It's shelf life expired 20 years ago. These were weapons from the late 80's/early 90's. You probably couldn't even use it as an insecticide now.
This is just on Sarin gas: Degradation and shelf life Rabbit used to check for leaks at sarin production plant, Rocky Mountain Arsenal (1970) The most important chemical reactions of phosphoryl halides is the hydrolysis of the bond between phosphorus and the fluoride. This P-F bond is easily broken by nucleophilic agents, such as water and hydroxide. At high pH, sarin decomposes rapidly to nontoxic phosphonic acid derivatives.[13][14] The initial breakdown of sarin is into isopropyl methylphosphonic acid (IMPA), a chemical that is not commonly found in nature except as a breakdown product of sarin. IMPA then degrades into methylphosphonic acid (MPA), which can also be produced by other organophosphates.[15] Sarin degrades after a period of several weeks to several months. The shelf life can be shortened by impurities in precursor materials. According to the CIA, some Iraqi sarin had a shelf life of only a few weeks, owing mostly to impure precursors.[16] Its otherwise-short shelf life can be extended by increasing the purity of the precursor and intermediates and incorporating stabilizers such as tributylamine. In some formulations, tributylamine is replaced by diisopropylcarbodiimide (DIC), allowing sarin to be stored in aluminium casings. In binary chemical weapons, the two precursors are stored separately in the same shell and mixed to form the agent immediately before or when the shell is in flight. This approach has the dual benefit of solving the stability issue and increasing the safety of sarin munitions. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sarin -----Original Message----- From: C. Hatton Humphrey [mailto:[email protected]] Sent: Thursday, June 19, 2014 2:31 PM To: cf-community Subject: Re: I thought Hussein didn't have chemical weapons... On Thu, Jun 19, 2014 at 3:02 PM, Eric Roberts < [email protected]> wrote: > 16.32 Isis jihadists have seized a chemical weapons facility built by > Saddam Hussein which contains a stockpile of old weapons, State > Department officials have told the Wall Street Journal: > > Quote U.S. officials don't believe the Sunni militants will be able to > create a functional chemical weapon from the material. The weapons > stockpiled at the Al Muthanna complex are old, contaminated and hard > to move, officials said. > (*facepalm*) So we're not worried about it because they don't think they can create a "functional" weapon. As Bruce pointed out these folks have a huge level of ingenuity. My fear is that this is being viewed from a western lens... someone tells use, "that's expired" and many will throw it out. Seems to me that if they can kill any group of people with it they will. If a drug's potency goes down when it expires that doesn't mean it becomes inert. It becomes unpredictable. I'm not a chemist but I would say that if the age takes effectiveness down by a percentage (let's say a factor of 50%) a dispersal that would originally have killed 10,000 will now kill 5,000. That's supposed to make us feel better? Until Later! C. Hatton Humphrey http://www.eastcoastconservative.com Every cloud does have a silver lining. Sometimes you just have to do some smelting to find it. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~| Order the Adobe Coldfusion Anthology now! http://www.amazon.com/Adobe-Coldfusion-Anthology/dp/1430272155/?tag=houseoffusion Archive: http://www.houseoffusion.com/groups/cf-community/message.cfm/messageid:371057 Subscription: http://www.houseoffusion.com/groups/cf-community/subscribe.cfm Unsubscribe: http://www.houseoffusion.com/groups/cf-community/unsubscribe.cfm
