GWOT Nightmare Fuel
Nov. 21st, 2018 01:34 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
drewkittyGWOT Nightmare Fuel
We are having an abbreviated meeting of the Ammunition Technical Working Group. But what we are discussing is so horrific that I have limited the group to myself, Wyatt, Janine and George.
I am well read. Wyatt literally has nothing better to do. Janine has been through a fire captain's courses in hazardous materials. But George was not only a soldier, but took advanced training as an NBC NCO.
Nuclear Biological Chemical, Non Commissioned Officer. In other words, the unit expert on horrible shit.
I will have to rope in others eventually. Biological warfare defense will involve our vet surgeon - who is already inspecting animals slaughtered for food, our cafeteria staff and some familiarization for others. We are already experts on fallout, courtesy of San Francisco. But today's discussion is of site and individual defense from chemical warfare agents.
Why? Because I've figured out something really horrific, based on the foregone conclusion that Wyatt and I and others have reached.
Someone who would nuke cities would not even blink at using chemical warfare.
"The problem is detection," Janine was saying. "A modern fire department would have chemical detector paper, gas sensors, access to technical experts on speed dial - I have some electronic copies of recognition guides and the ability to deploy canaries, I mean guards."
Yeah. Minefield detectors, semi sentient, single use.
"It's not just detection, and yes, symptoms can be used to identify agents. You need filtration of buildings and vehicles, protective equipment including suits and masks ... and most of the stuff you have is over the counter garbage. Even basics such as plastic sheeting and duct tape are in short supply."
George doesn't like this discussion. That's OK, I don't like it either. But I like the idea of a chemical agent IED detonated in front of a building air intake even less.
There is an unpleasant reason why we have perimeter and gate guards. I figured out the canary problem less than a week after the Firecracker. Our procedure for battening down the hatches for civil defense - for example against NUCLEAR ATTACK NOT AN EXAMPLE PICKED AT RANDOM - included shutting down ventilation fans and securing all but a handful of building entrances. Even our loading docks had been built with shower and hose bibs and drains to a separate external system. The CLIENT has always known it was a dangerous world, even if the official excuse was the limited extent to which we handled hazmat.
Second order concerns led quickly to conversations I didn't want to have. Defense against chemical air attack. Who would be doing that? The same people who are using helitorches to light inconvenient houses. You know, Homeland. And planning to fight them was the same as fighting them, which was the same as dying horribly.
I'd had to sketch the rooftop pintle mount five times before the machinist had caught on that we really, actually needed to elevate through a full 90 vertical degrees. The best he could do was 74, good enough.
A sitewide shelter in place with ventilation shut down? We had that procedure. It wasn't labeled as such, but it would work against chemical attack.
"Decontamination," I said, and there was a whole paragraph in the one word.
Training. Equipment. Care for casualties when none of the meds we had were effective for the purpose. Control of run off. Priorities.
George shuddered.
"If we had the gear, and we don't, you can get killed so easily ..."
Janine interrupted.
"That's a Fire Brigade responsibility. Hazmat. Chemical agents are a deliberate hazmat. Decon is something we train for."
"Not like this. You touch a spot, you flop over in convulsions and do the funky chicken. A spot on the person you are decontaminating. Or your own gear. Or the decontam gear itself as you are shutting down. Or the underside of your own rig, if you drove over a puddle. The best training you can do is simply not enough."
"We do the best we can."
"This is one subject in which the best you can, the very best that can be humanly done, is 5% to 10% casualties. One out of ten to one out of twenty, very simply dead."
That of course was the problem. In military use, on the battlefield, chemical warfare added to the friction of the fight. Everything would kill you anyway, so this was just one more damn thing.
Against untrained civilians - i.e. us - some would live to flee, and the rest would die horribly. Perfect atrocity weapon, as Saddam Hussein could have told you before he watched _South Park_ in his prison cell and hung for his crimes.
The other chemical warfare problem was more subtle. Interference with agriculture. One man's fertilizer is another man's poison. Animals concentrate toxins, pretty much by definition.
So we needed to establish both biological and chemical surveillance, which expanded on the kind of pH monitoring and animal health monitoring done by a careful farmer and took it on a sharp left turn into horror.
Another turd in the punch bowl, again mine.
