deadliest chemical weapons humans have been wiping each other from existence since the beginning of time whether it's a simple squabble or an alls out balls out War nothing is ever really resolved until at least one side lies in ruin Spartans destroyed the Romans vandalized the Korean War forget about it while a classic sword of the chest or a freedom seed to the old gray matter is perfectly capable of getting your point across sometimes Nations invest in more Creative Solutions and that's where full-on chemical warfare comes in you see a quick and easy demise is a
courtesy it's the slow and agonizing expirations that really send a message so let's see just how far humanity is straight from the light shall we as a warning you'll be seeing some gruesome images of the effects of these very real and very deadly chemicals so if you're one to be watching these videos with a big old plate of food you're in for a bad time anyway first up is mustard gas a bit more hangy than your average condiment mustard gas was a game changer in World War I which was already a game changer itself in
the world of warfare first used by the Germans during the third battle of era in Belgium in the summer of 1917 mustard gas is one of the most well-known chemical weapons used during the Great War but here's a fact for you mustard gas isn't a gas it's not even a mustard it's actually a liquid at room temperature which actually made it more effective in Warfare the thick and oily liquid would stick to most surfaces for days on end and to take advantage of this mustard gas was packed into artillery shells which bombarded the battlefield the
artillery explosions would turn the liquid into a fine Mist spraying all over the place what's worse is that the lethal liquid would slowly vaporize in warmer temperatures creating creeping death clouds which would engulf soldiers this vicious Vapor had a strong garlic or mustardy odor which is how the chemical got its namesake but no matter if it's a gas or a liquid the horrible effects still remain the same and I hope you're ready for some brief chemistry lessons here cuz I'm going to be giving you a rundown of how these chemicals affect the human body and
since I'm a chemical engineer during my day job you can you know trust me bro all right so mustard gas is what's called a blistering agent this means that its main form of attack is damaging human tissue and this is done through the chemical's ability to really fudge up the DNA and proteins in the nuclei of your cells particularly in the moisture areas of your body like your eyes your skin and your respiratory tract so rest easy knowing that nowhere's really safe especially if you sweat a lot like say A Soldier In the Heat of
battle carrying a crap ton of equipment any skin exposed to mustard gas will develop severe chemical burns and thanks to all that DNA and protein destruction will form very juicy but agonizingly painful yellow blisters or as I like to call them the Forbidden Capri Suns now with how bad this stuff is on your skin it's even worse when it gets in your slippery wet eyeballs if mustard gas Gets In Your Eyes you're going to be hit with severe and immediate irritation burning and in some cases partial or complete blindness that's just the effects on the
outside of the body breathing the stuff in results in immediate burning and pain in your throat and nasal passages why is it spicy over the course of a few days this will evolve into inflammation of set Airways causing restricted breathing congestion and likely complete respiratory failure those who did survive mustard gas exposure often suffered long-term respiratory complications for years after the war despite causing these horrific side effects and being the most commonly used chemical in Old WW1 the mortality rate of mustard gas is pretty low only making up about 2 to 3% of all chemical
warfare deaths during the Great War there was a chemical that was much more deadly than mustard gas and that chemical is way back in 1812 Cornish chemist and long neck ha John Davy decided to try to make some new chemical compounds as chemists tend to do today's attempt was exposing a mixture of carbon monoxide and chlorine gas to sunlight UV radiation from the sunlight actually kicked off a reaction forming a new gaseous compound Davey named this creation fos genene which when roughly translated from Greek means born from light this compound was pretty easy to produce
and was deemed valuable in various chemical synthesis reactions it's even still used today as an intermediate chemical by Industries for making stuff like Plastics insulation and even Pharmaceuticals the problem though is that it's extremely deadly if misused H easy to make and deadly when misused sounds like the perfect candidate for a chemical weapon said the Germans in a silly an aggressive accent and that's just what they did in December of 1915 during the first battle of epra poor Belgium really can't catch a break Germans set up about 3,000 cylinders of compressed fos gas on the
front line it was then released in a light Breeze causing a deadly white cloud which devoured the opposing forces now fos genene is classified as a choking agent which although very kinky is lethal when exposed to fos genene gas you immediately experience violent coughing difficulty breathing because yeah you know a choking agent and nausea and vomiting not only will your skin develop painful chemical burns but your respiratory tract as well just like with chlorine gas that I mentioned in a previous video phene has a similar mechanism of action it reacts with residual moisture inside and
outside of your body through a process called hydrolysis which forms hydrochloric acid and carbon dioxide the newly formed acid eats away at any tissue it comes in contact with which hurts like a lot the gas also directly damages your body cells causing your blood vessels to start leaking out fluids to neighboring organs particularly your lungs which is as a French say no bueno the excess fluid in your lungs only makes your breathing worse and worse until eventually you're physically unable to breathe and you suffocate now you might be familiar with the fact that a key
