To many of us who see 'death as death', it has always been un-obvious why coughing to death from WWI gas clouds was so much different than being hit in the guts out in No Man's Land and coughing your life away for a half an hour while your comrades are helpless to intervene.
A similar phobia existed against openly conducting warfare with radiation clouds or clouds of fire or germs.
Germs I can at least understand - since they are self replicating, they don't fade away like even the worst gas, fire or radiation cloud eventually does, but can circle the world and kill the nation that unleashed them in some cosmic justice bite-you-in-the-rear pandemic.
So instead of cloud warfare, almost all of the military and civilian elites promoted "precision" warfare.
A few bullets, shells or bombs would be aimed directly and land directly upon the enemy military forces --- and nothing else.
It was supposedly the more moral and certainly much cheaper and quicker way to win a war.
But why it was so moral to kill a man who was conscripted against his secret wish, to fight for his government only because if he didn't he might be jailed or even shot and yet so immoral to kill his brother making rifles back home was never really explained.
Cheaper certainly was the claim of the 'precision boys' at the beginning of WWII - a few medium bombers would drop their relatively small bomb loads directly on their military targets, once, and wipe them out completely.
But in fact total imprecision was the real Bomber Command/AAF forte and the war ended with thousand bomber raids of heavy four engine planes still dropping thousands of tons of bombs over "factories" week after week, year after year - and still not wiping them out.
It was actually cloud warfare with hundred of thousands of tiny fire bomblets and not a few big HE bombs doing most of the real damage, with germ cloud and gas cloud bombs waiting in the wings, but the Allies would never admit it.
Just as they never admitted that Nagasaki's civilians died as much from fire clouds and radiation clouds as they did from the poorly-aimed Atomic Bomb's explosive force upon the naval base.
Reductionist ideology, the ideology of the Era of Modernity, touted selective precision as the only correct way to approach reality.
First one determined the one right and best solution to solve any particular problem (and plenticided all other possible solutions) and then one applied that solution accurately and consistently until it worked, even if that took decades.
Modernity tolerated no second thoughts, no Plan B, no re-assessments.
Modernity simply could not afford to admit that the imprecise plentitude of cloud warfare was sometimes much more effective than the selective precision of modern warfare.
Because they feared that others might feel that what was true of warfare might also be seen as true of all reality : that imprecision and contingency ruled and that Reductionism gave a seductive but erroneous explanation of Reality...
Showing posts with label gas warfare. Show all posts
Showing posts with label gas warfare. Show all posts
Wednesday, June 3, 2015
Saturday, December 27, 2014
'Weaponizing' the Wind
The Allies actively 'weaponized' the wind to increase the lethalness of two death-creators during WWII (fire bombs and atomic radiation) and had fall back plans to use it with two others (chemicals and germs).
The Axis did weaponize the wind with the latter two (Japan with germs and Italy with chemical gas).
But it may be said that the elites of these modern nations all did so very, very reluctantly --- even secretly.
For handing over some of their total powers over life and death to Nature (the wind) was as about as comfortable for these male elites of superior races as it would be if they offered to share those powers with women, the poor , the unfit and the lesser races.
For pre WWII modernity was all about illusions of total control and total precision and total predictability and the wayward wind held none of those attributes.
How modernity really wanted to fight WWII was with the Norden Bombsight, able - it was claimed - to unerringly drop a bomb into a pickle barrel from 25,000 feet.
The Norden and its equivalents in long range land artillery, battleship guns and long lance torpedoes would make victory swift, almost bloodless and cheap.
WWII , of course, was anything but.
So a year or two into the unexpectedly long war, most modernist elites reluctantly - and secretly - changed tack.
Germ and gas (wind-carried) warfare had never been totally ignored but were quite low in priority - now more money was poured into secret efforts to make them workable weapons of war --- if desperate need required it.
National leaders went on parroting in public their bomber commanders' line that precision use of high explosives would take out vital enemy industrial assets without killing many civilians - but more and more mixed in with the (in)precise HE bombs were largely un-publicized fire bombs.
The HE was really only there to calm public and armed forces consciences ---- and to 'open up' buildings so the fire bombs could work better with the far more inflammable material inside.