"We need a capability to fight in the NBC environment."
Janine scoffed. "You can't wear a bunny suit and look tacticool." George nodded.
But what you can do is have a full face respirator, closely fitting Tyvek hood and coveralls, and rifles and equipment marked with colored tape as 'dirty' i.e. used in a contaminated environment.
In the idyllic pre-Firecracker days, the Feds had been pushing all police SWAT teams to become all hazards capable, with thoroughly mixed results depending mostly on local agency budgets as supplemented with grants.
That was beyond our scope. But the average guard was frankly getting better training in close combat than the typical department had the resources to give its SWAT officers.
What we didn't have was a baseline of prior training - military or police - to build on. Any training on NBC skills would have to come from somewhere, and in most cases, direct combat effectiveness.
This gave me two ideas.
"1) Identify members of Reaction Team who are former military. Put them through a refresher course and issue them NBC gear. Make from them an NBC-capable Reaction-Reaction Team."
"That could work..." George speculated.
"
2) Same concept, but prior service guards and also all supervisors. The latter group will help us map out whether it's worthwhile to spread the training further."
Now George and Janine frowned.
"[Echo 18], I know you think the world of your guards. But some of them can't pour piss out of a boot if the directions were printed on the heel. Look at Shane Shreve. He's ex-military."
Decidedly ex. As in ineligible for future military service.
"Point. But this is only certain guards. And supervisors."
"Shall we forget about the _supervisor_ who managed to give herself smoke inhalation discharging extinguishers into a trash dumpster fire? Or would you prefer the _supervisor_ who twisted his ankle running to a medical?"
"Or perhaps the _fire engineer_ who forgot to turn his radio on during the perimeter camp fire? Or the stretcher bearer team manager who couldn't show up for her own auto da fe?"
"Shots fired," Wyatt muttered.
"The point is, these skills are _hard_. Not because they are difficult, but because they must be precise and perfect every time."
"We need a training chemical."
That's when the thought hit me.
"This discussion is tabled. I need to do some brainstorming."
We were going to sneak this training in, and break entirely new ground in violating a whole section of Federal law we hadn't breached yet.
Riot control agents, the proper employment and use thereof. See 'improvised.'
We are having an abbreviated meeting of the Ammunition Technical Working Group. But what we are discussing is so horrific that I have limited the group to myself, Wyatt, Janine and George.
I am well read. Wyatt literally has nothing better to do. Janine has been through a fire captain's courses in hazardous materials. But George was not only a soldier, but took advanced training as an NBC NCO.
Nuclear Biological Chemical, Non Commissioned Officer. In other words, the unit expert on horrible shit.
I will have to rope in others eventually. Biological warfare defense will involve our vet surgeon - who is already inspecting animals slaughtered for food, our cafeteria staff and some familiarization for others. We are already experts on fallout, courtesy of San Francisco. But today's discussion is of site and individual defense from chemical warfare agents.
Why? Because I've figured out something really horrific, based on the foregone conclusion that Wyatt and I and others have reached.
Someone who would nuke cities would not even blink at using chemical warfare.
"The problem is detection," Janine was saying. "A modern fire department would have chemical detector paper, gas sensors, access to technical experts on speed dial - I have some electronic copies of recognition guides and the ability to deploy canaries, I mean guards."
Yeah. Minefield detectors, semi sentient, single use.
"It's not just detection, and yes, symptoms can be used to identify agents. You need filtration of buildings and vehicles, protective equipment including suits and masks ... and most of the stuff you have is over the counter garbage. Even basics such as plastic sheeting and duct tape are in short supply."
George doesn't like this discussion. That's OK, I don't like it either. But I like the idea of a chemical agent IED detonated in front of a building air intake even less.
There is an unpleasant reason why we have perimeter and gate guards. I figured out the canary problem less than a week after the Firecracker. Our procedure for battening down the hatches for civil defense - for example against NUCLEAR ATTACK NOT AN EXAMPLE PICKED AT RANDOM - included shutting down ventilation fans and securing all but a handful of building entrances. Even our loading docks had been built with shower and hose bibs and drains to a separate external system. The CLIENT has always known it was a dangerous world, even if the official excuse was the limited extent to which we handled hazmat.
