The naturalistic fallacy is annoying enough to poison. More generally your gas mask illustrations remind me of hanging out with my older brother years ago. He was into military themes, particularly chemical warfare.
Thank you sir! And this is exactly it, nature is made of almost nothing but chemicals, and not all of them good haha.
Really interesting piece, I wasn’t familiar with German development of chemical weapons, although it makes sense.
Ultimately while (imo) the development of chemical weapons is outright evil, the principle of prevent the movement of your opponent forward in the battle field is really genius. Obviously now war has progressed to the point where at least in America we aren’t fighting many foot solider battles and this doesn’t really have a ton of practical application in war any longer, but that was pretty smart thinking. If we ever do have foot solider wars for whatever reason I can only hope we stop people with more moral solutions lol, like what comes to mind is the dune force field stuff they put around their estates.
It was a perfectly rational way of thinking to find a way to achieve area denial by effectively denying access to clean air in that area. The French used Pepper spray to try and do this but it had no persistence in the air. Chlorine was an awful one, because it would concentrate at the bottom of trenches, and during the first attack with it, no one knew what was going on, but pretty much immediately lost its effectiveness after that because the other side knew what to do and what not to do. Mustard Gas was probably (?) the most effective in the end but even it didn't really achieve that force-field effect, despite its longer persistence. The closest thing to a force field I've seen so far would probably be Israel's Iron Dome, but that's only good for taking down rockets and the like.
The other problem with the gas was that sometimes it would be blown back across your own side's lines. That did happen a few times lol. Not great.
I'm looking forward to having foundation-like personal force fields, with the little bracelet haha. That'd be sweet.
It would be! Very useful in cities like sf 😅😂
Oh yes, I know what you mean haha. I visited SF once. The contrasts everywhere were startling!
Another great one. Scary stuff man. I didnt really know what the allies had tried. And didnt IG farben eventually get acquired by Bayer or something like that? I read something once upon a time but my memory sucks.
Thanks bro! <3 so Bayer was a subsidiary of IG, along with a bunch of other subsidiaries, and basically the subsidiaries were spun off into their own companies, while other parts were liquidated, and a lot of manufacturing plants were dismantled and taken by the Soviets.
Great piece! Excited the the second one! 😊
Thank you kindly!! I got so stuck at this point, but knew I needed to get something out there, and I was already at 2100 words, so decided it was probably gonna be a multi-parter. The next part will cover how nerve agents have actually been used and why - luckily - we’re unlikely to see anything truly resembling a Doomsday Weapon in Chemical or Biological form.
Cool! That will definitely be interesting. 😊