Atropine is the correct spelling.
And there is controversy as to which is worse, the nerve gas or the cure.
Think of NG as human "Raid", in which the chemical breaks down the synaptic chemical links between nerve cells and leaves the human unable to control motor functions. Atropine helps to restore those links, but will leave a person incompacited from its effects as a result.
But the thought I hated most was of plunging that spring loaded, stilleto-like 4 inch needle, into my thigh or buttocks. I simply couldn't understand why they couldn't develop an easier, less intimidating, method of getting the atropine into our systems.
As for it being a matter of when and not if, I guess most of these officials are just trying to ready the public for what they consider inevitable, given the extremism of some of these militant political factions.
So what is really inevitable is that we'll see extremist factions, with the will to use weapons of mass destruction growing bolder and more ruthless.
But somehow I doubt that most political terrorist groups are willing to commit wholesale slaughter with NBC style weapons. After all, their attacks are aimed not at the victims, but at the broader audience in general.
Such an attack would not evoke mere fear, but a public outcry for massive retaliation by our govt against all the perpetrators and their support network.
Call it the "Pearl Harbor" threshold. Americans were not outraged enough to go to war with Japan over their brutal invasion of China (in which US ships were also attacked like the gunboat, USS Panay). But when you attack the homefront, you rile us up and we go to war and bring all of our industrial power to bear in order to win it.
(Note: interesting link on the Panay attack: metalab.unc.edu
That result would be counter-productive to any political terrorist group with any other agenda other than initiating the apocalypse. And instead of becoming heros in their people's eyes, they would be known as the fools who roused the American "Satan" to conquer and destroy their homelands.
That's why I'm not too concerned about massive terrorist events against the US. There will always be bombings and we may see limited chemical attacks. But biological warfare is a genie that won't want to go back into his bottle, once unleashed. And nuclear terrorism is more valuable as a unspoken fear, than as a threat that actually is carried out.
Regards,
Ron |
