Chemical Weapons

The newest development in chemical warfare is the potential of biochemical weapons. This differs from ordinary chemical warfare in that it produced in microorganisms as opposed to chemical synthesis. An example of this is botulism toxin produced by the microorganism Clostridium Botulinum. With the new technologies of recombinant DNA and Combinatoral Chemistry radically new types of biochemical agents could be developed. These new agents could potentially be two hundred times as deadly as the nerve gas VX, which is considered the deadliest known.
Combinatoral Chemistry is the process by which one can screen millions of compounds for a given effect on an organism. It is currently being used to screen for new drugs by the pharmaceutical industry. The same technology can be used to screen for toxins. Lets say one wanted to find a new nerve toxin, one would place neural receptors on a chip and insert it into a solution of millions of potential nerve agents and find out which ones combined with the nerve receptor. The chip could be read and the best nerve agents would be selected.
Another technology for producing new types of biochemical weapons is recombinant DNA. It is possible by reshuffling genes for the botulism toxin to create new toxins with varying characteristics. The genes could be inserted into various microbe and large quantities cheaply produced. Other organisms producing toxins could also be utilized.

The table below shows the relative destructive effect in the form of human casualties of conventional, nerve agents, biochemical agents and nuclear weapons.

Causality Ratio	0
Conventional Weapons	1
Chemical Weapons	60
Biochemical Weapons	12,000
Nuclear Weapons	12,000

As the table illustrates the potential of biochemical weapons is enormous. The large number of toxin recombinants would make it impossible for an adversary to develop anti-toxins against these agents, while at the same ones own forces could have an anti-toxin for the particular agent used.

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