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In the early 1950s, Britain's Porton Down labs perfected even more effective gases known as V agents. They not only can cause death on contact, but also remain lethal days after they settle on foliage or the ground. The U.S. variation of the gas—VX—accidentally killed more than 6,000 sheep near the Army's Dugway Proving Grounds in western Utah last March. Nerve gases have long been stockpiled in aboveground tanks at another CBW installation, the Rocky Mountain Arsenal, ten miles outside Denver. But now the Army has promised to relocate these stores.
Research does not stop with nerve gases. In The Silent Weapons (David McKay; $4.95), Robin Clarke, editor of Britain's respected Science Journal, reports that CBW investigators are also exploring the practical potential of natural toxins. Among the objects of current study are jellyfish, mollusks and the highly poisonous puffer fish—a Japanese delicacy that, if not properly prepared, can kill adventuresome gourmets in a matter of minutes.
Considerable interest has focused on psychic or hallucinatory chemicals. Dubbed "incaps" (for incapacitating agents), they are designed to disorient temporarily rather than kill—which leads CBW's proponents to argue that it is a more humane form of fighting. Most notorious of these new gases is BZ, a mind-bending secret compound developed by the U.S. Army. In one test, a guard who had been given BZ tried to challenge an invader, forgot the password, and slumped to the ground, hopelessly confused.
Genetic Warfare. Deadly partners of such potions are the agents of biological warfare—viruses and bacteria that reproduce with astonishing rapidity and quickly assume more menacing proportions than far larger quantities of chemicals. The U.S. Army's germ-warfare research center is at Fort Detrick, Md., a heavily guarded, 1,300-acre compound where security is as tight as at any nuclear installation.
Much of Fort Detrick's work involves the hunt for more powerful and effective contaminants—a search sometimes sardonically called "public health in reverse." Occasional scientific papers published by the fort's resident researchers indicate that they have been particularly interested in finding new, treatment-resistant strains of such old virulents as plague, anthrax, encephalomyelitis, brucellosis and parrot fever.
Ideally, biological agents in the toxic arsenal should meet three essential qualifications for what Britain's eminent science writer, Lord Ritchie-Calder, calls the "doomsday bug." They should infect easily, cause serious illness, and retain their potency after prolonged storage or exposure to sunlight. Anthrax spores, for example, are still alive and lethal on the abandoned Scottish coastal island of Gruinard more than two decades after the biological-warfare experiments that took place there during World War II.