Nerve agents inhibit acetylcholinesterase, which is an enzyme that catalyzes the breakdown of acetylcholine. Some nerve agents covalently bind to the enzyme, and can damage the active site of the enzyme, so the acetylcholine builds up, the signal keeps sending, and the motor neurons keep firing. The G series and V series of nerve agents were mass produced, weaponized agents, while the EA series, A series, and others are not known to be mass produced or weaponized. Exposure to nerve agents is usually treated with atropine and pralidoxime chloride (2-PAM chloride).
@@derrickhageman1969 while true, things like Carbamates are relatively weak NAs, they aren't NEAR the potency of classical NA chemical warfare agents. And outta the 260 some publicly known NAs he had to narrow it down somehow
@@OpossumSupremacist Yep pesticides are weak to people but not insects but the one thing I realized while watching this video is chemistry is one scary profession ngl moving nerve agents aside their is other chemical compounds and elements that can seriously injure you or kill you in a few drops or grams
Not nearly as extreme as the nerve agent testing, but in the late 90s, I was in the Marine Corps and "volunteered" for a sleep deprivation experiment. A substantial number of minor injuries occurred, and those who made it to the end were largely experiencing delusions, mood disorders, and outright hallucinations. Some (like me) recovered relatively quickly after returning to normal sleep patterns, but some needed months of therapy to resolve sleep and mood disorders they'd developed (and probably still have lingering symptoms). It was a nightmare. But you got paid a lot more AND you got as long as you needed to recover afterward.
I'm surprised they did that experiment when the symptoms of sleep deprivation were long established by the 90s. I wonder if they were actually testing some other behavioral aspect but of course didn't want to cause a placebo by informing you.
@@thedread7258 keep in mind though the extension isn't wholly accurate. It takes the number of dislikes from before RUclips removed them and also keeps a count of the dislikes from other people with the extension. It can't account for post-removal dislikes from average users because it has no way of knowing about them
@@Uthael_Kileanea So, in other words, the tier list is actually -The Hague Won't Even Give You A Trial For This (S) -Crime Against Life (A) -The Development Process Was Grounds For Execution (B) -Added To Charges: Crimes Against Humanity (C) -Death Is Not Enough For Your Crimes (D) -A War Criminal Is You (E) -F Stands For Un-Forgivable Sin (F)
Well actually its not. If one reads the papers carefully, this claim collapses down to a very unimportant kinetic finding. There is one kinetic constant, which turns out to be femtomolar if you do lots of math to isolate it from the complex mechanism, but the IC50 is micromolar, so this is a weak agent. But the quotes on wikipedia got mangled and on the first glance, one might think, its super potent. Its not even a chemical warfare agent and has never been considered to be a candidate.
@@Volvith I know right, same feeling as when I heard about the CIA and their FULLY FUNCTIONING HEART-ATTACK GUN. which was made back in like, the fucking 1970s. Because 1- After you realize how many notable people have died to heart attacks over the years of seemingly natural causes, this really can make you wonder. And 2 (More relavent to this) If they had a wholly traceless, nearly silent gun which made people die of seemingly natural causes all the way back in the 70s, imagine what they can do today with their current budget and scale.
I start my AIT for that next week, CBRN has always fascinated and scared the fuck out of me, wish me luck I hope I never need to earn my pay for this job
The really scary part about this is that these are ALL incredibly simple molecules. Im an organic chemistry student on my third year of Ochem and I'm trained to look at molecular structures and imagine the potential synthesis pathways. The first thing that came to mind when I saw these was that I could synthesize these compounds with relative ease and using common precursors, which is really really really scary. 😭 As we push for a more educated societal standard, i wonder how many horrible people in the future will come up with the bright idea to utilize chemical weaponry
If it helps a lot of these are redundant from a weaponry point of view. VX has been around since the 50s and Edgewood mass produced enough to wipe out cities, once you have something that deadly it doesn't make a practical difference if the newer compound is more toxic, a tiny amount can already kill you and there's already a lot of it ready to be deployed, unless you're looking for something niche (as in not a WMD) there's no reason to make something worse unless you can't make VX.
@@DrDipsh1t Not to mention higher lethality is a double edged sword as it makes it harder to handle. More terrorists have been killed by exposure to their own NBC agent than the victims they have claimed.
As a member of a domestic WMD response team the majority of our monthly real world simulated trainings are orchestrated as 1st or 2nd year chem students whom elected to challenge their recently discovered knowledge by attempting to manufacture some of these agents without concern for the ramifications.
I still remember our NAAK (nerve agent antidote kit)training in Army BCT. It honestly was the most terrfying part, not because it was dangerous at all but just learning about Nerve agents and how quickly they could get ya with very little warning. We had to memorize all the symptoms. Sudden headache Unexplained runny nose Burning eyes Etc.
@@toxichank6960 I ended up with the opportunity to test in hot cells with VX. Incredibly un-nerving experience. Cool, but fuck that. I’d rather go back to my Stryker and collect ground samples lmao
I remember in high school our chemistry teacher told us that our final assignment in class is to research any paper that is chemistry-related and present it to the class. Me, being the meme/edge-lord all high schoolers tend to be, did an entire presentation on the effects and countermeasures to agent VX with model testing on mice, as described in some Czech research paper. To maximize meme potential, my entire Powerpoint was in Comic Sans.
Reminds me of when I had to really, really tone down my end of semester presentation. We had a useless science dept, but I somehow got to do an independent study on energetic materials. I got 2-3 police visits, a couple misdemeanor and one felony charges, one letter from the USDOJ and an "A" but not an "A+" I learned a lot about energetic materials and a decent amount about the legal system. Very informative class, would recommend. Edit: This was a long time ago, not sure I would recommend these days. The independent study part I'd absolutely recommend, my subject maybe not so much.
ah this is horrifying but one thing I find interesting is that you can, through their structure, almost sort them into a family tree. it's almost like you can see how the ideas developed over time
@@That_Chemist There's a pretty obvious logic to it. There's a unique bit that has the toxic effect, and the derivatives mostly replace one alkane with another to modify its physical properties.
O P O I ain't no chemist... but that arrangement appears in a large percentage. I'm guessing that arrangement is the "component" of the molecule that does the dirty work.
Neostigmine is quite interesting because whilst all the others are used to CAUSE paralysis, neostigmine is used to REVERSE the paralysis of the non-depolarising neuromuscular blockade cause by drugs like tubocurarine and pancuronium.
leaving the horror of all of these aside, i am super impressed that you can tell that something is necessarly toxic just buy looking at the (stylized) molecule. That is not only insanely impressive, but also really shows how much it pays off to actually understand one's own craft, not just get familiar with steps.
I just finished Chem 102 and even with tutoring, extra credit, and studying multiple times a week, the highest grade I could made was an 86 lol. That stuff really goes over my head, so I'm also amazed too. I need a little bit of his passion to help me through organic chemistry next year
The moment you sent Sarin to D tier I knew this was gonna be a spicy video. The classified, human tested, chemical warfare agents of the United States? Well of course we want to know more about that
@@samblackstone3400 probably brainwashed to believe it is an honor to sacrifice their health to the development of increasingly efficient ways of killing other human beings
Most of the test subjects were inmates at Holmesburg Prison in philly. They were not informed of the risks or natures of these experiments, and were either blackmailed into it by guards or offered reduced sentences in exchange. Many actually _did_ get their sentences reduced... technically. Because they died.
Sarin is treatable... so is VX, but some of the others aren't as easily treatable... Because the no no chemicals far outlive any treatment drug, and the treatment drugs would kill you in the first place before they could treat you.
@@livedandletdie as I found out watching the rest of the video. But also “easily treatable” isn’t correct since you have to be treated within minutes to survive VX or GB
man I had NO Idea an agent even existed that was easier to understand using femtomolars instead of regular old mcg/ml. because I guess 10x^-15 its a bit hard for our brains to comprehend. I suppose individual atoms of certain radioactive elements some how ending up in vital tissue are "kinda bad". its all just so far outside my existence and (hopefully) always will be
@@garethjones6342 Imagine doing the LD50 testing and going back for the third time dividing down after the entire sample population died immediately _again_ Then thinking "Maaaybe I should have been being more careful with this one this whole time..."
Fun fact about Aberdeen/ Edgewood area. If you get stationed there for more than 3 yrs, you MUST sign a waiver stating you have been made aware that there are VERY high levels of cancer in the area. Oh, and in the mornings we would go on company runs up to the gate to edgewood. On the gate, they had a sign that they are authorized to use deadly force without warning if you cross said gate
Ah, the good ol' 'Use of Deadly Force Authorized' signage. That's just an ordinary day at any USAF base where there are Alert bombers, tankers, or fighters on the flightline.
In grad school, I worked on a multi-step synthesis to make some goofy organophosphorous compound. I came up with a whole synthetic plan, which I'm certain would have worked, and started validating it with SciFinder searches of my intermediates. Long story short, it's worryingly easy to accidentally plan a process that involves distillation of sarin. Had to go back to the drawing board on that one...
I'm kind of surprised terrorists aren't slaughtering thousands of people every day with some of these things, they don't appear like they'd be especially tricky to synthesise. I'd check, but that seems like it'd probably be a bad idea. Then again that cult that released sarin into the Tokyo subway seemed to have surprisingly poor results, and I seem to recall they had quite a lot of the stuff. But if someone made one of the less volatile ones and went round painting it on random touchable surfaces in a city... Jesus. Then again you could do the same with dimethylHg... Like I say, surprised this isn't happening all the time.
"goofy organophosphorous compound" literally describes everything on this list...all of your intermediaries are going to be completely fucked up also surprised nobody has mentioned phosgene in all of this tbh, and "organophosphate" is only mentioned once...whoever made this is either a bad chemist or intentionally covering up the info you'd need to develop a weapon even though it's widely understood
@@TwoTreesStudio well considering he explained very detailed compounds and history of said compounds, yet obscured any actionable information I’m going to say it was deliberate. The non chemists watching don’t get it anyway and the chemist that are watching already know, so better just let the 3rd group (amateur chemists trying to make chemical weapons) In the dark as long as possible, if anyone wants to know how to do it they can make the google search themselves.
Wait untill you read up on bacterial toxins, they make even the very worst organophosphates look cute. Bacterial toxins are the most potent naturally occuring toxins on earth, the most potent of which, Botulinum neurotoxin A is 1.000-10.000x more deadly than the most potent nerve agent. Just 5 grams, if evenly divided among everyone is enough to kill every human on earth. And many other bacterial toxins are insanely potent as well, lethal in sub-microgram dosages.
As a Former decontamination sergeant, i can confirm that VX is hellish. One of the big Problems is His very gooey consistance, which make it difficult to decontaminate. In the cbrn Branche, there is the Term "VX problematic"
so, (for context I’m CBRN in the US Army) and it’s cool to see someone review what they beat into our heads. Soman is terrifying because it ages (permanently binds to your AChE within 2 mins of exposure.) We usually are able to counter nerve agent poisoning with a combination of Diazepam and Atropine (mostly the atropine) alongside copious amounts of RSDL to the affected area. SMs (servicemembers) are given CANA (the anti convulsant) and an ATNAA (the immediate atropine) injectors. Mostly these can counter 2nd and 3rd Gen agents, however the novichoks (4th Gen, A-Series, etc.) are also terrifying bc they are resistant to these interventions. It’s why the Russians prefer them.
