So we thought it might be useful for you to know a bit about the chemistry so that you can understand the discussions rather better a little bit about some of these things in particular nerve gases.

Just because some of the research idea looks at the nervous system, how we can interact with it actually to control pain rather than kill anyone.

The use of chemical weapons really began in the first World War.

First of all, they used chlorine, which is a sort of yellowish gas, so you could see it coming across the battlefields.

You had trench warfare.

These would go along no man's land down into the trenches and obviously maim and kill the enemy.

Or, if you've got the wind direction wrong, your own troops mustard Guess which is Chemical Weapon, which was used again in the Iraq Iran war in the 19 eighties, is political.

The gas, it is actually liquid, which made it particularly unpleasant because it would persist on the battlefield for months.

Mustard gas that was shot in the autumn could still be there in the spring and affect people on it cause blindness for those people who were not actually killed by it.

But the rather macabre twist to the chemistry mustard gas is that it has since been used, or derivatives off it have been used in medicine and more people have been saved by derivatives of mustard, then were killed in the various uses on the battlefield.

Run up on in particular in the early stages of the Second World War.

I guess both sides, allies and the Nazis they were both developing more sophisticated chemical warfare agents, presumably in case the other side used it.

Luckily, although there are lots of developments were made luckily, there was no chemical warfare whatsoever.

In the Second World War on dhe, none of these items got used, but nonetheless, the technology has been developed on DSO these days.

The you know this recent knowledge out there about these more advanced systems, of which sarin is one of them.

Unfortunately, terrorists can get hold of it.

I've got a molecule of sarin here.

Not really Sorry.

Know where that would be illegal to make that I've made out of straws and these colored balls they're quite small molecule.

Not many atoms, and that's why it's volatile.

It's a gas for a very low boiling liquid.

Here we have a phosphorous, this purple one, these two red ones or oxygen, the black ones of carbon on dhe.

The thing which makes it the reactive and volatile some extent is this one here.

This is a flooring.

And what this does is it blocks something in all animals are humans called a subtle coleene Esther raise.

That's the what it works on.

There was great worry in the UK that chemical weapons, which by the time of the Second World War were much more sophisticated might be used.

So a ll British citizens, even babies were given respirators or gas masks.

And I've got my father's gas smells.

I think they were presented in the color bull box, but my father had this rather posh leather case made for it.

And if you look inside, it has his name is written a political esquire.

Andi.

He's got his dread, his work address and even his telephone number.

Inside is the gas mask itself.

I haven't taken it out for many years, and I think it might be perished.

But let's see if we can get it out.

So what is ass?

It'll Coley nest.

Rachel, before I tell you what the Esther raise bit means, I'll tell you a bit about astral cooling.

So this is a molecule here of ass?

It'll Coley on.

This is a neuro transmitter.

So whenever we breathe or move our arms or the whole range of things, heartbeats and what not we use our nervous system.

Brain sends a signal now threat.

Most of it's like an electrical cable.

But when it gets to a junction, those signals are transferred by neurotransmitters, and astral coding is one type of neuro transmitter.

So this drifts across the sign up to get the junction on.

DIT triggers the next response, and the response might be the arm moves or lungs breathe.

I think I may need to stand up for this.

So here are the straps, but let's see what's left inside when you want that response to die off.

What happens is this drifts away from its receptor on the molecule like a Pac man comes along on.

Dhe chooses up.

That molecule is called a subtle Colin s straight.

So that's totally natural.

Very good thing very good thing, because otherwise if you move your arm, it would always be there.

You wouldn't be able to stop it and come back and breathing.

You'd be always breathing out and breathing in.

There's something coming.

So here we are.

This is not completely come off on DDE.

There is an eyepiece on dhe the thing that you breathe through.

So you need this to go on and this happens in milliseconds is incredibly quick, incredibly quick.

And all that happens is that this astral Coley next race comes along and it takes the end off.

This is not vinegar over here, Andi, the other bit is tolling and that gets recycled to make Maur Astal Colin in the receptor end.

Well, you can't see very much.

It's a bit dirty.

