Mustard Gas?

Mustard Gas is delivered as an aerosol, what do you need to know? I went through NBCD but need to know more about your context.

It's a blister agent. Rarely fatal. Works on skin contact or on lungs, airways and eyes. You'd need a massive dose for it to be fatal from anything but inhalation though.

Mustard gas in WWI was delivered by artillery shells or by teargas-type canisters. some troops had crude gas masks, but often ill-fitting or just didn't work. It can cause blindness, and if inhaled strips away the lining of the throat and lings. Death can take days or weeks, very painful.

Large fireworks displays employ 'mortar's with 'shells'. These are pipes that are aimed upwards, and the fireworks charges are placed inside. The charges have a 'propellant' that shoots them upwards, and then the 'burst' or explosion which is what you see in the sky.

Mustard gas must be contained in a container - like an artillery shell or a tear gas canister. It is an aerosal - and relies on wind direction to carry it. A shell bursting high in the air would likely disperse before floating down to reach a crowd. I assume you'll be firing real fireworks so the crowd hangs around to watch it? Interspersed with the real fireworks, you would need to be firing 'duds' that went up, then fell down INTO THE CROWD - and THEN exploded and dispersed.

Not a very likely setup.

there was an old man who used to come into my dad's store, back in the fifties. he was a ww1 vet of the argonne and had been mustard gassed during the war. he was practically blind and shuffled very slowly when he walked. it was a small town and my mom and dad said that he had been an athlete at the high school before going off to ww1. sad stuff---s6

Well any sort of professional display is going to go to great lengths to minimize the chance of falling shells or debris reaching the audience. Your experience proves it CAN happen, mortars fall out of alignment, shells go wild, wind can change - but pyrotechnical displays are very, very carefully planned NOT to do this. SO you would need to make the 'bad guys' experts in pyrotechnics, working on the crew, or make the owner of the company the bad guy himself.

Allegedly, character actor Walter Brennan's gravelly voice and aged appearance were a result of his exposure to mustard gas in WW1

Why not just use the fireworks as camouflage. The noise and flashing obscures the noise and flashes of artillery.

To answer your original question... have you checked wikipedia?
As to the problem of delivering mustard gas via fireworks... I have to agree that technically the gas would be too high to have any effect... but that would never seem to stop a Hollywood movie screen writer.
Maybe you should use some mystery gas that some evil chemist invented...
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updating this display booths website!

Does it have to be gas that's used? Couldn't the fireworks release some kind of burning liquid that rains down on the crowd? That'd give you some nice visuals to write as well.

Ann_Mayburn said:

It was more that I liked the idea of pretty fireworks raining down destruction from the sky. When I was a little girl, we went to a fireworks show where one of the fireworks exploded too close to the ground and burned some people. I got away with a singed arm, but it stuck in my mind as lovely death from above.

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What about acid then?

You could load the fireworks and rig them in such a way that the acid didn't get a chance to burn in the initial explosion.

WriteKnight said:

I assume you'll be firing real fireworks so the crowd hangs around to watch it? Interspersed with the real fireworks, you would need to be firing 'duds' that went up, then fell down INTO THE CROWD - and THEN exploded and dispersed.

Not a very likely setup.

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Happens in China all the time, actually... they set up the fireworks in the middle of the street and fire 'em off, and I've seen shells fall into the crowds and explode. I can say it was amusing, as I was watching from an apartment building balcony.

shaldna said:

What about acid then?

You could load the fireworks and rig them in such a way that the acid didn't get a chance to burn in the initial explosion.

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Very unlikely, acids are water based so they're too heavy to be launched in significant quantities in fireworks.
But there's all kinds of nasty chemicals in powder form that can be used. Quicklime has long tradition in warfare for example. (Though it's not very likely to outright kill, unless inhaled, and if inhaled, even milk is lethal)

Noah Body said:

Happens in China all the time, actually... they set up the fireworks in the middle of the street and fire 'em off, and I've seen shells fall into the crowds and explode. I can say it was amusing, as I was watching from an apartment building balcony.

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I'm not talking about street fireworks - I'm talking about pyrotechnics that can be fired from mortars. They look like paper 'bombs' - and they need lots of space to be seen, let alone fired.