I like how even though the tiers only rank them in badness relative to each other, and even the F one is really scary, half of them still ended up in S and A.
For anyone who doesn't wanna see the video of what happens when someone is exposed to a nerve agent, but are still curious, look at a wasp getting sprayed by raid. The spray holds the sodium channels open and essentially makes them have a seizure until they die.
Or remember when (if) you had that bad cramp in your calf at night? Now imagine whole body getting the same, plus mentally God knows what is happening in your head. This last probably minutes, but I bet it feels like eternity. Horrible way to go down😢
As a layman in anything related to chemistry, I wish there were additional descriptions as to what these agents do to you physically. Still love this content, the fact that many of these don’t degrade and are so lethal at small doses and with little to no warning is wild.
I’m pretty sure all of these inhibit the production of acetylcholinesterase which is an enzyme that breaks down acetylcholine which is a neurotransmitter that does a whole bunch of stuff including making your muscles contract and with no enzyme to get rid of the acetylcholine your muscles just sort of stay contracted which means you can’t breathe and eventually you die due to asphyxiation.
I used to work in a laboratory that did testing on nearly all of these compounds. While we were working with them we had these autoinjectors similar to an Epi-pen that were called Duodotes. They contained Atropine and another compound called 2-PAM that both worked together to counteract the effects of the nerve agents. One of the scariest ones is by far GD. It may not be nearly as toxic as the other ones, but because aging happens in a few minutes, by the time you would start getting symptoms of exposure it would be too late to get an antidote. I was responsible for making up some of the dosing solutions of these agents and would hand them off to someone that would give them to an animal. Even when an antidote was given to the animal, they would still have pretty severe symptoms. Its pretty brutal to see those kinds of things and its part of the reason I no longer work there. These compounds are no joke and I still have a pretty healthy fear of them. There's a reason they are banned.
Atropine for one thigh and 2-PAM Chloride for the other. Plus Pyridostigmine bromide tablets for pre-exposure prophylaxis. These are not cures. They are issued to the soldier for first-aid purposes to keep him or her alive long enough to be medevacked for treatment.
I’ve never heard about the Edgewood Arsenal human experiments before either, would be interested to see a video on it. We shouldn’t forget the atrocities in our past.
@@bujfvjg7222 people call me slow, dumb, stupid, and even retarded. However, it's realities like these that allow me to remain blissfully ignorant, and happy to work at Bojangles for $10 per hour! This world is broken beyond repair, and there's nothing you and I can do about it.
how the fuck did they test the nerve agents on citizens??! were they highly dilouted or something? were the volunteers not told what they were really inhaling??
The added fun with Soman is that it quickly irreversibly binds to the nerve receptors so normal nerve agent antidotes don't function that well. One of the reasons p-tabs exist
I mean if we say that we're generous and 1 Mol^-15 per kg is ld50 then if you had a 1 mol/l solution, you could wipe out all of humanity, 8×10^9 and we were generous and said every human weighed 100kg, then you could kill all of humanity 1250 times in a row.
@@likemau5552 It's not "That" bad, actually. Firstly, AChE inhibition constants and lethal dosages are not as strongly correlated as some would believe. Secondly, there are more things that govern toxicity than just enzyme inhibition kinetics (For instance, pharmacodynamics, whether the agent is readily hydrolysed in the body, etc). Thirdly, one of the papers dealing with TMTFA did test its toxicity on mice. By intraperitoneal injection, it was "only" around the same order of magnitude as sodium cyanide. So, definitely not something you would want to get in you, but also not on the level of something like Sarin or VX.
at proper homeopathic levels, if you somehow properly synthesized it, even the presence of a SINGLE molecule of active compond is like winning the lottary. thats how bullshit homeopathy is; like TMTFA; hard to even comprehend
Growing up on a farm, some of the chemicals we used were scary, as was the way some farmers out there handled them without any protective clothing or respirators. Common insecticide use against soil borne pests were Terufos and Phorate, they were sold under different brand names, the LD50 on some of them was around 1mg/Kg. This scares the hell out of me, a tenth of a gram inhaled or swallowed and you're dead (dermal numbers were only slightly higher), I don't go near anything that toxic.
If you want to see the effects of a nerve agent in action, just use insect spray on a mosquito.The mode of action is pretty much the same, with the difference that the compounds of the insecticides are optimized to inhibit/block insect acetylcholinesterase (an enzyme which breaks down the neurotransmitter acetylcholin), while nerve agents are good at blocking human acetylcholinesterase.
Correct. The most common insecticides work by disrupting the nerve sodium / potassium ion channels rather than acetylcholinesterase inhibition, but with the same result.
Try pyrethrin on fleas! They'll get one short jump and land twitching for about 20 seconds. Doing the Afghani Fish Dance! (What the Russians said about Afghan rebels after getting hit by Soman.)
@@MootingInsanity I don't get why people are surprised of this; governments are evil by their very nature. They'll send thousands upon thousands of men to die just to benefit a super small elite class. Lives mean nothing to them, other than what they can get out of them for their own profit
VX was apparently so important that it was rumoured to have been given by Britain to the United States as part of quid pro quo for information/designs for Thermonuclear weapons. Also Porton Down laboratory in Britain also conducted human experimentation with nerve agents (including at least one death found by a coroner's inquest in 2004 to have been unlawful) so you could include that with any Edgeworth Arsenal material.
ICU/OR RN back again, Neostigmine is used A LOT in critical care/anesthesia medicine. It's one of the most cost-effective and efficient reversal agents for paralytics. Rocuronium, Vecuronium, succs, all reversed by Neostigmine within 60 seconds, usually less than that. Another one is Suggamadex. Also, definitely make a deep dive on Eastwood Armory please
What's most scary to me is that you only have to get in the ballpark of any of those molecules. You've got two functional groups that you can mix and match and basically any combination of them makes an acetylcholinesterase inhibitor.
What a load of bullshit. Without field data nothing is a chemical weapon. There's reams of de novo drug design studies that go nowhere, because functionality is not as simple as organic chemists believe. Go learn some pharmacology before making these claims.
@@SwitchTF2 Cool hubris, bro. Just listen to what you're saying: "because these compounds have not been characterized, they're not dangerous". Please never step foot in a lab. To be clear, almost all of these neurotoxins have two parts: something to effectively permanently bind to one of the active sites on acetocholinesterase and something to sterically block the rest of the active region of it. Let me make one up for you: throw a bunch of isopropane groups on a nitrogen and bond it via an oxygen to, I don't know, lets say a dimethylcyclohexane. Any dimethylcyclohexane. Take your pick. I'll give you a dollar to breathe it. Its not a chemical weapon, right? "Without field data nothing is a chemical weapon." right? Dollar not enough? How about a trillion dollars? The moon? Literally doesn't matter from my point of view because you're not gonna be collecting. @That Chemist what odds would you put on my nonsense molecule being recognized as GRAS? Would you take a biggo sniff of it?
Also forgot to add that yes as a Chem soldier we do get exposed during training to being used to working within environments laced with nerve agents. But for the most part the popular chemical we use is just cs
I did some training with an agency where we underwent live-agent hazmat operations. It was 4 days of classroom learning, and 1 day of in the field. We had to have all of our masks and filters inspected, and then double and triple verified by computer measurements. We went into areas with VX, Sarin and GB gasses/exposure. And when they said “Oh yeah, by the way, this stuff isn’t even anywhere near the worst out there.” That just kind of hit different. Edited to add: Yes, VX is a 10/10 on this list. But theres also other nerve agents that make your death even more unpleasant. Just for some reference, in the proper environment, with the proper conditions and carrier, a single drop of VX gas the size of the tip of a needle, could kill over 3000 people.
1, Cyclosarin is less potent compare to sarin 2, Soman belongs in S tier - even tho it is not as toxic as some of the other agents, but the main kicker for it is that it is extremely hard to treat due to the rate at which aging (the loss of the alkoxy group ) which renders it resistant to oxime antidotes. Normal effective window for treatment for other agents are around few hours. Soman? 5 minutes 😬 3, In V series, the thiol is the leaving group, not the alkoxy group (I.e. in VX, the leaving group is diisopropylaminoethanthiol) Hope this helps
Technically, both are leaving groups I guess their hydrolysis rate is as follows Cl F SR OR NR2 The fact that two groups can split off makes binding to ACE irreversible... EDIT: Cl and F had a mix-up.
@@edi9892 The leaving group in this case is what causes the phosphonylation of the serine residue in AChE, in this case the thiol - the loss of alkoxy group is not the mechanism for its toxicity, but merely how hard it is to reverse a poisoned enzyme molecule. 2nd remark is incorrect unfortunately - fluoride is a much weaker leaving group than chloride. The reason why a weaker leaving group resulting in higher toxicity is that less of the inhibitor gets inactivated by nucleophiles within the body such as water, before reaching the intended target, AChE. Once reaching the target, the catalytic triad would still be able to eliminate the weaker leaving group due to lower activation energy resulted from stabilization of transition state intermediate
@@a.ziegler6010 Thanks for the clarification. I already noticed that I might be wrong, but I wrote this comment at 3:00 in the night... (sleep problems)
The G stands for "German (agent)", you learn this in Army CBRN training at Nord Hall in AIT. This was done because those agents were discovered during WW2 in the possession of the Germans as the Allies invaded.
@@timtmtm7689 I was puzzled too so I looked it up. He didn't mean Gerhard Schröder but the German chemist Gerhard Schrader. Apparently he was called "The father of the nerve agents".
Two popular theories as to why Hitler refused to allow the use of chemical weapons during WWII: He'd himself been a victim of gas attacks in the first world war and thus thought they were too horrible to use, and the second reason is that German high command knew the allies themselves also had chemical weapons and feared retaliation if they were used.
Hitler also ordered all German bunkers to be fitted with quick access to showers in case German soldiers got gassed. Didn't stop him from using it to mass murder the "undesirables".
@@PantsofVance Of course, very little about the nazi leadership made any logical sense. Gas too horrible to be used on soldiers but A-OK to be used on civilians; bunch of mad men.
I like how you're like "ok, this one takes a whole drop to be lethal, can eventually evaporate, and can only be absorbed through the skin a little bit. F tier useless trash."
They tasted it I laughed a month ago because in my chem materials acids were described as having the acidic taste. Like, it makes sense, but I can't imagine being that scientist who decided to chug some HNO3 (I don't know what it's called in English, sorry)
@@unnamellie the German name for acid is "Säure", which very literally means "sourness" Also, our anorganic chemistry prof told us that beryllium was first named glucium for its sweet taste
I'm a public safety and environmental science major, and I appreciate how you avoid the sensationalism I've seen from far too many science channels. Everybody is correct that the hazard severity is extreme, but the vulnerability is nearly non-existent for 99% of ppl, meaning the overall risk is marginal at most. Some RUclipsrs are willing to make soccer moms think their local suburban mall is imminent to be fumigated if it gets them clicks. I just wanna make sure it's clear that the chances of this being relevant to the average person is incalculably small.
The real trick with most of these is producing them without snuffing your own candle in the process . And that has happened on more than one occasion with terrorists . You know you have made some poor life choices when Karma AND Murphy personally hand you your Darwin Award .
