OT - Question for mgoScientists on a quiet night

Submitted by Magga Saraivah on

The US missile attack on Syria destroyed chemical weapons sites where chlorine and sarin are stored/manufactured. During this attack, would not a lethal cloud have been released that may pose a serious risk to civilians? 

What about it, you chemical weapons experts? Do chemical weapons only release their elements when they explode from intended use but not when they explode from being militarily attacked?

 

WindyCityBlue

April 15th, 2018 at 10:55 PM ^

So based on the intel they are telling folks, they are targeting plants that are making either excipients or API for the deadly chemical.  Doing this, prevents them from making the final product that is used for chemical warfare.  What' more, when you target an API plant, you bascially vaporize the deadly compound into something inert.  For example, the melting point for sarin is very low, so blasting it with an explosive will essentially "kill" its deadliness.

Also, sarin is hard to maintain.  If you can raise the pH just a little then it degrades into a non-lethal sustance. 

Hail-Storm

April 16th, 2018 at 9:30 AM ^

So many knowledgable people here with a huge range of education, whether it be law, chemistry, statistics, engineering, football, basketball, history, literature.

It's fun to come here expecting to just learn about Michigan athletics, only to watch a thread delve deep into some academic tangent debate, usually involving well thought out arguments.  

Thanks for your great explanation. 

bklein09

April 15th, 2018 at 11:00 PM ^

I’m pretty sure they used thermite plasma rockets, assuming they were operational in time.



That is unless they saw green smoke upon approach, of course indicating that the threat had been neutralized.

Arteza1

April 16th, 2018 at 12:09 AM ^

Even if there were finalized chemical weapons stored there and they were able to survive the drastic pressure and temperature changes that would take place it is highly unlikely that the cloud you speak ofcould persist for any long period of time. Differences in pressure and winds would cause disappation quite rapidly and even if here wasn't any air motion entropy would drive the combination of the gas and the surrounding air to reach equilibrium which would likely involve the chemicals being there only in trace amounts before they eventually decayed.

Icehole Woody

April 16th, 2018 at 7:49 AM ^

The storage facilities hit were isolated from the civilian population. I’m sure Assad is moving anything he has left into the basements of schools and hospitals in densely populated areas.

MaizeNBlueInDC

April 16th, 2018 at 12:04 PM ^

Believe it or not, as destructive as chemical and biological weapons can be, they are also quite fragile.  A major limitation of use is how to make the delivery effective and not actually destroy the agent in the payload.  (BTW, do not confuse the language I am using - efficacy, etc. - as being cold hearted, this is just the language that is used in describing the employment of C&B weapons).  They can be delivered via shells, bombs, etc. but take a specific design to ensure the actual agents are not blown up upon delivery or dispersed such that they have little impact to humans due to a lower than necessary concentration.  The most effective use during WWI was often just spraying the weapons across no man's land and not through artilery shells (aviation was not developed enough to them in bombs) because they were not very effective in artillery barrages.  Anyway, the background was to highlight that the desctruction of the plants/sites will subject the agents and their precursors to high temp/pressure that would destroy many of them.  And if any did leak out, they would quickly dispurse or become inactive before they could do much harm to those near these facilities.