tactic of World War I was trench warfare both sides of the war dug miles and miles of trenches as a way to protect themselves from machine gun fire it's really hard to shoot at guys when they're in a little hidey-hole well this is where chemical weapons really shined you see chemicals like mustard gas and fos genene are much heavier than air which means that the gases would creep over the land and pour into the trenches flushing out any soldiers who happen to be in the wrong place the wrong time warfare involving chemical weapons was horrifying
British officer Martin Greener recounted witnessing a cloud of poison gas approaching his [Music] position just a dawn they opened a very heavy fire especially machine gun fire and that's the idea was apparently to keep make you get down and then the next thing we heard heard this sizzling you know I mean you could hear this damn stuff coming out and then saw this awful Cloud coming over great yellow greenish yellow Cloud wasn't very high about uh I would say wasn't more than 20 ft up nobody knew what to think but immediately it got there and
knew what to think I mean you knew what what it was well then of course you immediately began to choke then the the word came whatever you do don't go down you see if you got to the bottom of the trench you got the full blast of it cuz it was heavy stuff it went down now you have to remember that fene was first used in 1915 the first effective gas masks weren't developed or distributed for a few months meaning that these first Witnesses had little to no protection against this stuff in the end fos
genene is estimated to be the cause of over 90,000 or about 85% of allk known chemical weapon deaths during World War I although history likes to highlight the German Empire for their aggressive use of chemical weapons during the Great War and rightfully so it was actually France who first used tear gas in 1914 but compared to chemicals like fos genene it's like hucking a paper ball at a cannon just prior to World War I's big spanking sequel Germany was experiencing a bit of a problem outside of planning world domination bugs a bunch of weird little
weevils were doing IR reparable damage to German Orchards which were a Key Food Source you see you have to be a little self-sustaining when you inevitably piss off the rest of the world in response German scientists were tasked with developing an effective insecticide to wither the weevils in 19 19 38 one Gard shraer mixed phosphorus with cyanide developing a toxic compound that was too deadly for agricultural use if you can't kill bugs with it maybe you can kill enemy troops with it this compound was dubbed taboon from the German word for taboo because the compound
was deemed too deadly for use but that didn't dissuade shider who rushed back to the lab to perform more experiments in doing so he quickly developed a much more potent version of the already lethal compound and this new poison was called sarin a very volatile odorless colorless liquid why is it so deadly well sarin is classified as a nerve agent arguably the deadliest and most horrifying classification of any chemical weapon it works like this now really turn your brains on for this explanation in your body is your nervous system this is basically the entire body's
communication Network controlling your movements your thoughts your emotions your memory muscle function and passive functions like your heartbeat and you're breathing well sarin comes in and all that up by messing with these guys these are neurotransmitters chemical compounds that are pass between neurons in your nervous system some neurotransmitters you may be familiar with are adrenaline which gives you that fight ORF flight feeling serotonin the happiness molecule and dopamine which hits really hard when you're up about 450% on your spy calls but you're too stupid to sell them even though they expire in 2 hours well
I would like you to meet acetal choline this neurotransmitter is what controls your muscle movement your thought process and your learning ability when passed from your nervous system to your muscles your muscles are stimulated and move the way your brain tells them to after your muscles are done doing what they're doing the acetylcholine is then broken down by acetylcholine esterase allowing the muscles to relax so sarin over here comes in and breaks that communication line your muscles are bombarded with signals to move but no signals to stop as a result victims who are exposed to
sarin gas are no longer in control of their own body bodies they can't think they can't breathe the body continues to seize and painfully convulse this complete loss of bodily function means death is quick in as little as a single minute with direct inhalation compared to fos genene sarin is calculated to be about 43 times more lethal when comparing lethal dosages the sheer potential destruction of the chemical was enough to prevent Germany from ever using the gas during World War II some sources claim that the main mustache in charge was too scared to unleash it
after his own personal experiences with mustard gas in World War I but the guy authorized using gas Chambers on innocent civilians so I'm calling on that one regardless of the reason sarin was never authorized for use in World War II however sarin along with a beefed up version called cyclosarin are known to have been used by Iraq in 1983 during the Iran Iraq war resulting in t of thousands of deaths an even deadlier version of the nerve agent called s was also synthesized but luckily it's never been used together taboon sarin s and cyclosarin make
up the G Series of nerve agents and you can pause here to read up on them all right we need a mental health break here so let's get some of that serotonin rebalanced a look at this little guy he's living it up he's doing his thing he's got a piece of fluff he's probably going to NOP no he ate it all right H now look at this handsome little man think I know what he wants you to do that's right don't disappoint him all right back to the devastation and [Music] despair venomous Agent X or
VX for short is a chemical compound discovered by the British in the 1950s while go figure researching potential pesticides oh how the turntables Britain pulled the whole copy my homework but in your own words move by building off of the AFF forementioned Gerard shrader's work once fully developed and refined the compound was then produced for the sake of chemical warfare should the world wars decide to become a Trilogy in its pure form VX is a thick oily amber colored liquid that is relatively nonvolatile meaning that it doesn't vaporize easily on its own at room temperature