Sad anyone would ever purposefully make a cocktail of death. Not just death but absolute suffering. I can only imagine those poor people they experimented on. It’s what nightmares are made of. What you mentioned reminded me of unit 731 from Japan. After reading about it I couldn’t sleep for 2 weeks.
Also this is probably one of the first times I have heard new chemistry terms like "quatranary anilibrium" 15:21 and im glad he does not use layman's terms because I get to expand my chemistry vocabulary.
And thank you for your dedicated viewership - I still appreciate your recommendation of making the perfluorocubane video every time I see you leave a comment :)
Idk why i have been recommended this video consistently since you uploaded it but I finally gave it a watch, understood nothing you said, and am still horrified. Well done! Also I guess I’m part of the watchlist too now
*Flicks through mentioned book* Well, that terrifying...now the question, where to rank it alongside the other terrifying things: -How deadly mixing household cleaning products is -How easy it is to produce materials that undergo "high energy decomposition at speed" -How easy it is to buy reasonably radioactive substances, sometimes without even knowing it -Taxes
I know something about getting radioactive products, there is this pseudo sciene conspiracy theory crazed category of products that do "Negative-5g, Negative ion" which are actually radioactive. Crazy to think they could sell that lol.
@@bulletghost3452 the anti 5G angle was just a pivot, beforehand they were putting the thorium compound (waste product of mining something else, I forget what) into skin creams which were sold at those "health" shops (the ones that also sell homeopathic remedies) as a "cure" to skin cancer...yes you did read that correctly...
"How deadly mixing household cleaning products is" Deadly/hilarious.. close enough. Few years back took upon my self to research why gf had some health issues after cleaning the toilet with bleach from... cat urine.... Yeah her face was pretty priceless when i told her that she essentially went trough military chemical warfare training. Thankfully door was open whole time and amounts didnt exceed other than skin and eye irritation. Now i know to just spray the bleach, run and close the door until fumes have dissipated. For the rest, that information is rather common if you lurk on questionable sites and already are under abc agencies watch list... Not that i actually use this information to anything crazy, but its good to know to help protect ones self against them and more over to tell people who want to ban anything supposedly dangerous that its futile since you can make it from stuff that cannot be regulated at all.
I was honestly a bit surprised you mentioned some of the history of how a couple chemicals were used but not Sarin cuz it was infamously used by that one Japanese doomsday cult in an attack on a subway. To be fair though, this was my first video of yours I've seen and I wasn't expecting it to be more about the chemical properties than the history of their use! It was very informative regardless even if I didn't understand some of the terminology
Aum Shinrikyo. The leader of the cult was actually executed fairly recently. They tried a bunch of different neurotic ways to use nerve/chemical agents in their attacks. IIRC they once tried to shoot a bunch of botulinum into the air via the exhaust port of a car.
@@bruhgod123A number of production pathways can be used to create sarin. The final reaction typically involves attachment of the isopropoxy group to the phosphorus with an alcoholysis with isopropyl alcohol. Two variants of this process are common. One is the reaction of methylphosphonyl difluoride with isopropyl alcohol, which produces a racemic mixture of sarin enantiomers with hydrofluoric acid as a byproduct.
u know these scary things about Quaternary amines makes me more cautious now when preparing anion exchange membranes because one of the steps involve treating the surface full of amines with methylating agents like methyl iodide to form quaternary amines which make me wonder if some of these may break apart and form terrifying compounds.
One of the most exciting parts of an orgo lab class... the sentence "You add this drop wise, because in the presence of, eh, twenty degree above room heat the product will be an anesthetic instead of an indicator and leaning over the beaker will paralyze you for a couple days on a ventilator. SO YOU ALL MADE SURE TO GET THE ICE BATHS DONE PROPERLY WITH BRINE, RIGHT?"
I can attest to the terrifying aspect. I went thru the CDTF at FLW MO. The first day is fun, splashing around cleaning up simulated chemical weapons in a variety of settings. The second day when they open the container and the alarms in the area start going off is a totally different vibe.
@@khub5660 I was there shortly after the 9/11 attacks and my class was a mix of BNCOC, 20/30 transition (like me), air marshals, and SF students so I'm sure I didn't get the normal treatment.
Nothing like that cold shower afterwards when the fear of death sets in just a little too late. Most people probably don't understand what it really means to say the army provides you with clothes to go in there and it's easier for them to just burn it all afterwards, from just having been in the same room as individual droplets of nerve agents.
@@donm9090 The night before CDTF is like, "they said you have to keep your face shaved to get a good mask seal, but they just told me not to shave tomorrow morning.... they said we have to burn contaminated MOPP gear, but today they told us they use the suits seven times...."
@@stickyfox You don't shave because they can't let you in with even so much as a slight razor burn cause damaged skin is a risk they can't take. Skin contact with a single drop of NA is enough to kill most people, damaged skin would have any vapor stick to it and get inside your skin better. Gas masks will seal with something like ¼-½" of facial hair. As far as what they burn goes, mopp is like $1k a set so it would make sense if they clean and reuse them at least a couple times, but eventually they'll be burned and replaced. Mopp has a field use time limit of about 4 hours iirc so that's probably when they burn the mopp gear, after it's been used enough times to get close to the 4 hours use. Everything underneath isn't nearly worth enough money to be cost effective to clean even once.
As a person that collects and studies CBRN-E personal protection equipment, if a nerve agent was ever used, I would just give up. It is nearly impossible to protect from them As a civilian. .
3:00 my first thought is that given he was discharged from the military after being exposed to mustard gas maybe Sarin gave even _him_ pause when presented with the nerve agent
I was a CBRN (Chemical Biological Radiological Nuclear) specialist in the army. This video is great, it's common knowledge that we were exposed to live agents such as nerve, blood, and blister (can't say which ones) but just knowing that if my mask failed I would pretty much be dead was pretty humbling. Nuclear radiation was still the most frightening thing that I could have ever possibly worked with.
@Gareth Fairclough honestly I wish it were fake substances that stuff scared the shit out of me. They have to call and make sure that they aren't doing any live training before commencing a mock fire drill, as to avoid any unnecessary risk of cross contamination of a live agent. The CDTF building is no joke lol we were already on a secured post and they had to check our id's again to gain access to the facility.
@@forthewubwubs Went through CDTF as well, if it was all fake they sure spent a shitload of money to make it look real. May have been less potent than the real thing but it was certainly real.
Yeah I went to air force basic training in August(watching this in tech school) and we learned about nerve and blister agents at CBRN after going through the gas chamber. Scary stuff.
@@7thBatallion nerve agents kill you within a few minutesto hours, radiation at the lethal level takes days. I'd rather die quickly than suffer days of excruciating pain.
When i learned about these nerve agents during my HAZMAT specialist course, the one thing that freaked me out most was that if someone is spasming, they would be a low priority casualty as even if we injected them with two jabs of diazepam they will almost never make it.
CBRN/ACM Marine here. I miss this shit. Ironically, I miss having a job that NOBODY took seriously. Gas chambers are the butt of the joke, "what do you guys even do?" all that jazz. I look back at how I felt about that during my time in, how other Marines looked at our jobs, how we were treated at the command and in the S-3, and I feel so good about the work we accomplished then. We had a ragtag group of CBRN, Arty, Infantry, EOD, SEAL, and corpsman on our ACM team, doing incredibly important shit that nobody else knew or cared about. It felt very "secret squirrel" if you will. Or as secret squirrel as a bunch of dudes running around in level A suits with detection equipment can get. Every sector of Marine professionalism jam packed into a squad of people that could take on the worst shit man kind has ever invented. A truly thankless job, and I was proud to do it. We all were. Wish I still could be in that field doing what I loved. I miss my guys, I miss suiting up, I miss the thrill, the professionalism, the places we got to go, things we got to do. We traveled the world, visited 15+ countries teaching people our job, did real world detection and decon on some real nasty shit. The knowledge you HAD to have to do that job efficiently and keep people alive is something i am really proud of, and I'm glad to have spread that knowledge as much as we did. Everybody thought the gas chamber was just going through the motions, which in the world then and today, it was in a way during peacetime. But the basic fundamentals of CBRN gas chamber training to the normal Marine lays the groundwork for having that skillset. I just wish more people took it seriously. It is an incredibly fulfilling knowledge base to have even in everyday life dealing with household chemicals, knowing what chemicals are in the random trucks driving the roads, such a niche sector of knowledge to possess. I just wish in hindsight, that I continued pursing that after I got out. I'm being overdramatic, but God damn, being 10 years removed from that job, do I fucking miss it. It was so much fun being so good at what we did. Now we all have kids, live normal lives, work normal jobs. Life is fucking strange sometimes. At one point I had a ridiculously important job. Now I'm a nurse, and it just doesn't compare. I've let that time in my life go. Uniforms in a tote in the attic, some small things around the house from those days, pictures, challenge coins, what have you. I hadn't honestly thought about it in quite some time. Thanks for the video. I know that wasn't its intention, but thanks anyway.
"I don't care, I wanna see what happens when you are exposed to nerve agents..." See link say its on rabbits "Nah I'm good I don't want to spoil my day"
Honestly, the absolute bastard-ness of VX has to do more with its cleanup being near impossible to do exhaustively. It’s basically grease with a super long decomp time and thin slicks can go unnoticed in some porous surfaces, patiently waiting for some poor sod to accidentally grip one invisible patch missed in cleanup with bare skin and within a couple minutes they’re a twitching seizing corpse-to-be.
I'm so glad this video exists. As CBRN operations the infantry guys number one question is what is the most scary/dangerous CBRN threat excluding radiation. I guess that radiation is just particularly terrifying to people.