If the weather had been dry enough and the wind was just right, and enough fire and HE bombs fell in the centre of a very big city in a short enough period, a self-sustaining firestorm could do far more damage than any single WWII atomic bomb was capable of.
The updraft from the intense concentrated burn drew in air/oxygen from all sides at ground level - creating intense winds and mimicking exactly the bellows that allows primitive furnaces of wood charcoal (think civilian wood framed homes) and lots of oxygen to effortlessly melt ores and metals... and human bodies.
Once having gotten over their public (and private) distaste for using imprecise fire bombs to mostly kill civilians rather than to destroy hard-to-hit factories, elites on the Allied side looked again at nuclear radiation which they had earlier rejected.
(Earlier very modest funding had really been directed at the possibility of nuclear boiler engines for ultra long range submarines.)
It had always been easy to powderize low grade nuclear material (even just enriched ore) and drop it into the wind over a huge city as basically a terror radiation weapon.
But now the claims by some that atoms could be used in a bomb that had HE like blast effects and fire and radiation effects was irresistible for some in the Allied elite.
The public would be lied to and told the new bomb worked by old fashioned blast effects and precision - indeed the atomic bombs were dropped with the aid of the Norden bombsight - but in fact they would mostly kill by wind-fed fire and wind-carried fallout radiation.
Man just had to claim WWII victory at Hiroshima - not Nature.
But Nature listens to no master and Axis-intended radiation dropped at Hiroshima was instead wafted back into Allied children's milk all over the world.
The 'Victory Bomb' was actually our very first man-made global weather cum environmental disaster.
Still think our current climate change disaster can be easily solved by just another 'Manhattan Project' superhero quick-fix ??
The Axis did weaponize the wind with the latter two (Japan with germs and Italy with chemical gas).
But it may be said that the elites of these modern nations all did so very, very reluctantly --- even secretly.
For handing over some of their total powers over life and death to Nature (the wind) was as about as comfortable for these male elites of superior races as it would be if they offered to share those powers with women, the poor , the unfit and the lesser races.
For pre WWII modernity was all about illusions of total control and total precision and total predictability and the wayward wind held none of those attributes.
How modernity really wanted to fight WWII was with the Norden Bombsight, able - it was claimed - to unerringly drop a bomb into a pickle barrel from 25,000 feet.
The Norden and its equivalents in long range land artillery, battleship guns and long lance torpedoes would make victory swift, almost bloodless and cheap.
WWII , of course, was anything but.
So a year or two into the unexpectedly long war, most modernist elites reluctantly - and secretly - changed tack.
Germ and gas (wind-carried) warfare had never been totally ignored but were quite low in priority - now more money was poured into secret efforts to make them workable weapons of war --- if desperate need required it.
National leaders went on parroting in public their bomber commanders' line that precision use of high explosives would take out vital enemy industrial assets without killing many civilians - but more and more mixed in with the (in)precise HE bombs were largely un-publicized fire bombs.
The HE was really only there to calm public and armed forces consciences ---- and to 'open up' buildings so the fire bombs could work better with the far more inflammable material inside.
If the weather had been dry enough and the wind was just right, and enough fire and HE bombs fell in the centre of a very big city in a short enough period, a self-sustaining firestorm could do far more damage than any single WWII atomic bomb was capable of.
The updraft from the intense concentrated burn drew in air/oxygen from all sides at ground level - creating intense winds and mimicking exactly the bellows that allows primitive furnaces of wood charcoal (think civilian wood framed homes) and lots of oxygen to effortlessly melt ores and metals... and human bodies.
Once having gotten over their public (and private) distaste for using imprecise fire bombs to mostly kill civilians rather than to destroy hard-to-hit factories, elites on the Allied side looked again at nuclear radiation which they had earlier rejected.
(Earlier very modest funding had really been directed at the possibility of nuclear boiler engines for ultra long range submarines.)
It had always been easy to powderize low grade nuclear material (even just enriched ore) and drop it into the wind over a huge city as basically a terror radiation weapon.
But now the claims by some that atoms could be used in a bomb that had HE like blast effects and fire and radiation effects was irresistible for some in the Allied elite.
The public would be lied to and told the new bomb worked by old fashioned blast effects and precision - indeed the atomic bombs were dropped with the aid of the Norden bombsight - but in fact they would mostly kill by wind-fed fire and wind-carried fallout radiation.