these physical properties prevent the oil-like chemical from dissipating wherever it's released it can remain on the ground and plants for days on end creating poison pools across the landscape the odorless and tasteless liquid is lethal in very small doses just a few milligrams on your skin will be enough to send you vertically packing the mechanism of action is identical to sarin causing a complete loss of bodily function and death by asphixiation however VX is considered to be much more potent in 1993 the United Nations banned along with several other chemical weapons the production and stockpiling
of VX and any amount that exceeds 100 G or about a/4 pound minus the cheese VX had also been used alongside sarin during the Iran Iraq war in 1983 as well as a few assassinations the most high-profile of which being the brother of North Korea leader guy Kim jung-un in 2017 where two women rubbed a cloth soaked with the nerve agent in the poor guy's face at an airport he received his one-way boarding pass to the northest Korea in the sky in just 15 minutes but that's not the end of nerve agents just yet no
now it's the Soviet Union's turn to dabbling chemical weapons in the 1970s many sneaky Soviet scientists were tasked with developing new nerve agents to bypass the un's banned chemical weapons list after over two decades of research the Nova series of nerve agents were developed these eight compounds are believed to be the most toxic things ever developed by man kind besides political subreddits now the navatu agents are functionally equivalent to other nerve agents but again are much more potent than the last although weapons were created to release these agents they were never deployed on the battlefield
field instead these compounds are mainly used in silencing enemies of the state with one of the most recent cases being in 2018 if you've actually paid attention in any of your world history classes then you know what this stuff is zeyon B derived from the German word for cyclone this pesticide turned humanicide was developed by you guessed it those gosh dang Germans back in the 1920s originally for much more innocent uses like getting rid of Lys on clothes to fumigating warehouses ships and even trains used to transport cattle just cattle zeyon B's main ingredient is
hydrogen cyanide a toxic systemic poison the compound takes the form of small pellets which when exposed to air evaporate into a gas now before some nerds out there correct me the phase changed from a solid directly to a vapor is actually called sublimation this is me saying I know what matters is the impact of the gas once inhaled the biology of it all is very complex but basically when a victim inhales hydrogen cyanide it's absorbed into the blood through the lungs where it breaks down into regular cyanide this then poisons the body's cells particularly the
mitochondria you know the PowerHouse of the cell aren't you glad you learned that one well inside the mitochondria cyanide stops the cellular respiration process this means that your body can no longer produce the energy required for your cells to do their jobs and just like in this American economy without jobs cells die very quickly as a result the entire body shuts down with death occurring within minutes of exposure of course you may know that zyon b was Adolf Hitler's poison of choice to systematically eliminate millions in about of weaponized ostm you know during that big
historical event in World War II that YouTube doesn't like people talking about isn't it great living in a time where we have to censor ourselves when discussing horrific historical events anyway next chapter during the Vietnam war from the mid-50s to the mid '70s the US was kind of getting their asses handed to them one of the main problems for US troops was North Vietnam's territorial Advantage thick foliage and treacherous jungles provided the northern military with tactical cover and Vantage points so how do you fight back against a hidden opponent you take away their hiding spots
that's exactly what the US tried to do when they developed the rainbow agents toxic herbicides developed specifically for converting a lush jungle biome into a complete Wasteland luckily a bunch of us chemical companies already produced herbicides for use in agriculture to kill off invasive plants that threaten crop yields the most notable companies were the Dow Chemical Company and the Monsanto company these companies were then tasked with upping production for the war effort in all six herbicides were developed agents green pink purple blue white and orange all named after the color-coded barrels that they were shipped
in agent orange was released into the environment by any means necessary helicopters planes boats trucks backpacks whatever could be used to spray liquid everywhere it's estimated that over 11 million gallons of Agent Orange showered over South Vietnam as well as the neutral countries of LA and Cambodia the US government actually sprayed about 20 times more than what the chemical man manufacturers deemed necessary to get the job done you what tens of thousands of square miles of rainforest in Jungle were devastated in the' 60s and70s full ecosystems were flat out destroyed surviving Wildlife were forced to
relocate and while not directly intended hundreds of thousands of people were caught in the crossfire soldiers and civilians alike immediate exposure symptoms included skin irritation and swelling as well as difficulty breathing overall the short-term effects were pretty mild and non-threat threatening however it was the long-term effects that packed the punch in all 14 diseases are linked with agent orange exposure including various cancers Parkinson's disease and severe birth defects thanks to the chemical mixtures genetically damaging mechanism of action despite not being solely intended as a chemical weapon against humans it is estimated that over 300,000 US
troops and over 400,000 Vietnamese laian and Cambodian people have died as a result result of agent Orange's long-term side effects making the compound one of the deadliest in history oh man what a bummer you should watch something happier here try this I'll see you over there [Music]