I used to live in Harford County (HarCo) MD, where Edgewood is. Edgewood Arsenal is a part of Aberdeen Proving Grounds (APG) and the different outposts of APG (there are three that I know of) are big employers in northern HarCo and Maryland in general. They all do research on weapons and other things for the military. I when I lived in HarCo I worked at a little local museum and we did a exhibit celebrating 100 years of APG back in 2017. We had different people come in and talk about different projects that they worked on. Or at least, as much as they could. A lot of things were still either classified, or were just uncomfortable to speak about to larger groups of people so they were vaugely covered. One of the people who came in was someone from Edgewood who worked on the chemical weapons projects. His overall speech was really good and just cover how the chemical weapons research lead to develop of other tech in other areas like solider protection, but I honestly don't remember a ton about it. What I do remember however is afterwards when he was just hanging out with just me and the museum staff talking more in depth. He told us about how when they tested some of the chemical the way they did it was to put the men in like, a trailer, with a gas mask, and then set off the chemical. Then he talked about how one time HE volunteered to try it. He told us how it was way worse than he thought it would be. He thought that the safety gear and filters would help and I guess make it not bad. He apparently way over estimated how much they would midegate the effects. He also noted that his was angry with him, which idk why that part stuck with me. He also switched to the development of defense against the chemicals after because he couldn't handle being in the weapons development after he did a test. APG does and has done a lot, and I mean A LOT of testing. On everything from chemicals, to bio weapons to vehicles and artillery pieces. They have the different outposts for different things. On days with think cloud cover you can hear the artillery tests for MILES booming around the Chesapeake Bay. And they test a lot of things that would make a lot of people uncomfortable. Like when they tested the chemicals. But in MD, we look the other way. Not only because places like APG, Fort Mead, Andrew AFB, the Navy Med research center are all huge employers in the state, not to mention you dont really get a choice if the military says they're putting a base somewhere; but also because of the same reason the speaker gave as to why he originally was okay with the weapons tests. Is it horrible? Yes. But it's better for us to have the tech first know that it does and hie it acts, how to ID it, etc., before anyone else does. Because then we can counter it. But the question then becomes well, now you have created it in the first place. Why. It wouldn't have existed otherwise. It was horrible and is horrible and whats the end point to the game of one up. Bonus Story: Living in MD and especially HarCo you can meet and talk to a lot of people who work or worked at APG. This is one of those stories. I had a bio professor in college (the same time I worked at the museum actually) who had interned at one of the bio labs at APG when he was in college. One of the first tasks he was given was a simple go-for task. Clean out this old deep freezer that was rarely opened and to store old samples from old tests. There were lists of the samples that were supposed to be in the fridge, but because it was basically acting like that old extern harddrive you through in the drawer and forget about until you clean, the list was a relative thing. Some things might have been removed years ago and not taken off the list, and things in the freezer might have been left off by accident or oversight. Well, my teacher was working his way through the freezer and was almost done sorting things when he found a few viles of something that were not on the list and didn't have clear labels. He took them to his boss who through some process managed to figure out it was an old labeling format for Smallpox. Smallpox that that lab wasn't supposed to have. Apparently they had to call the military and CDC to come get the samples. They somehow managed to keep it under wraps but apparently things like that have happened a few times. It was just neat to meet a person involved in on of those cases. Bonus bonus: APG also got in trouble for really loose and sloppy handling of anthrax and plague samples as well, and that is at least part of the reason the US military has said they are no longer doing biologic weapons research (at least publicly).
@@That_Chemist It's a useful pharmaceutical agent e.g. for atropine overdose and it's among the substances we got tasked with separating and checking their identity for practice. We also have some pure stuff to runn TlC and IR references with.
@@That_Chemist I think you have some nurses in the audience that are a little entertained by your concern over neostigmine haha. That reversible binding makes all the difference! I actually take an analog of neostigmine daily (pyridostigmine). Without a doubt the most dangerous medication I take, but not that hard to manage. www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3648782/
In BCT in my CBRN class I asked the instructor what happens if you're not in MOPP 4 (full protective gear) and you get gassed. He pretty much just said I hope the atropine lasts long enough to get you to the hospital. Starting my CBRN AIT soon wish me luck, I really hope I never have to earn my paycheck.
This comment reminded me of one of the chieftain's videos where he talked about armored crew procedures regarding chemical warfare. Kind of scary that to test whether or not a nerve agent has dispersed is that the tank commander takes the loaders side arm first and then orders the crew member to unbutton as a guinea pig.
Reminds me of my ex, she told me once to just shut up and say Yes dear, after that I said Yes dear with a s*** eating grin for every damn thing she said for the next 20 years and it drove her absolutely insane! I'm sure she's just as glad to be rid of me!
Certain there are a lot of CBRNE folks checking out the tier of stuff theyve been around. Massive pucker factor when your test strip turns neon green when you get a positive on VX. Side note, even though Novichok is supposed to be a rumor, always found it interesting that the teams in group have a test kit for this supposedly nonexistent agent.
I was under the impression that the "G" is derived from the German word "Gifte," which means "poisons" in English. The G-series nerve agents were developed by the German military during World War II, and they are named using a combination of generally two letters except in specific cases like GBS where the S stands for sulfur)
In any other tier list of toxic compounds, even neostigmine would be S tier. That's the stuff of the most terrifying of the most nightmarish of all nightmares.
Nerve agents inhibit acetylcholinesterase, which is an enzyme that catalyzes the breakdown of acetylcholine. Some nerve agents covalently bind to the enzyme, and can damage the active site of the enzyme, so the acetylcholine builds up, the signal keeps sending, and the motor neurons keep firing. The G series and V series of nerve agents were mass produced, weaponized agents, while the EA series, A series, and others are not known to be mass produced or weaponized. Exposure to nerve agents is usually treated with atropine and pralidoxime chloride (2-PAM chloride).
fun fact: Every single pesticide in use are nerve agents more specifically nerve inhibitors
@@derrickhageman1969 while true, things like Carbamates are relatively weak NAs, they aren't NEAR the potency of classical NA chemical warfare agents. And outta the 260 some publicly known NAs he had to narrow it down somehow
( •̀ᴗ•́ )و ̑̑ A perfect brainstorm list for the wonnabe punk band, or for the maniacal prankster with an itchy finger and label maker.
@@OpossumSupremacist Yep pesticides are weak to people but not insects but the one thing I realized while watching this video is chemistry is one scary profession ngl moving nerve agents aside their is other chemical compounds and elements that can seriously injure you or kill you in a few drops or grams
Aircraft hydraulic fluid is TriButylPhosphate.
It is an honor to be on a watch list with you all!
lol
Likewise
Clicked on this video to find this comment😂
well, i didn't actually search for this, i don't think youtube algorithm makes you subject to being on a watchist, at least in europe hahahaha
Likewise
I knew I’d be traumatized when I saw that Sarin was only in D tier
Can I give you some sarin.
Same I low key got mad
@@puertoricanpapi1356 I’ll take a container
@@toxicity6629 sorry I don’t think your kind would know what to do with it. Probably just end up polluting the whole hood further.
@@toxicity6629 everyone knows that the guy named "toxicity" is all about sketchy purchases
You're not a real chemist if your home products aren't even on this leaderboard
👀👀👀
The US government would like to know your location
@@LogieD223 trust me they already have us all on it!
@@minusstage3 Ain't that the truth lol
What’s horrifying about that is some of these do not look hard to synthesize.
Not nearly as extreme as the nerve agent testing, but in the late 90s, I was in the Marine Corps and "volunteered" for a sleep deprivation experiment. A substantial number of minor injuries occurred, and those who made it to the end were largely experiencing delusions, mood disorders, and outright hallucinations. Some (like me) recovered relatively quickly after returning to normal sleep patterns, but some needed months of therapy to resolve sleep and mood disorders they'd developed (and probably still have lingering symptoms). It was a nightmare. But you got paid a lot more AND you got as long as you needed to recover afterward.
Interesting
I'm surprised they did that experiment when the symptoms of sleep deprivation were long established by the 90s. I wonder if they were actually testing some other behavioral aspect but of course didn't want to cause a placebo by informing you.
holy shit the sleep experiments are real
Dude thank you for your service and your sacrifice. I hope they got some useful data.
The thing's us military folk will do for some extra money and extra time off..
I am impressed that you had the nerve to do this
🗞️🗞️🗞️
His FBI agent is watching him closely now
he might be raided anytime now.
@@That_Chemist So by evil you mean effective?
Have a like and go away...
Thanks for the tierlist, was struggling to pick one until now 👍
WHAT
Lmao🤣
@@Zizos 1K, I have an extension that shows me the dislikes. You should install one.
@@thedread7258 keep in mind though the extension isn't wholly accurate. It takes the number of dislikes from before RUclips removed them and also keeps a count of the dislikes from other people with the extension. It can't account for post-removal dislikes from average users because it has no way of knowing about them
Allahu Akbar
This tierlist could have used extra tiers above S, like "wtf?!", "oh god no" and "why would you even?!"
thats just like, all of them basically
That's what S tier is....
He said at the start that everything on the list is S-tier horrible. That means, that F... Is actually an S. And the ones above are...
@@Uthael_Kileanea Dear Sire, have you lost your mind?
@@Uthael_Kileanea So, in other words, the tier list is actually
-The Hague Won't Even Give You A Trial For This (S)
-Crime Against Life (A)
-The Development Process Was Grounds For Execution (B)
-Added To Charges: Crimes Against Humanity (C)
-Death Is Not Enough For Your Crimes (D)
-A War Criminal Is You (E)
-F Stands For Un-Forgivable Sin (F)
Hearing that one of these compounds is lethal at the femto molar level left me mouth agape and sent shivers down my spine, absolutely insane
That was 4 decades ago as well.
_I really don't like this video. :)_
Well actually its not. If one reads the papers carefully, this claim collapses down to a very unimportant kinetic finding. There is one kinetic constant, which turns out to be femtomolar if you do lots of math to isolate it from the complex mechanism, but the IC50 is micromolar, so this is a weak agent. But the quotes on wikipedia got mangled and on the first glance, one might think, its super potent. Its not even a chemical warfare agent and has never been considered to be a candidate.
@@Volvith I know right, same feeling as when I heard about the CIA and their FULLY FUNCTIONING HEART-ATTACK GUN. which was made back in like, the fucking 1970s. Because 1- After you realize how many notable people have died to heart attacks over the years of seemingly natural causes, this really can make you wonder.
And 2 (More relavent to this) If they had a wholly traceless, nearly silent gun which made people die of seemingly natural causes all the way back in the 70s, imagine what they can do today with their current budget and scale.
I had friends overdosing from Oxy, and ETC. It sounds a lot like dying from a nerve agent.
@@Volvithsoy
I was a nuclear, biological and chemical specialist in the army. Learning about his when I was 18 scared the hell out of me
It’s awful
@@That_Chemist the binary agents you discussed were only a rumor in the 90s. I was surprised when you mentioned them.
@@roscop.coaltrain9440 this is terrifying
I start my AIT for that next week, CBRN has always fascinated and scared the fuck out of me, wish me luck I hope I never need to earn my pay for this job
@@lordbabycakes8736 you me both bro
The really scary part about this is that these are ALL incredibly simple molecules.
Im an organic chemistry student on my third year of Ochem and I'm trained to look at molecular structures and imagine the potential synthesis pathways. The first thing that came to mind when I saw these was that I could synthesize these compounds with relative ease and using common precursors, which is really really really scary. 😭
As we push for a more educated societal standard, i wonder how many horrible people in the future will come up with the bright idea to utilize chemical weaponry
Safely making these sorts of things would be really challenging, so the risk is minimized due to the exposure of the chemist to the nefarious agents
If it helps a lot of these are redundant from a weaponry point of view. VX has been around since the 50s and Edgewood mass produced enough to wipe out cities, once you have something that deadly it doesn't make a practical difference if the newer compound is more toxic, a tiny amount can already kill you and there's already a lot of it ready to be deployed, unless you're looking for something niche (as in not a WMD) there's no reason to make something worse unless you can't make VX.
@@justalurker3489that's the way I look at it: you can only get so efficient at killing things lol.
@@DrDipsh1t Not to mention higher lethality is a double edged sword as it makes it harder to handle. More terrorists have been killed by exposure to their own NBC agent than the victims they have claimed.
As a member of a domestic WMD response team the majority of our monthly real world simulated trainings are orchestrated as 1st or 2nd year chem students whom elected to challenge their recently discovered knowledge by attempting to manufacture some of these agents without concern for the ramifications.
There really is a tierlist for everything on RUclips.
Tierlist for Tierlists? Is that allowed? I feel like the universe would collapse after that.
Could always make a tier list for the tier list tier lists
@@Rwdphotos could you make a tier list of the tier lists of the tier list of tier lists
pipe bomb tier list
Terrorist attacks tier list? I wonder what would be in S tier.
