Watchdog Agency Concludes Chlorine Used as Weapon in Syria

[The Magistrate]

27. Apples And Oranges, Sir

The original stocks did not include weaponized chlorine. It is pretty old school as a poison gas weapon, being superseded even in the course of the Great War when it was initially employed, by more effective agents. It will certainly kill, in sufficient concentration, but no one in the modern day would normally bother to employ it as a munition. On the other hand, just about every country with much in the way of an industrial base will have the stuff available, and it can be readily put into action. The initial use in the Great War involved simply concentrating a mass of pressure cylinders full of it, and turning them on when the wind was right to blow the cloud over onto an enemy position. This developed into using smaller cylinders with lighter walls and a very small charge of explosive to rupture them, thrown in large quantities by what were called 'projectors' in those days but were basically simple mortars. Even less structural strength would be needed for something dropped from the air. Not much at all would be involved in putting something of this sort together.