BBC chem-attack report, and other random thoughts

This report and footage seems pretty good.

The video is a bit more telling, although not definitive, than some of the other stuff I've seen that looked more like Paliwood productions.

Some of the victims in that BBC video do seem a bit cyanotic, and one guy is shown having muscle spasms...those are symptoms of a nerve agent.

There's also a video floating around of some doctor talking about using up thousands of doses of atropine to treat. Atropine is a standard nerve agent treatment. Everyone in the US military gets training on its use in BCT during the ABC weapons training.

aside from chem-weapons, there's other stuff that can ruin your day. Have you checked your spare tire lately? Is it actually inflated, or is it flat? Can you find that locking lugnut adapter gizmo for the wrench? Do you have a working flashlight in your ride, or are its batteries dead?

This item about accidental prosperity in the news dump is actually pretty good and warrants a closer look than just a bullet point. While it nominally talks about America, the advances of the past 250 years were largely planet wide (in varying degrees). The real bump in American prosperity seen in the 50's and 60's was IMO due to the "last man standing" effect that fell out of WWII. America had a few decades of mostly unchallenged, other than by the Soviets, worldwide industrial supremacy. But, even that Soviet challenge was a driver of innovation and technological advance.

posted by Purp at 11:32 AM

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