Chemical Weapons - Weapons of Mass Destruction Essay

The chemical weapon warfare has ever since the ancient ages been elicited great debate among various scholars and military expert. Some people greatly support the use of chemical as a weapon while at the same time, different group greatly condemn the warfare. In the article “it would be very well if we could avoid it” by Thomas Faith, the author discusses different opinions used by those supporting and those opposing chemical warfare. And General Pershing prospective on chemical warfare during and after his military career. This paper gives an analysis of the reasons for and against chemical warfare.

Poison Gas/Chemical Warfare usage, while not harming physical structures preventing the collateral damage of homes and buildings, causes a high casualty rate in all living things. It is indescriminate and robs life equally be they related or not to a target of military or strategic importance. Gas usage has been widely considered uncivilized, but the French resorted to its usage in August, 1914 during the first World War in an attempt to rout the Germans. Unfortunately, the Germans were the first to give gas warfare serious development and it became used extensively before the war was over. On the battlefield it prooved effective in eliminating hostile threats in an inhumane way, but this does not make it morally acceptable. In more recent times ISIS has been reported to using Poison Gas in Syria against both military and civilians in an indescriminate manner. This sort of attack ignores international laws as well as inhumanely cause widespread harm. In this day and age, this sort of attack is unnecessary and is why it was outlawed in the first place even back during the first World War.

Chemical warfare, while horrible, proved to be unwieldy and unpredictable, and relatively easy to counter. After some limited successes against unprepared opponents, the use of chemical gas had very little tactical benefit; the recognition of this limited utility is that after widespread use in 1915 - except for the short-lived effects of the introduction of mustard gas in 1917 - gas was abandoned by both sides as an effective tactic.

One of the new weapons used in WWI was poison gas. Poison gas was first used by the french in 1914, they used them to fight against the germans. After the french the germans started to study it and we the first to use it in a big scale. They used chlorine gas caused irritation and aggressive sneezing. There are many types of poisonous gas like chlorine gas, phosgene (causes violent coughing, choking and eventually death), and Mustard gas (nearly odorless chemical that causes internal and external blisters for hours). The total amount of casualties for poison gases are 1,240,853 people and total deaths are 91,198 people.

There are many examples why gas was a necessary weapon in World War I. One example is using clouds of toxic gas on the enemy. Since this gas is so dangerous and unstoppable they would release the clouds of gas on the enemy to scare them away from their area or to kill off the remaining enemies. This toxic gas was also refereed to as Tear Gas. Because Tear Gas was so affective, eventually both sides would use it on the enemy in wars because there was no way of avoiding it unless you leave the area. Another example is the incurable things the gas does. Tear Gas could give you first-degree burns to having your eyes and face being rotted away. The things the gas could do to you was endless. It could burn out your lungs to the point not even the

One of the many advancements made during the duration of World War I was that of poisonous gasses. These gasses were considered “uncivilized” before the beginning of the first World War. However, they were deemed necessary to overcome the standoff between the Allied forces and the Central Powers. The French army was the first to use such a weapon in 1914, but the Germans were the first to use poisonous gasses on a large scale. The German’s first recorded use of

World War II was Fought from 1939-1945. The Nazis forced ladored Jews to make bombs in the Holocaust. There were many different types of bombs and chemicals in WWII.

Poisonous gas was so devastating that after World War One all chemical weapons were completely banned from use during wars. The main use for poisonous gas during World War One was during trench warfare, the gas could be thrown into the trench where a large group of enemies were in a small area, and then they would be forced out because of the gas. Frequently though, most of the enemy soldiers died before making it out. There were multiple types of poison gas used during World War One, and each of the types were used for different purposes. First was mustard gas and tear gas which were mainly used to make enemy soldiers incapable of fighting back and although tear gas doesn’t kill people, mustard gas could kill you but it took weeks and is extremely agonizing. The other two types of gas, chlorine and phosgene, were used with the intention to kill the enemy. Chlorine gas mainly affects your lungs by mixing with the mucous in them and turning into hydrochloric acid. Phosgene is a much more deadly gas than chlorine and most deaths from chemical weapons in World War One were caused by it. Not only was phosgene more toxic than chlorine, it was also harder to detect because it doesn’t really have a color and its smell isn’t very strong. Poisonous gases are another extremely deadly weapon invented during World War One and were extremely painful and

Chemical warfare was starting to gain momentum during the First World War After using less than ideal equipment from the British against German forces, the United States needed to gain an edge for fighting into the future to increase their chances at mission success. The United States gained experience with chemical weapons from the First World War and after transitioning from World War I to World War II various improvements were made to enhance the capabilities of the Chemical Weapons Service. Colonel Lewis McBride was directly responsible for changing the Chemical Weapons Service and helped in securing America’s ideals; taking the United States into the future with new and improved chemical weapons technologies.

The fact that we cannot use chemical weapons is a very bad thing. We could have used these weapons in the Vietnam War. With all the tall grass and dense forests, our soldiers were not prepared for the close up combat. If we had used the chemical agents in that forest, we could have eliminated hidden enemy forces and we would have saved many American soldiers’ lives.

War, according to the Oxford Dictionary, is “A state of armed conflict between different nations or states or different groups within a nation or state” (citation). War truly does bring out the worst of in the people involved, because in war the objective is to kill or capture enough of the opposing sides’ soldiers to show that your side is superior. Both sides will take any measures necessary to win, a few examples of this being Mustard gas, Ricin, Agent Orange, and Sarin . When guns and other weapons will not cut it, that’s when in the mind of the governments that chemical warfare became necessary . Since these four chemicals and many more have been used throughout history, the Chemical Warfare Convention banned all forms of chemical weapons, due to the lasting effects of the chemicals on both nations and individuals of those nations. The way the CWC defines a chemical weapon is a toxic chemical or its precursor that can cause death, injury, temporary incapacitation or sensory irritation through its chemical action.

These are just a few examples of many accounts of the use of chemical and biological agents in war.

intended for pesticide use [1]. Later, Sarin was found to be a more effective nerve agent due to its high degree of toxicity. As a result, the Germans stockpiled Sarin and other similar compounds such as tabun and soman during World War II for chemical weapons use but it was never formally introduced as a weapon until the 1980’s during a poison gas attack on Halabja, a Kurdish city targeted by the Sadam regime in Iraq [1]. It was later used much more extensively by the Iraqi regime during its conflict with Iraq. Sarin has since primarily been used by terrorists such as extreme religious sects in Japan, or Iraqi insurgents against U.S. forces. Sarin is a desired compound for use in unconventional warfare because even under crude conditions terrorists are able to synthesize an impure concoction that is still toxic enough to be lethal.

Chemical weapons are toxic gases, which use in the wars such as World War 1. Chemical weapons used in First World War and they killed a lot of people even children. In addition, chemical weapons are unless color, so people can’t see them. Also, most of people who died through the First World War were civilians. Therefore, who were responsible about them? In addition, people who survived had dangerous and permanent diseases such as cancer, asthma … etc. Even people’s genes effected by these toxic gases and they cause a lot of genetic problems that appeared in a second generation. Even soldiers who were pushed to this war. Then, they died or effected who were responsible about their families. In addition chemical weapons burned a lot of trees and they changed plant characteristics. Also, these gases can react with others to change air and weather characteristics. Therefore, chemical weapons effect on our

Chemical weapons originated in early World War I. They were simple grenades or mortars filled with common chemicals. These specialized grenades were popularized by the Germans and then were seen used by even the Allied Forces. They were popularized by their area of effect and useful in the trench warfare.