Fireworks come in various classes - the lower class fireworks are what most people can buy at fireworks stands.

If you want to lob a string of firecrackers into a crowd on a street - that's a different setup than a large scale display with an attending audience that is typical of communities in the U.S.

The bad guys on the barge, have to know how to pack and load the mortars. Honestly - it's a lot more complicated then it sounds - if you're talking about a large scale community fireworks display. Most displays are controlled by computers, so that the right mortar fires at the right time. Typically - a display is loaded or 'charged' many hours before the time of the display. It can take all day to load a display. Then the mortars are guarded - usually by police or rental security - with the company controlling the firing computer monitoring security as well.

Yeah - I've got friends who do this for a living.

Ann_Mayburn said:

Anyone out there have any knowledge of chemical weapons, in particular mustard gas? I'm using it in a novel and had a couple questions on delivery method. From what I've found via Google, I think it will work, but not totally sure.

It's for an erotic romance story, so my readers probably wouldn't know the difference. But I would.

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Well, a romance involving mustard gas, points for originality

first, the short facts:
"Mustard gas" is a liquid, it is heavy, oily and stable. It is a nsaty weapon, having no symptoms during exposure. victims will get symptoms two to twenty four hours later, when antidotes are no longer effective.


Mustard agent attacks the skin, eyes, lungs and gastro-intestinal tract. Internal organs may also be injured, as a result of mustard agent being taken up into the body.



Symptoms of mustard agent poisoning extend over a wide range. Mild injuries consist of aching eyes with abundant flow of tears, inflammation of the skin, irritation of the mucous membrane, hoarseness, coughing and sneezing.



Severe injuries are incapacitating and may involve eye injuries with loss of sight, the formation of blisters on the skin (damage as 2nd dgree burns, but heals slower), nausea, vomiting and diarrhoea together with severe respiration difficulty.

If the affected area of skin is >50% of the body, death is likely after several days or even weeks. (This may be far less likely for victims in a modern ICU specialized in burns.)

sulphur mustard as it is also called, can cause temporary or permananent blindness if it you get it in the eyes, Some degree of damage is likely to persist for 30-40 years after exposure.

See: http://morichesdaily.com/2010/08/toxic-munitions-dumping-sites-shores/mustardgas-blister/

When weaponized, there are two dispersal methods, explosion and spray. Spray is usually delivered with aircraft. Either through overpressure, or gravity delivery. This can take place from up to ten thousand feet if light, wind and temperature is favourable. to achieve a good coverage, a plane passing at 1000 feet, using 700 pounds of agent will cover an area some 4000 by 1000 feet.

The second type of delivery is explosion, simply put a stick of dynamite in a barrel of agent, and is will be spread over a wide area. the effects will be droplets like rain over the immediate area, and a cloud drifting downwind, initially rising and then sinking. this will be followed by a second cloud of vapour from the droplets.

80 pounds of agent dispersed in this manner will cover a rough circle with a 40 feet radius.

(Njmbers from US Air Force calculations 1942)

Now, the above areas are what the military considers enough to be effective against a dispersed trained enemy. The effect on a civilian crowd would be horrific if the amount of liquid was large enough. Even if the drops are well spread, a day later several hundred people would be panicking in the ER:s

I do not know how much weight you can put in a fireworks rocket, but according to
http://www.jpyro.com/refseries/dispnotes/DN-05-02.pdf
there should be no problem putting up some 40 pounds of agent with ten 8 inch mortars.

If the antagonists know what they are doing, they could rig the fuses to blow when the bombs are on their way down.

My estimation of success would be "Tricky". If the bad guys can train ahead of time with dummy agent but similar weather and wind conditions, I'd say the odds would be fair to good to get a mass panic and temporarily overwhelm the ER:s

If you want immediate panic, use Lewisite. It starts to burn immediately on contact.

Hey AM,

I like the method of delivery.

But why stop at mustard gas? You could have anthrax, zyklon B... a whole swathe of nasty things.

You could even make something up, something that may burn,, but will possibly wipe out a crowd of people.

Being a young innocent I'd call that Andrex.

But I'm sure you could find a better name!

Regards

Whacko