The relevant prevailing condition is ventilation. Tunnels are very different from streets in that regard.
Think of it like the difference between clearing a room with a fart, and clearing a football stadium.

Killing 1,000+ out in the open with sarin requires exactly what Jon described, and it is complicated.

Had detailed reply, X404 ate it. Bah!

Short version : The Aum Shinriyoko subway attack is almost completely unlike the incident we're talking about. If you wanted to come up with a scenario in which a chemical agent would be at it's absolute most effective, that was it, yet they still only killed or hospitalised a relatively small number of people (the London underground bombers caused much more death and injury with plain old explosion and fire). Also Aum were very far from being a 'small band of nutters', they were a multimillion pound international organisation with a headquarters that would make most Bond villains jealous.

If you look at history the only people who have ever been able to deploy chemical weapons on a 'battlefield scale' (which is what this is) have been nation state armies.

Sarin is also relatively easy to manufacture. It was a topic for discussion on a Food Defence training course 2 weeks ago.

Some interesting links amongst this one

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-23925932

Syria: Obama Makes New Military Action Vow

http://news.sky.com/story/1136626/syria ... action-vow

A vote would make the arming decision a lot easier, that's for sure.

The fact that they seem gungho about attacking Syria now that it has used chemical weapons seems hollow when they did nothing after Saddam Hussain's gassing of the Kurds.


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I'm amazed America supported the rebels at all. Okay that's the moral high ground, but given Assad has been fighting Al-queda (spelling?) and some of the rebels are known to support Al-queda, I'm amazed the Americans just didn't keep their nose out. Yes Assad is a nasty piece of work and has done terrible things, but the last thing America wants is chaos that will allow extrimists to operate in a country.
Obviously things change now Assad has used chemical weapons, assuming that's the case. We know rebbels had access to stocks of it they captured. I wouldn't put it past one group of extremist rebels to gas another/innocent civilians to get the US involded in taking out the current regime.

Every nation in the area is fighting Al Quaeda, it is the common enemy of all the states around there. The presence of their fighters does significantly complicate things. Which is probably why further delay might actually be a good thing. We still need to determine who actually launched the gas attacks before blindly attacking someone.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-23983036

How did he ever get that envoy job?

Brown envelopes or maybe he had enough dirt on everyone else courtesy of GCHQ?