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Chemical warfare in a relationship is only fair if your significant other gives as good as they get. Depending on just how much broccoli they ate, you may feel like you’re gonna die. But in World War II people actually did die from gas attacks. Although, not the first time the method was used. That was a clusterfuck.
--On This Day in History Shit Went Down: January 31, 1915--
A big part of the 20th century was Germans killing Russians and Russians killing Germans. Many forget that World War I also had an eastern front, possibly because it came to an end with Russia saying fuck this shit in 1917 and just walking away so they could make war amongst themselves over whether their flag should be white or red, or something. Anyway, I can’t think of too many WWI eastern front movies, but it happened, and people died. Not from gas though. I mean, not the first time they tried it out.
On January 31, 1915, the German forces made the first large-scale use of gas as a weapon of war, launching 18,000 canisters of xylyl bromide, an early type of tear gas, toward the Russian lines. I guess some dumbass didn’t check the weather report though because it was cold as fuck and the liquid that was supposed to vaporize didn’t cuz brrrr. There are no known casualties. From the gas. The battle sucked though, and a shit-ton of people died. It was called the Battle of Bolimów, and when the gas didn’t work the Germans said ah fuck it let’s not do this today and then the Russians launched a no, fuck you counterattack and so the Germans said oh shit man the cannons, and people got shot and blowed up the old-fashioned way and the rats had a feast afterward.
You’ll notice I said “large-scale” use of gas. The previous year, the French had tossed some tear-gas hand grenades at the Germans, and a bit later the Germans tried shooting a few thousand canisters of a lung irritant at the British, but the explosive charge that launched the canisters also incinerated the gas, so that was a total nothing.
But they learned from their fuck ups and a few months after Bolimów the Germans hit the Brits with chlorine gas and it worked, killing over a thousand and wounding 5,000 more. And then all over the war commanders said oh this shit is awesome we need to do that too, and so they did, killing about 100,000 people via various gas attacks during the war. Ten years after the war ended the Geneva folks said hey, don’t do that shit anymore.
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When I was in high school (4 1/2 decades ago), our chemistry teacher had the class do an experiment to generate chlorine gas. I kid you not. Two dozen 15-year olds and twelve lab stations with little test tubes puffing out tiny clouds of toxic fumes. Everyone started coughing and the teacher was yelling "OPEN THE WINDOWS!!!1!!" because of course no fume hoods. He evacuated us into the hallway and passed around a vial of ammonia for us to sniff to neutralize the gas. Then brilliantly stated "maybe next time I'll just do this as a demo" Those were the days amirite?