I still remember our NAAK (nerve agent antidote kit)training in Army BCT. It honestly was the most terrfying part, not because it was dangerous at all but just learning about Nerve agents and how quickly they could get ya with very little warning. We had to memorize all the symptoms.
Sudden headache
Unexplained runny nose
Burning eyes
Etc.
SLUDGM. That's what I learned at Anniston HAZMAT Tech training. We practiced test kits in hot cells, I believe with Sarin. Very interesting.
That describes my cooking. 😆 lol. This stuff is not to messed around with. WW1 showed how easy it was it poison yourself with it.
@@toxichank6960 I ended up with the opportunity to test in hot cells with VX. Incredibly un-nerving experience. Cool, but fuck that. I’d rather go back to my Stryker and collect ground samples lmao
@@GetTheFO At least somebody had our backs (or butts) covered with 2-PAM.
Damn that's like the Vid, anything can be a symptom so good luck everyone.
I remember in high school our chemistry teacher told us that our final assignment in class is to research any paper that is chemistry-related and present it to the class. Me, being the meme/edge-lord all high schoolers tend to be, did an entire presentation on the effects and countermeasures to agent VX with model testing on mice, as described in some Czech research paper. To maximize meme potential, my entire Powerpoint was in Comic Sans.
Everybody make way for our new ruler, zchen27
Of all the crimes against humanity covered by that presentation, the choice of font is inarguably the worst.
IMO papyrus might be worse. still. very nice.
Reminds me of when I had to really, really tone down my end of semester presentation. We had a useless science dept, but I somehow got to do an independent study on energetic materials. I got 2-3 police visits, a couple misdemeanor and one felony charges, one letter from the USDOJ and an "A" but not an "A+"
I learned a lot about energetic materials and a decent amount about the legal system. Very informative class, would recommend.
Edit: This was a long time ago, not sure I would recommend these days. The independent study part I'd absolutely recommend, my subject maybe not so much.
@@garethjones6342 alright you can stop insulting the skelliton brothers or theyll turn you blue and hit you with bones
ah
this is horrifying
but one thing I find interesting is that you can, through their structure, almost sort them into a family tree. it's almost like you can see how the ideas developed over time
Yeah that’s true!
@@That_Chemist There's a pretty obvious logic to it. There's a unique bit that has the toxic effect, and the derivatives mostly replace one alkane with another to modify its physical properties.
O P O
I ain't no chemist... but that arrangement appears in a large percentage. I'm guessing that arrangement is the "component" of the molecule that does the dirty work.
@@warpedweirdo organic phosphoru is dirty dirty stuff
A historical overview of making people lose their nerves, literally.
1:45 G-series.
8:50 V-series.
11:45 Novichok.
14:40 Neostigmine, a medication.
Neostigmine is quite interesting because whilst all the others are used to CAUSE paralysis, neostigmine is used to REVERSE the paralysis of the non-depolarising neuromuscular blockade cause by drugs like tubocurarine and pancuronium.
leaving the horror of all of these aside, i am super impressed that you can tell that something is necessarly toxic just buy looking at the (stylized) molecule. That is not only insanely impressive, but also really shows how much it pays off to actually understand one's own craft, not just get familiar with steps.
I just finished Chem 102 and even with tutoring, extra credit, and studying multiple times a week, the highest grade I could made was an 86 lol. That stuff really goes over my head, so I'm also amazed too. I need a little bit of his passion to help me through organic chemistry next year
The moment you sent Sarin to D tier I knew this was gonna be a spicy video.
The classified, human tested, chemical warfare agents of the United States? Well of course we want to know more about that
I wonder if the poor people who were unknowingly exposed to these were compensated
@@samblackstone3400 probably brainwashed to believe it is an honor to sacrifice their health to the development of increasingly efficient ways of killing other human beings
@@trustmeimabiochemist3929
Truly a horrifying example of jingoism if that’s the case
Most of the test subjects were inmates at Holmesburg Prison in philly. They were not informed of the risks or natures of these experiments, and were either blackmailed into it by guards or offered reduced sentences in exchange.
Many actually _did_ get their sentences reduced... technically. Because they died.
@@ಠಎಠ it just got real worse real quick then
Oh man. Sarin/GB in D tier. How much worse do these things get? This list is going to be interesting
I hope you enjoy :)
Sarin is treatable... so is VX, but some of the others aren't as easily treatable... Because the no no chemicals far outlive any treatment drug, and the treatment drugs would kill you in the first place before they could treat you.
@@livedandletdie as I found out watching the rest of the video. But also “easily treatable” isn’t correct since you have to be treated within minutes to survive VX or GB
man I had NO Idea an agent even existed that was easier to understand using femtomolars instead of regular old mcg/ml. because I guess 10x^-15 its a bit hard for our brains to comprehend.
I suppose individual atoms of certain radioactive elements some how ending up in vital tissue are "kinda bad".
its all just so far outside my existence and (hopefully) always will be
@@garethjones6342 Imagine doing the LD50 testing and going back for the third time dividing down after the entire sample population died immediately _again_
Then thinking "Maaaybe I should have been being more careful with this one this whole time..."
Fun fact about Aberdeen/ Edgewood area. If you get stationed there for more than 3 yrs, you MUST sign a waiver stating you have been made aware that there are VERY high levels of cancer in the area. Oh, and in the mornings we would go on company runs up to the gate to edgewood. On the gate, they had a sign that they are authorized to use deadly force without warning if you cross said gate
Ah, the good ol' 'Use of Deadly Force Authorized' signage. That's just an ordinary day at any USAF base where there are Alert bombers, tankers, or fighters on the flightline.
When Thatchemist uploads a video, I always watch, laugh, learn, and get contacted by the authorities.
Every clandestine lab needs this hung up like a live, laugh, love sign.
In grad school, I worked on a multi-step synthesis to make some goofy organophosphorous compound. I came up with a whole synthetic plan, which I'm certain would have worked, and started validating it with SciFinder searches of my intermediates. Long story short, it's worryingly easy to accidentally plan a process that involves distillation of sarin. Had to go back to the drawing board on that one...
I'm kind of surprised terrorists aren't slaughtering thousands of people every day with some of these things, they don't appear like they'd be especially tricky to synthesise. I'd check, but that seems like it'd probably be a bad idea.
Then again that cult that released sarin into the Tokyo subway seemed to have surprisingly poor results, and I seem to recall they had quite a lot of the stuff. But if someone made one of the less volatile ones and went round painting it on random touchable surfaces in a city... Jesus. Then again you could do the same with dimethylHg... Like I say, surprised this isn't happening all the time.
The person who discovered the compound probably thought the same thing.
That's why it's up there on the weaponized terrorist compounds watchlist.
"goofy organophosphorous compound" literally describes everything on this list...all of your intermediaries are going to be completely fucked up
also surprised nobody has mentioned phosgene in all of this tbh, and "organophosphate" is only mentioned once...whoever made this is either a bad chemist or intentionally covering up the info you'd need to develop a weapon even though it's widely understood
@@TwoTreesStudio well considering he explained very detailed compounds and history of said compounds, yet obscured any actionable information I’m going to say it was deliberate. The non chemists watching don’t get it anyway and the chemist that are watching already know, so better just let the 3rd group (amateur chemists trying to make chemical weapons) In the dark as long as possible, if anyone wants to know how to do it they can make the google search themselves.
As someone with no background in chemistry or nerve agents: this all sounded scary to me. Thanks for the new fear! 10/10 would watch again!
Wait untill you read up on bacterial toxins, they make even the very worst organophosphates look cute. Bacterial toxins are the most potent naturally occuring toxins on earth, the most potent of which, Botulinum neurotoxin A is 1.000-10.000x more deadly than the most potent nerve agent. Just 5 grams, if evenly divided among everyone is enough to kill every human on earth. And many other bacterial toxins are insanely potent as well, lethal in sub-microgram dosages.
@@pieterveenders9793 What may be the reason for that lethality?
Is it beacuse they attack something specific or they behave in some weird way.
You don't get less scared of it by studying chemistry. You just get more horrified.
@@pieterveenders9793 Wait is botulinum neurotoxin the same as botox? The stuff people INJECT INTO THEIR FACE???
As a Former decontamination sergeant, i can confirm that VX is hellish. One of the big Problems is His very gooey consistance, which make it difficult to decontaminate. In the cbrn Branche, there is the Term "VX problematic"
it’s gooey and it reminds me of honey, i’ll forget that it’s honey
so, (for context I’m CBRN in the US Army) and it’s cool to see someone review what they beat into our heads. Soman is terrifying because it ages (permanently binds to your AChE within 2 mins of exposure.) We usually are able to counter nerve agent poisoning with a combination of Diazepam and Atropine (mostly the atropine) alongside copious amounts of RSDL to the affected area. SMs (servicemembers) are given CANA (the anti convulsant) and an ATNAA (the immediate atropine) injectors. Mostly these can counter 2nd and 3rd Gen agents, however the novichoks (4th Gen, A-Series, etc.) are also terrifying bc they are resistant to these interventions. It’s why the Russians prefer them.
I like how even though the tiers only rank them in badness relative to each other, and even the F one is really scary, half of them still ended up in S and A.
For anyone who doesn't wanna see the video of what happens when someone is exposed to a nerve agent, but are still curious, look at a wasp getting sprayed by raid. The spray holds the sodium channels open and essentially makes them have a seizure until they die.
Damn. We really out here casually using war crimes on wasps. Fuckers deserve it tho
Damn
@@drt1605 Same goes for mosquitoes. We've developed a method to make them go extinct, but the males are important pollinators.
Or remember when (if) you had that bad cramp in your calf at night? Now imagine whole body getting the same, plus mentally God knows what is happening in your head. This last probably minutes, but I bet it feels like eternity. Horrible way to go down😢
As a layman in anything related to chemistry, I wish there were additional descriptions as to what these agents do to you physically.
Still love this content, the fact that many of these don’t degrade and are so lethal at small doses and with little to no warning is wild.
You should check out my new carcinogen tierlist - let me know if that is more to your liking, as I tried to cover that more in newer videos!
I’m pretty sure all of these inhibit the production of acetylcholinesterase which is an enzyme that breaks down acetylcholine which is a neurotransmitter that does a whole bunch of stuff including making your muscles contract and with no enzyme to get rid of the acetylcholine your muscles just sort of stay contracted which means you can’t breathe and eventually you die due to asphyxiation.
Yeah I thought the same tbh
You pretty much cramp to death
@@That_Chemist absolutely! Thanks for pointing me in the right direction :)
I used to work in a laboratory that did testing on nearly all of these compounds. While we were working with them we had these autoinjectors similar to an Epi-pen that were called Duodotes. They contained Atropine and another compound called 2-PAM that both worked together to counteract the effects of the nerve agents. One of the scariest ones is by far GD. It may not be nearly as toxic as the other ones, but because aging happens in a few minutes, by the time you would start getting symptoms of exposure it would be too late to get an antidote.
I was responsible for making up some of the dosing solutions of these agents and would hand them off to someone that would give them to an animal. Even when an antidote was given to the animal, they would still have pretty severe symptoms. Its pretty brutal to see those kinds of things and its part of the reason I no longer work there. These compounds are no joke and I still have a pretty healthy fear of them. There's a reason they are banned.
