by CKR
I’ve stayed out of the white phosphorus uproar, because a number of people have said what I thought needs to be said. (Armchair Generalist, Stygius, William Arkin)
But my friend the Armchair Generalist ran into some flack from that small group of people who are truly and loudly horrified by the use of anything beyond clean explosives and slashing bullets.
Let me first say that part of the indignation is political and self-righteous: look at the dreadful things these people are doing, against the laws of war and humanly repellent. And I agree with the more militarily oriented that once you’re dead, you’re dead. Doesn’t get much worse than that.
But I think there’s a portion of the argument that’s been missed by those who are trying to put across the basic facts. Let me call it the Yuck Factor.
I can recall at one time in my life being repulsed by radiation sickness and nerve gas in a way that went far beyond the usual horrors of war. I could hardly bear to think about it. Skin peeling off, nausea, convulsions, internal organs liquefying, the body out of control, with full consciousness of the degradation.
Being atomized or slashed to shreds, in one’s imagination, results in a rapid loss of consciousness. There’s a clean one/zero feel to it. But radiation and nerve gas imply ooze, living decomposition, increasing pain.
By some turn of fate or my subconscious, my career took me to a place where I had to contemplate nuclear weapons every day. Later, I came into contact with the nerve gas community, even having the opportunity to tour one of their facilities.
It’s not like a tour of the Hershey candy factory. You start off with being fitted with a gas mask in a chamber into which they pump banana oil. If you can smell it, the gas mask doesn’t fit right. I knew that VX comes in through your skin, anyway; the gas mask would be very limited protection. Next you are instructed in the use of three atropine self-injectors, including that you are to clip them to your collar after you have used them, so that if you are found unconscious, the medics will know how much you’ve dosed yourself. Atropine is itself a poison, but it and the nerve gas neutralize each other in your body.
All my life I had found nerve gas far more revolting than radiation, which I found merely terrifying. I had gone through the gas mask drill before, so that wasn’t too bad, but breathing is difficult, magnifying anxiety symptoms. I was feeling faint by the time we got to the instructions for the self-injectors and had to press my fingernails into my palms and bite the inside of my lip to stay upright in my chair. I’ve never been fond of injections, either.
My injector kit and gas mask belted around my waist, I followed my host through the halls. I knew that the ventilation was arranged so that air flowed from the halls into the laboratories, but I was shocked to see open space for that ventilation. In the plutonium facility, the flow was the same, but there were always filters! And over there you see a tank of VX. Stainless steel, it was taller and broader than me, enough to kill a largish city.
My heart was palpitating and I was breathing shallowly, two of the symptoms of nerve gas poisoning. With three, you’re supposed to use the atropine injector. Recognizing the similarity of those symptoms to garden-variety anxiety, however, I had vowed not to use those injectors unless I saw someone who worked there use his. Atropine is poison, remember.
So I bit my lip again and forced my breathing back to a more normal rhythm. I was grateful when we could hand in our apparatus belts, and even more grateful to my colleagues as we drove back to the hotel.
“I had at least two symptoms at all times,” one of them said. How good to be able to laugh again!
Some of us have had experiences that have allowed us to become inured to the peculiarly yucky idea of nuclear and chemical dissolution. But most people haven’t had these experiences. It’s good that some of us haven’t become too accustomed to these horrors.
But those who are repulsed by such things can let that yuck factor get in the way of considering the true horror: that nations make war on each other for the wrong reasons.
…For you don’t count the dead
When God’s on your side.
- - Bob Dylan