Drugs intended to be used as nonlethal weapons are almost certain to kill people if used during a crisis, the British Medical Association said in a recent report.
Many experts believe the odds for a chemical attack are relatively high, compared with biological or nuclear terrorism because of the widespread availability of raw materials including millions of military-grade chemical weapons scattered in at least a dozen countries.
They were no-shows in Iraq, but tons of chemical weapons are stoking fears and costing billions to clean up elsewhere in the world - from concrete "igloos" in Oregon, to the Panama rainforest, to the highlands of China, where Japanese war leftovers reportedly have killed hundreds.
The US Defense Science Board, a senior advisory body to the Pentagon, has recommended exploration of the use of calmatives as strategic weapons. Calmatives, such as anesthetic or psychoactive drugs, are the same type of weapon was that tragically used at the end of the Moscow Theater siege in October 2002.
Over the past year harrowing first-hand testimonies from North Korean defectors have detailed execution and torture, and now chilling evidence has emerged that the walls of Camp 22 hide an even more evil secret: gas chambers where horrific chemical experiments are conducted on human beings.
Senior U.S. military officials and independent experts are concerned North Korea would use chemical or biological weapons tactically to devastate U.S. and South Korean forces in the event of war, potentially producing a dilemma of U.S. retreat or nuclear retaliation.
Researchers have developed a new sensor network for chemical weapons that uses neural networks to learn over time.
Chemical and biological weapons falling into the hands of individuals or small bands of terrorists is as much a threat as nuclear weapons being developed by rogue states according to delegates at U.N. disarmament talks.
Against the backdrop of the war on terrorism, an expanding group of government researchers is at work on a nationwide sensor network that someday could provide a real-time early-warning system for a wide array of chemical, biological and nuclear threats across the United States.
The U.S. is actively rethinking the role of its arsenal of weapons of mass destruction. Issues under consideration include: the resumption of nuclear testing, ambivalence over controlling chemical and biological weapons, and the development of new "bunker busting" nuclear weapons.