Reasons Behind the Chemical Weapons Manufacturing During the Vietnam War

Why did the Vietnam War generate, manufacture and use new chemical weapons? In history, weapons of mass destruction have been used but had a massive impact throughout the War in vietnam. Chemical weapons are using chemicals poisonous to create physical or physiological effects on the enemy instead of destructive characteristic properties. The chemical weapons are not aimed at destroying people, but to render them vulnerable. Everyone would prefer bombs over chemical weapons for the enemy, because the chemical weapons will influence you and your next generations, because the chemicals are inside, the food you consume, water, polluting the air and so forth.

Once chemicals are in you, they can almost not get these chemicals out of their bodies. That is much greater and far more dangerous death than nuclear and explosive devices. All living things, including humans to animals, can be harmed by chemical weapons. Why would people want chemical products to be sprayed on plants? The conclusion is: starvation and poverty for the people who use these crops. This is an easy question. The chemical weapon used to kill a human is known as the lethal agent, and the term used in plants is known as the defoliant. The defoliants are used to quickly kill the plants and crops on the field.In history and in the Vietnam War, it was used a lot, but it all began in the First World War. Such weapons can be heavy, fluid or gas They block nerves or blood, therefore they kill them. It would be diagnosed as having an effect on your body. These would be: nerve agents, moutaries, cyanide gasoline, tear gas, arsines and psycho-psychotomimetic agents. There are two categories, lethal and disabled The fatal ones in a certain time cause mortality and the impaired will alter things like degeneration and paralysis of your body. Some chemical weapons are too dangerous that they have to be destroyed and people have the techniques to get rid of it and not affecting anyone or anything. There are still being meetings between countries so that this chemical weapon war stops and the innocent people stop suffering. The use of these weapons is considered to be biological warfare because it differs from conventional and nuclear weapons. The reason that it differs is because these are the only one that are harming the living things without any explosions and the other ones are explosives that only kill things at the instant. Any non-living toxic products are considered as chemical warfare.

A really powerful advance in the history of the chemical weapons was the use of gas. This was a very dangerous and probably one of the most deadly weapons during all of the wars. This weapon could kill people instantly or make them suffer depending on the gas, and the worst thing was that there were many different types of gas. The German army was the first army to use the gas called Chlorine Gas. This gas was used a lot in the Vietnam War to harm the enemies. This type of gas causes you to feel a burning sensation and chest pains which will eventually lead to death. Even though it was a great weapon to use, it could also be bad for the side using it. The reason for this is that for you to be able to use this gas, the weather has to be perfect meaning either there can’t any wind or it has to be blowing in the opposite direction of the army using it. The reason for this is that it can come back and kill your own side. Another type of gas used and probably that most deadly and the cruelest gas is called Mustard Gas that is going to be explained later on. This gas is fired into the trenches with shells, fixing the weather problem that the chlorine gas had. This gas is really cruel to use because it can make you suffer for up to 5 weeks before it kills you.

In the 1900’s, the agents that were discovered were chlorine, chloropicrin, phosgene and mustard gas. All of these were moved by the wind so the people couldn’t stop this. The way to protect from this was by using gas masks, and if you were infected with these you had to urinate on the spot that you were infected. How could the people detect it? It could be detected with the smell. Chlorine is a chemical element that appears in the periodic table with atomic number 17 and it is a halogen. It is a really potent oxidant and it is used for disinfecting and bleaching. In the atmosphere, chlorine containing particles as chlorofluorocarbons are destroying the ozone layer. Chloropicrin that is also known as PS, is a chemical compound that is a color-less toxic liquid and it is used as a fumigant and as a nematocide. When this chemical was introduced into the people, it caused vomiting and it is classified as a lachrymatory agent. This was a really intelligent idea because with this, the soldiers had to take their masks off to vomit and they could now inhale the powerful gases and die. Phosgene is a colorless gas used as a chemical weapon mainly in WWI. This chemical was used with gas weapons. Mustard gas is a member of sulfur mustard. If this gas touched the skin of a person, it could form large blisters. Now, the mustard agents are regulated by the CWC.

Later on in 1910, the Lewisite was discovered and used. The only way that a person could get protected from it was by using gas mask. It is specifically a arsine. It also made blisters on the people and it sometimes was a lung irritant. It can go easily through clothes so this was a cause of more harm in the soldiers, but the effects were seen after 12 hours as blisters or severe burns. If there is an excess in a body, death can happen. If anyone inhales it, they would have diarrhea, vomiting, burning pain, sneezing and pulmonary edema. The results if anyone ingested it were: vomiting, really hard pain, nausea and tissue damage. In the 1930’s, the G-series nerve agents were discovered. These were dropped by airplanes and people could recognize it if they placed it on a paper and it changed color. It is named G-series because of the Germans. This is the first and oldest family of the nerve agents. The first nerve agent was discovered in 1936, which was GA or tabun. In 1939, GB or sarin was discovered. Then was GD or soman and then was GF or cyclosarin. GB was the only agent that was used in the United States as munitions.

Lots of different weapons were used by different armies participating in the Vietnam War. These armies included the opposing armies of both the Republic of South Viet Nam and people’s Army of Vietnam. The United States, Viet Cong, Australia, South Korea, Thailand, Philippine and New Zealand were armed and equipped. Almost all of these were armed by the United States because they were really powerful. In 1961 and 1962 the Kennedy administration accepted the use of chemicals to destroy all of the vegetation and food crops in South Vietnam. Between 1961 and 1967 the United States Air Force sprayed over 12 million gallons of herbicides, mainly Agent Orange. Over 6 million acres were damaged of foliage, trees and food crops. This affected about 13% of South Vietnam’s land. In 1997, Wall Street Journal reported that about half a million children were born with dioxin related deformities and that the birth defects in South Vietnam were quadrupled those in the North. The use of Agent Orange may have been against the international rules of war of that time.

Also, the most likely victims of such an assault were the small children. A 1967 study by the agronomy section of the Japanese Science Council concluded that 3.8 million acres has been destroyed, think that the discovery of the chemical weapons was a good and bad discovery for the history of mankind. It was good because there are some chemicals that are used to clean things and others that are used as treatment for health problems. The negative impact of these chemical weapons is much more noticeable because of one main thing, this is death. It caused thousands of deaths throughout all the wars and it is recently still taking people’s lives because of the chemicals that these persons had inside their body. If the chemical weapons would not have ever been discovered, maybe the history on which country is more powerful would have changed.