Tag: chemical warfare

That Time the U.S. Army Sprayed Millions of Americans With Zinc Cadmium Sulfide

In the early 1950s, the U.S. Army Chemical Corps prepared a series of biological weapons tests in multiple cities across the United States and Canada. These experiments were executed in the mid-1950s through the late 1960s—not before a law was passed to shield private military contractors from all liability for public injury.

As Professor Lisa Martino-Taylor writes, this, in effect: “created a sanction-free military human test zone across North America and blocked legal recourse for victims.”

In short, the Army was ostensibly concerned that the Russians would expose American and Canadian civilians to dangerous agents, so the Army did it themselves in the name of mitigation.

As a part of the tests, the U.S. Army Chemical Corps released zinc cadmium sulfide “from airplanes, rooftops, and moving vehicles in 33 locations, mostly cities and towns, in the United States and Canada.” These cities included St. Louis, MO, Minneapolis, MN, Corpus Christi, TX, Fort Wayne, IN, Biltmore Beach, FL, and Winnepig, MB. The cities were chosen because of their similarity to cities in the USSR.

In St. Louis, the Army’s dispersion methods were insidious. “The Army used motorized blowers atop a low-income housing high-rise, at schools and from the backs of station wagons” to disperse the chemical agent. Local officials were told that the “government was testing a smoke screen that could shield St. Louis from aerial observation in case the Russians attacked.”

Zinc cadmium sulfide itself is a fine powder “that is formed by heating zinc sulfide and cadmium sulfide together under very high temperature so that they fuse…Zinc cadmium sulfide is not a biologic weapon; it was a tracer used by the Army to imitate or simulate the dispersion of biologic weapons.” At the time, the compound was not believed to be dangerous to humans.

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Pentagon Officials Cast Doubt on Hysterical Hate-Russia Propaganda. Chemical Attack Not Imminent as Russia Restrains Its Power

It appears that some Pentagon officials aren’t as anxious to embark on World War III over Russia’s war in Ukraine as one might be led to believe.

Reports from Reuters and Newsweek suggest that some in the military, and others recently retired, do not believe Russian leader Vladimir Putin will launch a chemical attack, as President Biden recently suggested. Nor is Russia using all of its might to crush Ukraine’s resistance.

The question is whether saner heads in the armed forces will prevail over the Deep Staters and media leftists. They can’t wait to see American boys die face down in the mud for “democracy” in a country that just outlawed 11 opposition political parties.

Those military officials, Joe Lauria wrote for Consortium News, are “engaged in a consequential battle with the U.S. State Department and the Congress to prevent a direct military confrontation with Russia, which could unleash the most unimaginable horror of war.”

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An Essential Guide To The Truths And Myths Of Chemical Weapons

If you were to ask the average person on the street to tell you about chemical weapons, odds are you’ll hear far more in the way of legend, born out of popular culture, than you will anything resembling fact. For most people, the only information they have on chemical weapons comes from movies like The Rock, episodes of 24, or trashy spy thrillers. Worse still, because that level of background knowledge is so low, even those people who can speak with even a basic level of understanding can often be taken as credible, even as they rattle off incredibly misleading information.

I should know this. Before I started really working in the weapons of mass destruction (WMD) field, I wasn’t much better. When I first joined the U.S. Army as an artillery officer, my sum total of chemical defense training was a short period of instruction as a cadet at Fort Lewis. That very limited instruction reinforced the fact that chemical protective suits are awful to wear more than conveying any real functional knowledge about chemical agents and their effects. 

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FEDERAL AGENTS USED TOXIC CHEMICAL SMOKE GRENADES IN PORTLAND

The Portland Police Bureau began using tear gas on Black Lives Matters protesters almost as soon as they first assembled in late May. Mayor Ted Wheeler acknowledged that the city has used “CS” tear gas. The commonly used formulation contains 2-chlorobenzalmalononitrile, a compound that was designed to induce immediate pain but can also have long-term effects, including chronic bronchitis. In early September, Wheeler ordered the police to stop using it. Tear gas is banned in war but can be used to disperse crowds of civilians.

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