Chemical Weapons and Terrorism Links

Reference

The best resource I have found on the web for introductory technical information about chemical weapons is the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons' page CW and CW Protection. It includes a technical discussion of chemical weapons (far more than the simple outline I provided), protection, accidents and agent dispersal.

Other Useful or Interesting Sites

  • CNN has a very nice special on Biological and Chemical Weapons here

    Preparedness

    Being prepared for a chemical (or biological) attack is difficult. It isn't terribly practical for everyone to carry around the equipment necessary to protect themselves from every possibilty. An individual citizen would have to sacrafice a lot to be constantly prepared.

    So, again, it boils down to prevention of these types of attacks and improved ability to identify and respond to an attack.

    Biological Weapons were beyond the scope of my paper. The field was so vast and possabilities endless if a group could overcome the technical difficulties. But I will say a few words here. I found an interesting Op-Ed piece in the New York Times about biological weapons (Free subscription required). The author pointed out the key to being prepared for the unique nature of a biological attack.

         The first line of defense against a biological attack would not
         be heroic fire and emergency workers like those who raced to
         the World Trade Center but rather the public health system
         that detects and monitors disease trends and would be likely to
         encounter the dying victims first. New York and other major
         cities have made great strides toward preparedness in recent
         years, but nationwide there are too few medical personnel
         trained to spot biological attacks, a shortage of sophisticated
         laboratories to identify the agents, inadequate supplies of drugs
         and vaccines to counteract the threat, and few plans for setting
         up quarantines and emergency facilities to handle mass
         casualties.
    




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