Chem Warfare essays

History of Bio/Chem Warfare essays History of Biological and Chemical Warfare The use of biological weapons and efforts to make them more useful as a means of waging war have been recorded numerous times in history (NBC-MED). [As early as the sixth century BC biological warfare has been reported, when the Assyrians poisoned the wells of their enemies with rye ergot. When plague broke out in the Tartar army camp in 1346 during its siege of Kaffa (present day Feodosia in Crimea), the Tartars set the corpses of those who died on catapults and flung them over the walls. The defenders were forced to surrender when an epidemic of plague engulfed the city. It is also believed that Russian troops used the same tactic against Sweden in 1710. Smallpox has also been used as a biological weapon on several occasions. It is a belief that in the fifteenth century Pizarro presented South American natives with contaminated clothing. The English were said to have done the same during the French and Indian War when Sir Jeffrey Amherst gave French-allied Indians smallpox-laden blankets (NBC-MED).] Fort Carillon, which was held by the same Native Americans, was lost to the English when huge losses due to the sickness forced the defenders out. The first large-scale use of chemical weapons came during World War I. Starting in 1914, both sides used various tear gases in attacks. Yet it was on April 22, 1915 that the Germans used thousands of cylinders of chlorine to attack the unprepared French Territorial and Algerian units along a four-mile line in Ypres. The attack took the defenders completely by surprise, but the surprise would not last long as both sides began developing other gases and more effective delivery methods in the war. By the time World War I had come to an end, more than 100,000 tons of various chemical agents were used (Encyclopedia Britannica) to kill and injure over one million people (Watts) in Europe. ...