Atropine for one thigh and 2-PAM Chloride for the other. Plus Pyridostigmine bromide tablets for pre-exposure prophylaxis. These are not cures. They are issued to the soldier for first-aid purposes to keep him or her alive long enough to be medevacked for treatment.
Sounds like a lot of fun!
@@taylorjacquez7451 animal abuse x100
I’ve never heard about the Edgewood Arsenal human experiments before either, would be interested to see a video on it. We shouldn’t forget the atrocities in our past.
Sadly, we always do..
Especially if they're still happening now!
@@bujfvjg7222 people call me slow, dumb, stupid, and even retarded. However, it's realities like these that allow me to remain blissfully ignorant, and happy to work at Bojangles for $10 per hour! This world is broken beyond repair, and there's nothing you and I can do about it.
how the fuck did they test the nerve agents on citizens??! were they highly dilouted or something? were the volunteers not told what they were really inhaling??
Please make a video!!
I have no idea what any of this means, but you make this field (chemistry) sound very impressive
Thank you :)
it means if you are exposed you are very dead.
I remember going through the nerve agent chamber, even though they make sure your all sealed up and fine its still pretty scary
The added fun with Soman is that it quickly irreversibly binds to the nerve receptors so normal nerve agent antidotes don't function that well. One of the reasons p-tabs exist
Whats p tabs.
@@saddish2816 an anti nerve agent pill that was used to help stop soman when it was used in the gulf war
P tabs are another festive example of "the treatment is terrifying enough to make you run screaming from the cause"
@@panykfelidae9018 Aight I'm gonna look up P-tabs...
Edit: Oh it's PB. How is that horrible?
@@TitaniusAnglesmith look ag ghe symptoms. Muscle weakness. Breathing issues. Can be lethal if quit suddenly
TMTFA sounds like it would be one of the few chemicals that's lethal even at homeopathic concentrations
I wonder, if it is even more toxic than botulinum toxin!? ☠🤔
It propably is
I mean if we say that we're generous and 1 Mol^-15 per kg is ld50 then if you had a 1 mol/l solution, you could wipe out all of humanity, 8×10^9 and we were generous and said every human weighed 100kg, then you could kill all of humanity 1250 times in a row.
@@likemau5552 It's not "That" bad, actually. Firstly, AChE inhibition constants and lethal dosages are not as strongly correlated as some would believe. Secondly, there are more things that govern toxicity than just enzyme inhibition kinetics (For instance, pharmacodynamics, whether the agent is readily hydrolysed in the body, etc). Thirdly, one of the papers dealing with TMTFA did test its toxicity on mice. By intraperitoneal injection, it was "only" around the same order of magnitude as sodium cyanide. So, definitely not something you would want to get in you, but also not on the level of something like Sarin or VX.
at proper homeopathic levels, if you somehow properly synthesized it, even the presence of a SINGLE molecule of active compond is like winning the lottary.
thats how bullshit homeopathy is; like TMTFA; hard to even comprehend
Weellllllcome back, I'm That chemist and today we'll be doing a speedrun to the top of the No-Fly list!
Growing up on a farm, some of the chemicals we used were scary, as was the way some farmers out there handled them without any protective clothing or respirators. Common insecticide use against soil borne pests were Terufos and Phorate, they were sold under different brand names, the LD50 on some of them was around 1mg/Kg. This scares the hell out of me, a tenth of a gram inhaled or swallowed and you're dead (dermal numbers were only slightly higher), I don't go near anything that toxic.
If you want to see the effects of a nerve agent in action, just use insect spray on a mosquito.The mode of action is pretty much the same, with the difference that the compounds of the insecticides are optimized to inhibit/block insect acetylcholinesterase (an enzyme which breaks down the neurotransmitter acetylcholin), while nerve agents are good at blocking human acetylcholinesterase.
Better yet - on a wasp. They'll constantly flap their wings very rapidly, but can't fly. They've lost total control of all body functions.
Correct. The most common insecticides work by disrupting the nerve sodium / potassium ion channels rather than acetylcholinesterase inhibition, but with the same result.
Try pyrethrin on fleas! They'll get one short jump and land twitching for about 20 seconds. Doing the Afghani Fish Dance! (What the Russians said about Afghan rebels after getting hit by Soman.)
@@2fathomsdeeper you are gross.
@@guyincognito. Good point. I'm sure that's because cholinesterase inhibitors are generally way too toxic for consumer use.
Would definitely be interested in hearing more about the Edgewood Arsenal stuff I had no idea... Great insight as always.
'Horrible things done by the government' is a hell of a rabbithole
@@MootingInsanity I don't get why people are surprised of this; governments are evil by their very nature. They'll send thousands upon thousands of men to die just to benefit a super small elite class. Lives mean nothing to them, other than what they can get out of them for their own profit
Same. I totally believe it happened but I’d like to hear about it
Holmesburg prison. That's where most of the "volunteers" came from
See also "Project ARTICHOKE" and "MKULTRA" for more unethical stuff (this time conducted by the CIA).
VX was apparently so important that it was rumoured to have been given by Britain to the United States as part of quid pro quo for information/designs for Thermonuclear weapons.
Also Porton Down laboratory in Britain also conducted human experimentation with nerve agents (including at least one death found by a coroner's inquest in 2004 to have been unlawful) so you could include that with any Edgeworth Arsenal material.
Us "Brits" though......
15:28 The fact that I can't find any detailed information about this gas, really makes it seem extremely dangerous to even know about its existence.
ICU/OR RN back again,
Neostigmine is used A LOT in critical care/anesthesia medicine. It's one of the most cost-effective and efficient reversal agents for paralytics. Rocuronium, Vecuronium, succs, all reversed by Neostigmine within 60 seconds, usually less than that. Another one is Suggamadex. Also, definitely make a deep dive on Eastwood Armory please
What about you suggama dix??
@@Phapchamp classic
funny chemical name
@@Phapchamp holy shit dude ya fuckin killed them
Just googled sugamadex cause I thought it was a joke. It's fukcin' real!!
What's most scary to me is that you only have to get in the ballpark of any of those molecules. You've got two functional groups that you can mix and match and basically any combination of them makes an acetylcholinesterase inhibitor.
100%
😨😨
What a load of bullshit. Without field data nothing is a chemical weapon. There's reams of de novo drug design studies that go nowhere, because functionality is not as simple as organic chemists believe. Go learn some pharmacology before making these claims.
@@That_Chemist what a joke
@@SwitchTF2 Cool hubris, bro.
Just listen to what you're saying: "because these compounds have not been characterized, they're not dangerous".
Please never step foot in a lab.
To be clear, almost all of these neurotoxins have two parts: something to effectively permanently bind to one of the active sites on acetocholinesterase and something to sterically block the rest of the active region of it.
Let me make one up for you: throw a bunch of isopropane groups on a nitrogen and bond it via an oxygen to, I don't know, lets say a dimethylcyclohexane. Any dimethylcyclohexane. Take your pick.
I'll give you a dollar to breathe it. Its not a chemical weapon, right? "Without field data nothing is a chemical weapon." right? Dollar not enough? How about a trillion dollars? The moon? Literally doesn't matter from my point of view because you're not gonna be collecting.
@That Chemist what odds would you put on my nonsense molecule being recognized as GRAS? Would you take a biggo sniff of it?
I feel personally attacked by this awesome video.
oh yeah haha
@@That_Chemist Finally someone I don't need to explain the pun in my name to lol
@@agentvx8320 you need to thanks him for explaining your alas
Plz be nice
@@yutudelickzolonskyyballs7146 what a name
@@agentvx8320 I'd think everyone watching this understands your name, I'm only an amateur chemist with no formal training and it was clear to me
as someone who is currently a chemical corps soldier, this stuff will mess up the world if used incorrectly
Also forgot to add that yes as a Chem soldier we do get exposed during training to being used to working within environments laced with nerve agents. But for the most part the popular chemical we use is just cs
I did some training with an agency where we underwent live-agent hazmat operations. It was 4 days of classroom learning, and 1 day of in the field. We had to have all of our masks and filters inspected, and then double and triple verified by computer measurements. We went into areas with VX, Sarin and GB gasses/exposure. And when they said “Oh yeah, by the way, this stuff isn’t even anywhere near the worst out there.” That just kind of hit different.
Edited to add: Yes, VX is a 10/10 on this list. But theres also other nerve agents that make your death even more unpleasant. Just for some reference, in the proper environment, with the proper conditions and carrier, a single drop of VX gas the size of the tip of a needle, could kill over 3000 people.
Humanity for inventing such horrific things to kill each other is arguably worse than the chemicals itself.
The fact that humanity created this to kill each other makes me lose all the hope i had left in humanity...
Damn. Who'd have thought that Electronic Arts is only the second most evil "EA"?
It even has its own Sarin as an antagonist
1, Cyclosarin is less potent compare to sarin
2, Soman belongs in S tier - even tho it is not as toxic as some of the other agents, but the main kicker for it is that it is extremely hard to treat due to the rate at which aging (the loss of the alkoxy group ) which renders it resistant to oxime antidotes. Normal effective window for treatment for other agents are around few hours. Soman? 5 minutes 😬
3, In V series, the thiol is the leaving group, not the alkoxy group (I.e. in VX, the leaving group is diisopropylaminoethanthiol)
Hope this helps
Thank you, Doctor Ziegler.
Technically, both are leaving groups
I guess their hydrolysis rate is as follows
Cl
F
SR
OR
NR2
The fact that two groups can split off makes binding to ACE irreversible...
EDIT: Cl and F had a mix-up.
@@edi9892 The leaving group in this case is what causes the phosphonylation of the serine residue in AChE, in this case the thiol - the loss of alkoxy group is not the mechanism for its toxicity, but merely how hard it is to reverse a poisoned enzyme molecule.
2nd remark is incorrect unfortunately - fluoride is a much weaker leaving group than chloride. The reason why a weaker leaving group resulting in higher toxicity is that less of the inhibitor gets inactivated by nucleophiles within the body such as water, before reaching the intended target, AChE. Once reaching the target, the catalytic triad would still be able to eliminate the weaker leaving group due to lower activation energy resulted from stabilization of transition state intermediate
@@a.ziegler6010 Thanks for the clarification. I already noticed that I might be wrong, but I wrote this comment at 3:00 in the night... (sleep problems)
@@edi9892 lmaooooo nah its alg, I feel you tho, what a mood
Many pharmacies in the UK countryside keep stocks of Atropine and 2-PAM, just in case farmers were poisoned. Happened a few times each year.
The G stands for "German (agent)", you learn this in Army CBRN training at Nord Hall in AIT. This was done because those agents were discovered during WW2 in the possession of the Germans as the Allies invaded.
Yeah i was confused why the G would stand for the Former German Chancellor(1990-1998) Gerhard Schröder, makes alot more sense
@@timtmtm7689 I was puzzled too so I looked it up. He didn't mean Gerhard Schröder but the German chemist Gerhard Schrader. Apparently he was called "The father of the nerve agents".
@@sylux7998 What is with Germany and having the fathers of two things banned by the Geneva Convention be from there?
@@airplanemaniacgaming7877 They’re just incredible at making things.