Second order concerns led quickly to conversations I didn't want to have. Defense against chemical air attack. Who would be doing that? The same people who are using helitorches to light inconvenient houses. You know, Homeland. And planning to fight them was the same as fighting them, which was the same as dying horribly.
I'd had to sketch the rooftop pintle mount five times before the machinist had caught on that we really, actually needed to elevate through a full 90 vertical degrees. The best he could do was 74, good enough.
A sitewide shelter in place with ventilation shut down? We had that procedure. It wasn't labeled as such, but it would work against chemical attack.
"Decontamination," I said, and there was a whole paragraph in the one word.
Training. Equipment. Care for casualties when none of the meds we had were effective for the purpose. Control of run off. Priorities.
George shuddered.
"If we had the gear, and we don't, you can get killed so easily ..."
Janine interrupted.
"That's a Fire Brigade responsibility. Hazmat. Chemical agents are a deliberate hazmat. Decon is something we train for."
"Not like this. You touch a spot, you flop over in convulsions and do the funky chicken. A spot on the person you are decontaminating. Or your own gear. Or the decontam gear itself as you are shutting down. Or the underside of your own rig, if you drove over a puddle. The best training you can do is simply not enough."
"We do the best we can."
"This is one subject in which the best you can, the very best that can be humanly done, is 5% to 10% casualties. One out of ten to one out of twenty, very simply dead."
That of course was the problem. In military use, on the battlefield, chemical warfare added to the friction of the fight. Everything would kill you anyway, so this was just one more damn thing.
Against untrained civilians - i.e. us - some would live to flee, and the rest would die horribly. Perfect atrocity weapon, as Saddam Hussein could have told you before he watched _South Park_ in his prison cell and hung for his crimes.
The other chemical warfare problem was more subtle. Interference with agriculture. One man's fertilizer is another man's poison. Animals concentrate toxins, pretty much by definition.
So we needed to establish both biological and chemical surveillance, which expanded on the kind of pH monitoring and animal health monitoring done by a careful farmer and took it on a sharp left turn into horror.
Another turd in the punch bowl, again mine.
"We need a capability to fight in the NBC environment."
Janine scoffed. "You can't wear a bunny suit and look tacticool." George nodded.
But what you can do is have a full face respirator, closely fitting Tyvek hood and coveralls, and rifles and equipment marked with colored tape as 'dirty' i.e. used in a contaminated environment.
In the idyllic pre-Firecracker days, the Feds had been pushing all police SWAT teams to become all hazards capable, with thoroughly mixed results depending mostly on local agency budgets as supplemented with grants.
That was beyond our scope. But the average guard was frankly getting better training in close combat than the typical department had the resources to give its SWAT officers.
What we didn't have was a baseline of prior training - military or police - to build on. Any training on NBC skills would have to come from somewhere, and in most cases, direct combat effectiveness.
This gave me two ideas.
"1) Identify members of Reaction Team who are former military. Put them through a refresher course and issue them NBC gear. Make from them an NBC-capable Reaction-Reaction Team."
"That could work..." George speculated.
"
2) Same concept, but prior service guards and also all supervisors. The latter group will help us map out whether it's worthwhile to spread the training further."
Now George and Janine frowned.
"[Echo 18], I know you think the world of your guards. But some of them can't pour piss out of a boot if the directions were printed on the heel. Look at Shane Shreve. He's ex-military."
Decidedly ex. As in ineligible for future military service.
"Point. But this is only certain guards. And supervisors."
"Shall we forget about the _supervisor_ who managed to give herself smoke inhalation discharging extinguishers into a trash dumpster fire? Or would you prefer the _supervisor_ who twisted his ankle running to a medical?"
"Or perhaps the _fire engineer_ who forgot to turn his radio on during the perimeter camp fire? Or the stretcher bearer team manager who couldn't show up for her own auto da fe?"
"Shots fired," Wyatt muttered.
"The point is, these skills are _hard_. Not because they are difficult, but because they must be precise and perfect every time."
"We need a training chemical."
That's when the thought hit me.
"This discussion is tabled. I need to do some brainstorming."
We were going to sneak this training in, and break entirely new ground in violating a whole section of Federal law we hadn't breached yet.
Riot control agents, the proper employment and use thereof. See 'improvised.'
