WTF Government now wants to blow up chemical & biological weapons

[era veteran]

Because the US is so far away from getting rid of these old weapons, they now want to blow them up. If the government was not so cheap they could have finished years ago. We have fought the government over 25 years on this. The only 2 munitions dumps to have to blow them up are Bluegrass Army Depot in Madison Co. ( Richmond ) and a depot in Pueblo CO. Years ago the designer of these old cold war weapons replied how were they meant to be destroyed and he replied Shoot Them. Well I guess they want to follow his advice. This plant is too close to people for this. Mustard Gas, Sarin, & VX are the ones we know about. Of the 15,000 mustard gas rounds @ Bluegrass Army Depot 9,300 are corroded. This needs to be an up in arms issue. http//www.kentucky.com/latest_news/story/1146931.html

[Statistical]

1. They will be detonated inside a sealed detonation chamber.

The fragile chemical chains that make the chemical agents work will be destroyed.
The gas in the detonation chamber can then be analyzed to determine if it is safe before venting into atmosphere.

Anything that gets rid of them quicker is good in my book.
Chemical weapons are far worse than nuclear weapons, and more prone to accidents, leaks, accidental release.

Having thousands of very old, corroded leaking shells for another decade is far more dangerous then detonating them in controlled manner.

[era veteran]

2. All the other dumps had their shit neutralized

I don't trust that the residues of explosion will be captured. The government has lied and covered up in the past.It only shortens the finish time by a few months and they won't be in compliance with treaty anyway. Too close to Lexington! The rest of the country really doesn't have this decades old problem. I thought this had been resolved but it looks like the State Dept. is leading the way. We will mobilize protest again. The controlled manner of destruction is to blow them up. What in the fuck could go wrong?

[jwenova]

3. KY

I live near the weapons, and do not look forward to any toying
with these weapons, however, I don't like living near time
boms either. Something HAS to be done.

[Lagomorph]

4. The government has not been cheap regarding the disposal of ...

chemical and biological weapons.

We're not talking high explosive ammunition here. They detonate the dispersal charge or just blast it open and burn the crap at temperatures that leave little, if anything behind.

Much better than dumping it in the ocean, like Europe did after WW1.

[era veteran]

5. Sarin and VX, What could go wrong?

They were supposed to neutralize this and have known about it for over a quarter of a century. Yes they have been cheap or this would have been done DECADES ago. I understand their 'claims' I think this is the cheap way out, with the straw man of satisfying treaty requirements, that we still won't meet. Rust never sleeps.

[Lagomorph]

6. It took years to come up with...

...the technology to really dispose of the stuff.

http://fas.org/sgp/crs/natsec/RL33432.pdf

It wasn't always so.

[era veteran]

7. The technology is neutralization and NOT exploding. Nothing to do with link

involving dumping in ocean that you posted. There was never any talk of dumping. The old wet igloos are full of rust and government lies.

[jeddie80]

8. Yeah..

Yeah.. They blow it up in US and open dozens in the world..

[jeddie80]

9. "ATTENTION! BIOHAZARD! DEATH! "

These are the words placed along the secured restricted zone, they mark the facilities which are of serious hazard to all living beings, which are used as a place to work at different toxins, bio- and bacteriological materials, this work being held under seal of secrecy. And such a facility is nearly put into operation not high in the mountains or in a deserted area but in a Tbilisi suburb - Alekseevka village.
Despite nearly all the countries in the world signed the biological and toxin weapons convention Washington is keen to freeze up the negotiations on the mechanism of its inspection by all means available. And there are some good reasons for that.
Diligently keeping away from making up a global non-proliferation of biological weapons control system the USA have been actively developing their overseas laboratories. And the geography of the facilities is rather extended -Afghanistan, Egypt, Peru, Thailand, Germany and several European countries. And now it's Georgia.
It is known, that any biological laboratory concerned with drugs development has all the resources to perform operations going against the Convention.
Forcing the start-up of Health and disease control center laboratory Washington actively train specialists in this field. But judging by the guidelines of the training the laboratories will handle not only hemorrhagic fever, anthrax, plague, aphtha, phthisis and goat fever agents.
On certifying the laboratory as a top level biosafety one its owners mean not higher standards for the engineers and laboratorians but a certain equipment reserve factor. The staff can be replaced, the equipment configuration can be changed in several hours - and we have an output of last generation combat biological agents. And it's worth mentioning that we have them outside continental US.
But even American specialists do mistakes, and do them on the verge of a fall.
For instance, last year an independent commission detected some egregious violations in Fort Detrick infection diseases research institute. They could lead to a global disaster. The personnel was unskilled, so it was attacked by infected animals, the protective suits were marred by lab tools, the transport containers with test biomaterials were losing their hermiticity. And, in addition to all that, some used protective suits and injection syringes were found at the city waste dump, say nothing of an attempt to hush up the loss of a container with first class pathogens.
From all appearances, Georgia will face the same problems in the nearest future, and it may be not the only one. The Georgians' well-known devil-may-care attitude to secure arrangements and their homebred microbiologists' total inability of dealing with deathful biological materials may lead the world to its final edge.
These are just factors concerning the organization of the process and they can be somehow overcome. But no one including his American advisers is able to predict the way M. Saakhashvili may behave. His sharp desire to have the independent republics back under Georgian jurisdiction may play a low-down trick with the future of the whole world.
Launching a "small" biological war under the guidance of his advisers, M. Saakhashvili risks letting the uncontrollable genie out of the bottle. And who would be responsible for the consequences? In that situation it may happen that there just won't be anyone to be called to account, and, most likely, nobody will be left to do that.
Could Alekseevka laboratory be just a new storage, an international virologic waste dump? There's a chance.
But about eight square kilometers is obviously too much to study human and animal diseases.
May be it's world expert community which will be able to give an answer to the mankind, what is going on here in Georgia and who develops its highly dangerous technologies far away from its own borders?

[era veteran]

10. Welcome to DU and thanks ; lots of info in that piece

But you should read the rules or the mods may take it down. 5. Copyrights: Do not copy-and-paste entire articles onto this discussion forum. When referencing copyrighted work, post a short excerpt (not exceeding 4 paragraphs) with a link back to the original. / All NBC weaponry is evil.