Man just had to claim WWII victory at Hiroshima - not Nature.
But Nature listens to no master and Axis-intended radiation dropped at Hiroshima was instead wafted back into Allied children's milk all over the world.
The 'Victory Bomb' was actually our very first man-made global weather cum environmental disaster.
Still think our current climate change disaster can be easily solved by just another 'Manhattan Project' superhero quick-fix ??
Sunday, September 5, 2010
1941 penicillin:Porton Down GERM WARFARE yes, patients no
The Florey Archives at London's Royal Society has a Florey letter (HF/1/3/2/1/19 )(previously 98HF.35.1.19) that didn't get shredded but probably was intended to be.
Dated December 4th 1941, it is addressed to Doctor "Cameron" at "Porton" and mentions scientists "Courtice" and "Gaddum".
Florey says ICI penicillin is at Porton and he is glad that Gaddum wants lots and lots of penicillin.
In December 1941, no one had much penicillin - certainly no patients in UK got any - and only Dawson's patients in the USA.
This must be some of the very first ICI penicillin ever produced - not for patients - but for 'Porton' .
One of Florey's very closest of his (very few) friends was Paul Fildes, very near the top of Britain's WWII Germ Warfare effort, which was centred at Porton Down.
That place has been for a century Britain's leading gas and germ warfare centre - in fact one of the top centres in the world for this highly secret activity.
Florey's first biographer, Bickel, indicated that in 1939, Florey had been asked by the War Office if he would be a consultant in 'poison gas research' (probably because of his proven skill in doing lethal experiments on small animals and his middle-aged chickenhawk attitude to the upcoming war.)
Florey had agreed.
I have always wonder if Florey's mystery month , mid July-mid August 1941, was somehow connected with him having informal talks on germ and gas warfare with various American researchers.
Certainly, Florey go top clearance for his trip to America from US and British officials - penicillin ,alone, seemed too unproven to warrant this kind of assistance.
Now Penicillin and Porton is like Jeckyll and Hyde to British audiences - no wonder this letter has never been mentioned in all the hagiography on penicillin and Florey.....
GR - Gordon Roy- Cameron *
FC -Frederick Colin- Courtice *
JH -John Henry- Gaddum
* Part of Florey's power was his cultivation of a network among the sizable Aussie contingent working in the UK - these two are but a tiny part of this group. Florey also cultivated ex pat britons who had taught in Australia.
Dated December 4th 1941, it is addressed to Doctor "Cameron" at "Porton" and mentions scientists "Courtice" and "Gaddum".
Florey says ICI penicillin is at Porton and he is glad that Gaddum wants lots and lots of penicillin.
In December 1941, no one had much penicillin - certainly no patients in UK got any - and only Dawson's patients in the USA.
This must be some of the very first ICI penicillin ever produced - not for patients - but for 'Porton' .
One of Florey's very closest of his (very few) friends was Paul Fildes, very near the top of Britain's WWII Germ Warfare effort, which was centred at Porton Down.
That place has been for a century Britain's leading gas and germ warfare centre - in fact one of the top centres in the world for this highly secret activity.
Florey's first biographer, Bickel, indicated that in 1939, Florey had been asked by the War Office if he would be a consultant in 'poison gas research' (probably because of his proven skill in doing lethal experiments on small animals and his middle-aged chickenhawk attitude to the upcoming war.)
Florey had agreed.
I have always wonder if Florey's mystery month , mid July-mid August 1941, was somehow connected with him having informal talks on germ and gas warfare with various American researchers.
Certainly, Florey go top clearance for his trip to America from US and British officials - penicillin ,alone, seemed too unproven to warrant this kind of assistance.
Now Penicillin and Porton is like Jeckyll and Hyde to British audiences - no wonder this letter has never been mentioned in all the hagiography on penicillin and Florey.....
GR - Gordon Roy- Cameron *
FC -Frederick Colin- Courtice *
JH -John Henry- Gaddum
* Part of Florey's power was his cultivation of a network among the sizable Aussie contingent working in the UK - these two are but a tiny part of this group. Florey also cultivated ex pat britons who had taught in Australia.
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