I can just about see the camera.

I couldn't drive in this and what it would have been like walking in the complete darkness.

A blackout?

I have no idea.

So that process is going on and on and on, constantly in our bodies on what sarin does is it comes along on dhe, the molecule, which which takes this ends group off here.

Let's let's call it.

This thing here, it's this Ohh which is gonna happen?

That's the Patman molecule comes along.

It stops that for that.

And then water comes in and takes this off to make acetic acid.

Well, sarin comes along on DDE.

It's got a much more active group.

The flooring is really reactive.

That goes, Andi this the time she zone.

But now water can't take this off again.

So it's just soaked up one of these pattern molecules as Tell Colin a stray molecules.

Well, now you see, it's not available to break down the astral cooling anybody.

So you've always got on switch on your muscles.

And the thing which is deadly is your breathing, because obviously your lungs and muscles, they move in and out.

And if they don't go one way and don't go back the other way, then you know you're very quickly died of suffocation, which is why you see, in all these news reports, people were really bad breathing problems, and it's because they can't get those muscles to work correctly.

Because the stock only nest raises being mocked up by the sarin on dhe.

The water can't hide.

Rise inside here will be activated carbon charcoal, which has a very large surface area and will absorb the molecules of the poison gas on DDE.

I believe that I'm not certain that they found that coconut charcoal was by found the best.

Why from coconuts?

I don't know.

It just probably gave higher surface area.

So there is an antidote.

And, of course, whenever chemists of designed in the past poisonous things, obviously they don't kill themselves.

Clever guys.

They invent some sort of anti dote on the anti date.

Is this molecules called prowl Doc scene And this is like super water.

So here's an oxygen here, and it's connected to this nitrogen.

And that makes this oxygen about hundreds of 300 times more reactive than normal water.

And that can come along on dhe displaced the siren from the astral curly next race, and that could go back its business again.

No.

The other thing, which is perhaps more interesting is this which I bought as a schoolboy in the early 19 sixties.

As far as I remember, I paid five shillings for a 25 UK pence on dhe 60 you at that time 60 US cents.

So not very much inside.

If you look, this is a kit a military kit for detecting poisonous gases and hear the instructions how to use it here.

There's a whole lab have little different vessels on underneath is essentially what is a bicycle pump.

Except instead of pumping things up, it sucks air through a hole at the top.

You put the chemical tester here and then you come like this and it sucks air through.

So you go Imagine me now wearing a gas mask and gloves because there may be chemical.

It was that you put the thing in here and then out of here you took a small paper disk.

So imagine wearing gloves and the battle raging around me, and you put a chemical this piece of filter paper in here and then you start mixing up solutions here and still pumping away and see if you get to color.

Does this stuff scare?

You have?

Totally, Absolutely.

Yeah, yeah, I mean it, Sze Horrendous that the lethal dose for this is around one milligram, far smaller than the smallest sof sweetener pill that you might put in your coffee, for example.

But we think of cyanide sodium cyanide is being quite dangerous, but you need half teaspoonful of that so you can see these.

There is a you know, around 1000 times Maur deadly than even sign item.

We all know that that was horrendous.

I think one of the problems of chemical weapons is that they are not targeted at particular individuals in the way that you would.

If you shoot a Gannett them, you can't control them.

If you're aiming a bomb or missile building, you're you're aiming at that building.

But if you release a gas, it's going to go over.

The wind blows it, and there's no control off who's in the way And who isn't also that that the members of society who are most vulnerable old people, young Children are those that are likely to suffer most from chemical weapons Because if you know their chemical weapons about and you're properly equipped, such a soldier's with all their battle field kit, then they're relatively little danger.

You cannot easily protect yourself from exploding bombs if they're big ones, but you can from chemical weapons.

So part of the revulsion I think that everyone feels about chemical weapons is that they're not targeted.

Didn't individuals on innocent bystanders can so easily be injured or killed?

So I look at the blue one, the nitrogen.

This is a cat time that Tetra try me felt ammonium species.

There is a huge problem now that there are aging stockpiles in various places off chemical weapons that need to be destroyed.