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Radio War Nerd EP #451 — Tear Gas in Warfare (Patreon)

Published:
2024-06-22 14:37:27
Imported:
2024-06
Tags:

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Content

Recorded: June 19, 2024

Last month, the US accused Russia of using banned chemical weapons in Ukraine — chloropicrin, and CS tear gas — adding new sanctions in response. We discuss actual US policy re: banned CS gas in warfare, chloropicrin in your strawberries, and recover some lost history of US military's widespread use of tear gas as a battlefield weapon in the Vietnam War.

Images

*Russian CS gas grenade allegedly used in Ukraine

*WW2 poster

*Battle of Hue

*E8 Expendable Launcher

Works cited:-Chemical Warfare during the Vietnam War: Riot Control Agents in Combat, by D. Hank Ellison-"Poison Gas in Vietnam", Seymour Hersh, New York Review of Books, May 9, 1968-"Russia is using toxic chemical weapons, wrecking a ban it helped create," Washington Post, May 6, 2024-"Claims of Chemical Weapon Use in Ukraine 'Insufficiently Substantiated': Watchdog", Kyiv Post, May 7, 2024

Total time: 1:33:51

Direct link to this episode's mp3 here

*

Subscribe to Radio War Nerd at patreon.com/radiowarnerd

Sound production by Telescope Audio

Check out the Radio War Nerd Merch store here!

Order your print or ebook of John Dolan's new book Erdogan Pizza: Dispatches from a Violent & Grotesque World

Files

Comments

MoldyTolge

Taking a massive hit of BZ gas then hitting play on Brenden’s new ambient album

Philippe Duhart

From Bakersfield so I got family and friends who’ve worked for the Resnicks. Ask Yasha if he got ahold of the company Christmas cards. They are themed and there are costumes. They’re unbelievably terrible.

Jenn

I love seeing the episode title and knowing it’s gonna be a classic

William

The US is just Wiley coyote

Borvis

My grandpa—New Deal vintage, WW2 vet—had an old gun safe like Mark was mentioning. If you put in the wrong combo, a “pin” would drop and it would spray you in the face with tear gas. He had to get rid of it cause he was too freaked out about fucking up the combo! Haha.

NYCM&AHole

All I hear is counter strike gas (CS gas), ie, a bunch of fat nerds eating microwave burritos

zo

Oh man I’ve been looking forward to seeing pistachio wars come out for years at this point, so glad it finally got edited and will be released. Wish I could see in person. Enjoy it for us John!

Mark Ames

Researching these, turns out some of these old safes supposedly spray phosgene as well

Michael

Theoretically, if you trained a bunch of green beret navy seals who also all have ISB and deployed them behind enemy lines, would that be a war crime?

Doug Cartel

Shout-out to the morons on SomethingAwful forums circa 2003 who legitimately thought B-52s filled with CS gas canisters would "minimize civilian casualties in iraq" as if the air force would ever even think of doing that. May even have been Vilerat himself a few years before he got ganked in Benghazi (Might be wrong but I distinctly remember seeing someone argue that)

CR

Biden’s cloistering and loyalty shit is the same complaint the media made about Trump. It’s probably more that once you’re at that position you don’t want to trust anyone because you’re getting pelted by commentary from everyone. But tough shit because that’s also the position most in the world that needs to be open to everything. It’s like locking down the People’s House (U.S. Capitol) to keep the people out is not just a stupid logistical move, but it tells the people to go fuck themselves. We don’t matter. And exactly what good has come from the government ever telling us that? We never mattered, but it’s the easiest lie to keep up.

ploob

A wise man once told me "You can't follow almond trees."

William

Every accusation a confession

a clash of purple

People like Biden and Trump are true elitists. They regard their lessers, even their own supporters, with nothing but disgust and contempt. They're certainly not interested in hearing anyone disagree with them, especially not us lower-class vermin.

Jeff Normal

United States: “you don’t fight fair…stand and fight, ya bunch of cowards!” Viet Cong: digs in deep and starts sending rounds United States: heroically fills aircraft with gas

Shane

Nice shout out to JD on Chapo’s most recent episode, btw.

Steve Mathews

In the 80s and 90s, they teargassed us many times in training (US Army).

Steve Mathews

Great for sinus issues imo. Clear you out for a week, even in hay fever season.

Jason Thompson

Oh man I wanna watch pistachio wars! When is the next Kickstarter update?? Please!

Lauren G

I've just subscribed and can't find an RSS link anywhere to get the podcast on my app of choice. Can anyone help? Apologies if it's obvious and I'm missing it.

Christopher Small

Fun episode, and I don’t really have anything to comment on it. But I do kind of want to go back to something from the Belisarius episode and play devil’s advocate for the theological debates about Christ’s nature and put them into context. Not as a criticism or anything, it's irrelevant to the episode, I just like the topic. Because beyond being a matter of faith/dogma and proxy for cultural/political divisions, questions of body and spirit were all deeply tied into people’s understanding of things. People in the ancient world weren’t very good about abstractions, they tended to default to thinking of them in material terms. And the divide between corporeal/non-corporeal things was more of a spectrum than a clear binary. And this gave spiritual questions a practical dimension, like was it okay to eat meat used in a pagan sacrifice because the spiritual content of the meat might pollute your body. So these debates about Jesus’s physical and spiritual makeup had a lot of real world ramifications that would seem obvious to someone in 6th century Anatolia but are lost on us. And in the end I think they did have some positive impacts on the world, though not what they intended. Because along with being very muddled and imprecise, the way immaterial things were dealt with in the ancient world was also taken for granted. Like if you go back to how Plato talked about forms or Plotinus talked about tutelary deities, they don’t get into how such things worked, they just assumed people already knew and got to work building a whole cosmology on top of it. However, spending 1000 years arguing about what Jesus was made of forced people to interrogate what it actually meant for something to be a thing of pure spirit/abstraction. Like all those scholastic debates about how many angels you can fit on the head of a pin were actually asking what it meant for something to be a thing of pure spirit/ideal, which in turn helped them work out better ways of dealing with abstractions.

Quinn

tunnel warfare would be a great episode. not only vietnam even tho im sure theres plenty of grest stuff there, everything from seige sapping to gaza tunnels. was there ever a known battle in a cave?

Lauren G

Saw the email and message. Got it all sorted now. Really appreciate it!

Yairo Martis

If only the Lusthog squad had had CS gas grenade launchers, maybe Doc, 8 Ball and Cowboy wouldn't have gone down like that.