@@airplanemaniacgaming7877 We Germans also invented the printing press, Otto engine, Diesel engine, PC, MP3, Jet engine etc..
Morally questionable chemistry is a scary subject! Great vid!
Thank you!
what exactly is questionable about these chemicals? this is actual evil.
edit: except for the medicine one
waltuh
I feel like morally questionable and nerve agents arent phrases that go together. I think "morally horrifying" is more appropriate
I don’t think nerve agents are even remotely morally questionable.
As a medical professional, i was really surprised to see neostigmine on there! Glad it got F tier
Two popular theories as to why Hitler refused to allow the use of chemical weapons during WWII: He'd himself been a victim of gas attacks in the first world war and thus thought they were too horrible to use, and the second reason is that German high command knew the allies themselves also had chemical weapons and feared retaliation if they were used.
Hitler also ordered all German bunkers to be fitted with quick access to showers in case German soldiers got gassed. Didn't stop him from using it to mass murder the "undesirables".
@@PantsofVance Of course, very little about the nazi leadership made any logical sense. Gas too horrible to be used on soldiers but A-OK to be used on civilians; bunch of mad men.
Nah he used it all up on Jews
@@EkonEzg Yes but is that any reason not to donate it to ukraine? You have to take the booster, its the only safe way against the russian covid.
Yeah, you're forgetting a group of people he did use it against
I like how you're like "ok, this one takes a whole drop to be lethal, can eventually evaporate, and can only be absorbed through the skin a little bit. F tier useless trash."
Haha
I've always wondered how they knew some of these are tasteless and odorless
This tbh
They tasted it
I laughed a month ago because in my chem materials acids were described as having the acidic taste. Like, it makes sense, but I can't imagine being that scientist who decided to chug some HNO3 (I don't know what it's called in English, sorry)
@@unnamellie when people describe a "Acidic taste" I always imagine squeezing a lime on your tongue. That is probably how you can best describe it.
@@bulletghost3452 you need to make sure that all acids are acidic👀
@@unnamellie the German name for acid is "Säure", which very literally means "sourness"
Also, our anorganic chemistry prof told us that beryllium was first named glucium for its sweet taste
love how a research for a roleplay I'm planning for my friend led me to this and probably me ending up on a watchlist :D
I'm a retired nuclear biological and chemical warfare specialist. I love little videos like this. Good for civi awareness.
Thank you 🙏
🧢🧢🧢
CBRN?
@@Shadow.behind.mountains UK forces, ye that's the acronym used these days. They change repeatedly.
Y’all ever use a hapsite? If not, what did you use in the field for analysis?
I'm a public safety and environmental science major, and I appreciate how you avoid the sensationalism I've seen from far too many science channels. Everybody is correct that the hazard severity is extreme, but the vulnerability is nearly non-existent for 99% of ppl, meaning the overall risk is marginal at most. Some RUclipsrs are willing to make soccer moms think their local suburban mall is imminent to be fumigated if it gets them clicks. I just wanna make sure it's clear that the chances of this being relevant to the average person is incalculably small.
The crazy thing is one bad actor could do terrible things - that is the scary part
The real trick with most of these is producing them without snuffing your own candle in the process .
And that has happened on more than one occasion with terrorists .
You know you have made some poor life choices when Karma AND Murphy personally hand you your Darwin Award .
Sad anyone would ever purposefully make a cocktail of death. Not just death but absolute suffering. I can only imagine those poor people they experimented on. It’s what nightmares are made of. What you mentioned reminded me of unit 731 from Japan. After reading about it I couldn’t sleep for 2 weeks.
To counter the enemies cocktail of death. It's warfare. The alternative is being conquered and having your people destroyed.
Rarely used, they keep getting designed and tested for defensive reason... the Geneva convention is just paper after all.
@@addaustin6730 when Hitler is afraid to use them, you know you've got something appallingly bad on your hands
@@AlphaCarinae The "need" doesn't exist. There's never any reason to use nerve agents, or any chemical weaponry, against a group of people.
@@addaustin6730Unless you're literally being invaded, any "defensive" excuse is bullshit
2:46 Oh ok. Well I was about to play with some of them in my backyard later tonight but I guess I'll pass now.
Also this is probably one of the first times I have heard new chemistry terms like "quatranary anilibrium" 15:21 and im glad he does not use layman's terms because I get to expand my chemistry vocabulary.
Quaternary anilinium* :)
excellent work. as someone who went through live agent training: VX is by far the most terrifying
Your hard work does not go unnoticed! Thanks for the great content as always!
And thank you for your dedicated viewership - I still appreciate your recommendation of making the perfluorocubane video every time I see you leave a comment :)
Idk why i have been recommended this video consistently since you uploaded it but I finally gave it a watch, understood nothing you said, and am still horrified. Well done!
Also I guess I’m part of the watchlist too now
*Flicks through mentioned book*
Well, that terrifying...now the question, where to rank it alongside the other terrifying things:
-How deadly mixing household cleaning products is
-How easy it is to produce materials that undergo "high energy decomposition at speed"
-How easy it is to buy reasonably radioactive substances, sometimes without even knowing it
-Taxes
I don’t even mention the worst contents of the book for good reason
I know something about getting radioactive products, there is this pseudo sciene conspiracy theory crazed category of products that do "Negative-5g, Negative ion" which are actually radioactive. Crazy to think they could sell that lol.
@@bulletghost3452 the anti 5G angle was just a pivot, beforehand they were putting the thorium compound (waste product of mining something else, I forget what) into skin creams which were sold at those "health" shops (the ones that also sell homeopathic remedies) as a "cure" to skin cancer...yes you did read that correctly...
"How deadly mixing household cleaning products is" Deadly/hilarious.. close enough. Few years back took upon my self to research why gf had some health issues after cleaning the toilet with bleach from... cat urine.... Yeah her face was pretty priceless when i told her that she essentially went trough military chemical warfare training. Thankfully door was open whole time and amounts didnt exceed other than skin and eye irritation. Now i know to just spray the bleach, run and close the door until fumes have dissipated.
For the rest, that information is rather common if you lurk on questionable sites and already are under abc agencies watch list... Not that i actually use this information to anything crazy, but its good to know to help protect ones self against them and more over to tell people who want to ban anything supposedly dangerous that its futile since you can make it from stuff that cannot be regulated at all.
@@Hellsong89 Use something that isn't bleach instead and you can clean it safely
When you see a three fluorides on the same carbon connected to a ring with a charged group that’s when you know shit is getting real.
Yeah that bad boy is so effing electrophilic
@@That_Chemist
It’s literally off the chart on my molecule modeling program lmao. It can’t render the electron density correctly.
@@That_Chemist noooo my electrons D:
all your electrons are belong to us
@@liam3284 lmao
I was honestly a bit surprised you mentioned some of the history of how a couple chemicals were used but not Sarin cuz it was infamously used by that one Japanese doomsday cult in an attack on a subway. To be fair though, this was my first video of yours I've seen and I wasn't expecting it to be more about the chemical properties than the history of their use! It was very informative regardless even if I didn't understand some of the terminology
I think he expected everyone to know about sarin.
Aum Shinrikyo. The leader of the cult was actually executed fairly recently.
They tried a bunch of different neurotic ways to use nerve/chemical agents in their attacks. IIRC they once tried to shoot a bunch of botulinum into the air via the exhaust port of a car.
Sarin was used in syria
Sarin should be higher up, not because it's deadly (even though it is), but because it's so damn easy to make.
ok tell me how to make it im gonna prank my friends with it
@@bruhgod123as if clicking this vid didn't put us on enough additional watch lists _already..._
For God’s sake nobody tell him
@@Ag3nt0fCha0s tell me
@@bruhgod123A number of production pathways can be used to create sarin. The final reaction typically involves attachment of the isopropoxy group to the phosphorus with an alcoholysis with isopropyl alcohol. Two variants of this process are common. One is the reaction of methylphosphonyl difluoride with isopropyl alcohol, which produces a racemic mixture of sarin enantiomers with hydrofluoric acid as a byproduct.
u know these scary things about Quaternary amines makes me more cautious now when preparing anion exchange membranes because one of the steps involve treating the surface full of amines with methylating agents like methyl iodide to form quaternary amines which make me wonder if some of these may break apart and form terrifying compounds.
Oh my gosh you are actually right - I didn’t even think of the ion membrane researchers!!!
One of the most exciting parts of an orgo lab class... the sentence "You add this drop wise, because in the presence of, eh, twenty degree above room heat the product will be an anesthetic instead of an indicator and leaning over the beaker will paralyze you for a couple days on a ventilator. SO YOU ALL MADE SURE TO GET THE ICE BATHS DONE PROPERLY WITH BRINE, RIGHT?"
This reminds me of the phrase "oops I accidentally a war crime."
I can attest to the terrifying aspect. I went thru the CDTF at FLW MO. The first day is fun, splashing around cleaning up simulated chemical weapons in a variety of settings. The second day when they open the container and the alarms in the area start going off is a totally different vibe.
They split it into 2 days now? I did all of it in one
@@khub5660 I was there shortly after the 9/11 attacks and my class was a mix of BNCOC, 20/30 transition (like me), air marshals, and SF students so I'm sure I didn't get the normal treatment.
Nothing like that cold shower afterwards when the fear of death sets in just a little too late. Most people probably don't understand what it really means to say the army provides you with clothes to go in there and it's easier for them to just burn it all afterwards, from just having been in the same room as individual droplets of nerve agents.
@@donm9090 The night before CDTF is like, "they said you have to keep your face shaved to get a good mask seal, but they just told me not to shave tomorrow morning.... they said we have to burn contaminated MOPP gear, but today they told us they use the suits seven times...."
@@stickyfox You don't shave because they can't let you in with even so much as a slight razor burn cause damaged skin is a risk they can't take. Skin contact with a single drop of NA is enough to kill most people, damaged skin would have any vapor stick to it and get inside your skin better. Gas masks will seal with something like ¼-½" of facial hair. As far as what they burn goes, mopp is like $1k a set so it would make sense if they clean and reuse them at least a couple times, but eventually they'll be burned and replaced. Mopp has a field use time limit of about 4 hours iirc so that's probably when they burn the mopp gear, after it's been used enough times to get close to the 4 hours use. Everything underneath isn't nearly worth enough money to be cost effective to clean even once.
As a person that collects and studies CBRN-E personal protection equipment, if a nerve agent was ever used, I would just give up. It is nearly impossible to protect from them As a civilian. .
3:10 We actually DO know why. Adolf was injured by mustard gas in WWI, and he developed a great aversion towards using them in combat as a result.
3:00 my first thought is that given he was discharged from the military after being exposed to mustard gas maybe Sarin gave even _him_ pause when presented with the nerve agent
The algo has blessed you, please do more. This topic is extremely interesting!
Thank you :)
I was a CBRN (Chemical Biological Radiological Nuclear) specialist in the army. This video is great, it's common knowledge that we were exposed to live agents such as nerve, blood, and blister (can't say which ones) but just knowing that if my mask failed I would pretty much be dead was pretty humbling. Nuclear radiation was still the most frightening thing that I could have ever possibly worked with.
