Should Britain remain a 'Tier One' Military Power?

Sonic67

No. There's numerous reasons why it didn't kill straight away. If only there was some kind of way of finding out.

Wait.

Myth busting: Why didn't the Skripals die on the spot?

Nerve agents only really work quickly when they are inhaled. The mechanism of action in the Skripal case appears to be dermal absorption – the agent got into their systems through the skin. This works slowly. Signs and symptoms progress from localised ones at the site of exposure to central ones over a period of hours. In a cold war-era study with goats and the nerve agent Soman, death took up to 48 hours after exposure to the shaved skin. It's not exactly fast.

Second, if something happened to reduce the intended dose - for instance if the person opening a door handle was wearing gloves - then a possibly quite lethal dose could have been mitigated to a lower one.

In addition, we must also allow for human factors. Did one of the Skripals say: "What is this muck on my hands? I'm going to wash up". That would have initiated a self-decontamination effort. Soap and water is actually quite good at decontaminating nerve agents, as numerous studies have indicated.  All of the organophosphate nerve agents degrade in the presence of water, through a mechanism called hydrolysis. So, did the door handle in question get wet? Salisbury is not known for an arid climate.

Practical toxicity in the field differs greatly from the theoretical toxicity of poisons in laboratory conditions. Every major nerve agent incident (Tokyo, Halabja, Ghouta, Khan Sheikhoun etc) has had more people injured than killed. The Tokyo incident killed 12 people, but there were nearly 70 with major exposure who survived and nearly a thousand with minor to moderate exposure.

The most important thing to consider, however, is the nature of the lethality and toxicity estimates for nerve agents. All of these toxicological statistics are derived from studies wherein the targets (almost always lab animals) did not receive decontamination or treatment for their injuries. Indeed, if you were trying to experimentally determine figures for lethality, administering antidote therapy or decontamination would warp the results and be bad science. Statements that 'substance X is five times more lethal than Y' are only valid in the absence of medical treatment.

Trollslayer

When talking about chemical weapons you link to someone who deals with the effects of ionising radiation.

rustybin

And who wears a beret.

Sonic67

Frank Spencer Walt.

Skull n Bones

Are you an expert ?  or did you even watch the video through as you might learn something important  

Edit. Will stick to the Markov/Litvenenko thread to keep on topic.

Sonic67

Note, the link above regarding why they didn't die immediately.

Dan Kaszeta is a London-based consultant in security and chemical defence. He has 27 years experience in the field, with roles in the US Army, the White House, the US Secret Service, and private industry. You can follow him on Twitter here.

Happy he's an expert?

justincase

And would it be safe to say that no media outlet has got any evidence of who did it...
People can think whatever they like about this incident ,who knows what happened but i would like to see some evidence before i started blaming anyone ...

And the consequences are ?

IronGiant

I'm staying openminded on this, but S&B is convinced by RT that it's a conspiracy against Russia.

However, I'll now put my mod hat on and ask that we move this discussion to the Markov thread.

justincase

Sorry

Rasczak

Getting back onto the original topic, before we diverted into World War II and Russia, it looks like the can has been kicked down the road a little bit further:
UK misses Nato deadline for completing defence review

The financial stand-off between the Chancellor and Defence Secretary remains ongoing over whether the MOD will receive billions in extra funding or severely downscale some areas of its capability.