@Gareth Fairclough honestly I wish it were fake substances that stuff scared the shit out of me. They have to call and make sure that they aren't doing any live training before commencing a mock fire drill, as to avoid any unnecessary risk of cross contamination of a live agent. The CDTF building is no joke lol we were already on a secured post and they had to check our id's again to gain access to the facility.
@@forthewubwubs Went through CDTF as well, if it was all fake they sure spent a shitload of money to make it look real. May have been less potent than the real thing but it was certainly real.
Yeah I went to air force basic training in August(watching this in tech school) and we learned about nerve and blister agents at CBRN after going through the gas chamber. Scary stuff.
Ill take radiation over nerve agents. Christ almighty.
@@7thBatallion nerve agents kill you within a few minutesto hours, radiation at the lethal level takes days. I'd rather die quickly than suffer days of excruciating pain.
Finished watching NileRed make cherry and grape sodas and now the algorithm decided it’s time to teach me the human atrocities tier list 💀
When i learned about these nerve agents during my HAZMAT specialist course, the one thing that freaked me out most was that if someone is spasming, they would be a low priority casualty as even if we injected them with two jabs of diazepam they will almost never make it.
CBRN/ACM Marine here. I miss this shit. Ironically, I miss having a job that NOBODY took seriously. Gas chambers are the butt of the joke, "what do you guys even do?" all that jazz. I look back at how I felt about that during my time in, how other Marines looked at our jobs, how we were treated at the command and in the S-3, and I feel so good about the work we accomplished then. We had a ragtag group of CBRN, Arty, Infantry, EOD, SEAL, and corpsman on our ACM team, doing incredibly important shit that nobody else knew or cared about. It felt very "secret squirrel" if you will. Or as secret squirrel as a bunch of dudes running around in level A suits with detection equipment can get. Every sector of Marine professionalism jam packed into a squad of people that could take on the worst shit man kind has ever invented. A truly thankless job, and I was proud to do it. We all were. Wish I still could be in that field doing what I loved. I miss my guys, I miss suiting up, I miss the thrill, the professionalism, the places we got to go, things we got to do. We traveled the world, visited 15+ countries teaching people our job, did real world detection and decon on some real nasty shit. The knowledge you HAD to have to do that job efficiently and keep people alive is something i am really proud of, and I'm glad to have spread that knowledge as much as we did. Everybody thought the gas chamber was just going through the motions, which in the world then and today, it was in a way during peacetime. But the basic fundamentals of CBRN gas chamber training to the normal Marine lays the groundwork for having that skillset. I just wish more people took it seriously. It is an incredibly fulfilling knowledge base to have even in everyday life dealing with household chemicals, knowing what chemicals are in the random trucks driving the roads, such a niche sector of knowledge to possess. I just wish in hindsight, that I continued pursing that after I got out.
I'm being overdramatic, but God damn, being 10 years removed from that job, do I fucking miss it. It was so much fun being so good at what we did. Now we all have kids, live normal lives, work normal jobs. Life is fucking strange sometimes. At one point I had a ridiculously important job. Now I'm a nurse, and it just doesn't compare. I've let that time in my life go. Uniforms in a tote in the attic, some small things around the house from those days, pictures, challenge coins, what have you. I hadn't honestly thought about it in quite some time. Thanks for the video. I know that wasn't its intention, but thanks anyway.
Really cool!
@eL PieDra thanks! Very awesome section of my life that I hadn't really talked about in a decade.
I've never been so confused, terrified and entertained in my life.
"I don't care, I wanna see what happens when you are exposed to nerve agents..." See link say its on rabbits "Nah I'm good I don't want to spoil my day"
I had no idea that evil was so easily quantifiable!
Props for being tough enough to try all these nerve agents yourself. Now that’s Chemistry!
*Coyote Peterson: Chemical version*
The scariest part about Cyclosarin is that it's shorthand is GF which is yet another proof that Girlfriends are seriously toxic and nerve-wrecking.
Lol
Don't introduce me to your GF please 😨
I’m so glad the algorithm brought me to this. What a great scientific breakdown. 10/10
I have no idea what you're talking about and I'm probably on a watchlist now, but I enjoyed every bit of this.
I was in the Army as a cbrn specialist, was around G & V series agents. Pretty scary!
I always thought VX was the most toxic ever created. It's quite scary that there's something even worse than that.
Honestly, the absolute bastard-ness of VX has to do more with its cleanup being near impossible to do exhaustively. It’s basically grease with a super long decomp time and thin slicks can go unnoticed in some porous surfaces, patiently waiting for some poor sod to accidentally grip one invisible patch missed in cleanup with bare skin and within a couple minutes they’re a twitching seizing corpse-to-be.
Greetings from Sweden!
You, Sir, just got yourself a new subscriber. 👍
Thank you - I just visited an IKEA about a week ago ;)
@@That_Chemist Did you try the meatballs?
Guess I'm gonna download that book. I'm probably on every watchlist anyway
I'm so glad this video exists. As CBRN operations the infantry guys number one question is what is the most scary/dangerous CBRN threat excluding radiation. I guess that radiation is just particularly terrifying to people.
Please talk about the human trials in Maryland. It's important these actions see like the light of day.
I used to live in Harford County (HarCo) MD, where Edgewood is. Edgewood Arsenal is a part of Aberdeen Proving Grounds (APG) and the different outposts of APG (there are three that I know of) are big employers in northern HarCo and Maryland in general. They all do research on weapons and other things for the military.
I when I lived in HarCo I worked at a little local museum and we did a exhibit celebrating 100 years of APG back in 2017. We had different people come in and talk about different projects that they worked on. Or at least, as much as they could. A lot of things were still either classified, or were just uncomfortable to speak about to larger groups of people so they were vaugely covered. One of the people who came in was someone from Edgewood who worked on the chemical weapons projects.
His overall speech was really good and just cover how the chemical weapons research lead to develop of other tech in other areas like solider protection, but I honestly don't remember a ton about it. What I do remember however is afterwards when he was just hanging out with just me and the museum staff talking more in depth. He told us about how when they tested some of the chemical the way they did it was to put the men in like, a trailer, with a gas mask, and then set off the chemical. Then he talked about how one time HE volunteered to try it.
He told us how it was way worse than he thought it would be. He thought that the safety gear and filters would help and I guess make it not bad. He apparently way over estimated how much they would midegate the effects. He also noted that his was angry with him, which idk why that part stuck with me. He also switched to the development of defense against the chemicals after because he couldn't handle being in the weapons development after he did a test.
APG does and has done a lot, and I mean A LOT of testing. On everything from chemicals, to bio weapons to vehicles and artillery pieces. They have the different outposts for different things. On days with think cloud cover you can hear the artillery tests for MILES booming around the Chesapeake Bay. And they test a lot of things that would make a lot of people uncomfortable. Like when they tested the chemicals. But in MD, we look the other way. Not only because places like APG, Fort Mead, Andrew AFB, the Navy Med research center are all huge employers in the state, not to mention you dont really get a choice if the military says they're putting a base somewhere; but also because of the same reason the speaker gave as to why he originally was okay with the weapons tests. Is it horrible? Yes. But it's better for us to have the tech first know that it does and hie it acts, how to ID it, etc., before anyone else does. Because then we can counter it. But the question then becomes well, now you have created it in the first place. Why. It wouldn't have existed otherwise. It was horrible and is horrible and whats the end point to the game of one up.
Bonus Story: Living in MD and especially HarCo you can meet and talk to a lot of people who work or worked at APG. This is one of those stories.
I had a bio professor in college (the same time I worked at the museum actually) who had interned at one of the bio labs at APG when he was in college. One of the first tasks he was given was a simple go-for task. Clean out this old deep freezer that was rarely opened and to store old samples from old tests.
There were lists of the samples that were supposed to be in the fridge, but because it was basically acting like that old extern harddrive you through in the drawer and forget about until you clean, the list was a relative thing. Some things might have been removed years ago and not taken off the list, and things in the freezer might have been left off by accident or oversight.
Well, my teacher was working his way through the freezer and was almost done sorting things when he found a few viles of something that were not on the list and didn't have clear labels. He took them to his boss who through some process managed to figure out it was an old labeling format for Smallpox. Smallpox that that lab wasn't supposed to have. Apparently they had to call the military and CDC to come get the samples. They somehow managed to keep it under wraps but apparently things like that have happened a few times. It was just neat to meet a person involved in on of those cases.
Bonus bonus: APG also got in trouble for really loose and sloppy handling of anthrax and plague samples as well, and that is at least part of the reason the US military has said they are no longer doing biologic weapons research (at least publicly).
I have worked with neostigmine in a lab class recently and never realized how toxic it was
Wtf
@@That_Chemist It's a useful pharmaceutical agent e.g. for atropine overdose and it's among the substances we got tasked with separating and checking their identity for practice. We also have some pure stuff to runn TlC and IR references with.
@@That_Chemist I think you have some nurses in the audience that are a little entertained by your concern over neostigmine haha. That reversible binding makes all the difference! I actually take an analog of neostigmine daily (pyridostigmine). Without a doubt the most dangerous medication I take, but not that hard to manage.
www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3648782/
Pyridostigmine is another drug used for the same clinical purpose.
What I gathered from my Cburn training in the USMC is that when exposed to a nerve agent immediately shooting myself is the best case scenario
This video made me remember all my chemistry classes from high school. amazing work!
Thanks :)
How many did you have? In high school?
Hopefully in 20 years we WON'T have a new tier list involving nerve agents and how evil they are. Maybe I'm just living in a dream though.
Naaaahhhhh, CIA gonna have a new DLC here soon.
Dream on. They will be 1000 times more deadly.
In BCT in my CBRN class I asked the instructor what happens if you're not in MOPP 4 (full protective gear) and you get gassed. He pretty much just said I hope the atropine lasts long enough to get you to the hospital. Starting my CBRN AIT soon wish me luck, I really hope I never have to earn my paycheck.
I wish you luck!
This comment reminded me of one of the chieftain's videos where he talked about armored crew procedures regarding chemical warfare. Kind of scary that to test whether or not a nerve agent has dispersed is that the tank commander takes the loaders side arm first and then orders the crew member to unbutton as a guinea pig.
Better hope you're not in C co. If you're B co, you'll hate it, but remember it fondly when you're at your first unit.
@@igorsokolenko6144 In B start tomorrow
The one I have to keep saying, “Yes dear,” to.
Reminds me of my ex, she told me once to just shut up and say Yes dear,
after that I said Yes dear with a s*** eating grin for every damn thing she said for the next 20 years and it drove her absolutely insane!
I'm sure she's just as glad to be rid of me!
Certain there are a lot of CBRNE folks checking out the tier of stuff theyve been around. Massive pucker factor when your test strip turns neon green when you get a positive on VX.
Side note, even though Novichok is supposed to be a rumor, always found it interesting that the teams in group have a test kit for this supposedly nonexistent agent.
It's only actively denied by Russia I think, other nations acknowledge it's existence.
Novichok isn't classified anymore, they teach it at nord hall now
I was under the impression that the "G" is derived from the German word "Gifte," which means "poisons" in English.
The G-series nerve agents were developed by the German military during World War II, and they are named using a combination of generally two letters except in specific cases like GBS where the S stands for sulfur)
In any other tier list of toxic compounds, even neostigmine would be S tier. That's the stuff of the most terrifying of the most nightmarish of all nightmares.