The terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001, served as a wake-up call for the entire world.  Since that time, there has been a growing fear that “weapons of mass destruction” will fall into the wrong hands.  This is a legitimate concern, especially as the technology to create these different weapons becomes more common throughout the world.

 

Weapons of mass destruction are simply weapons designed to kill large amounts of people.  When hearing this definition, most people usually think of nuclear weapons.  Nuclear weapons are certainly a legitimate concern, especially as “high-risk” nations like South Korea and Iran get closer to developing their own nuclear programs. 

 

However, there are other kinds of WMDs (a common way to express “weapons of mass destruction”).  In a worst-case scenario, it is possible for a terrorist group to unleash a deadly virus or bacteria into the air.  This is known as biological warfare (or “germ” warfare).   Fortunately, this type of attack is extremely rare, and nations such as the United States have taken every precaution to defend against it.

 

Terrorists could also try to use chemical weapons for an attack.   For example, they could release deadly chemical agents into the air or sneak them into the water supply.  This method is feared almost as much as a nuclear attack, simply because it has been used many times in the past. 

 

Saddam Hussein, the tyrannical leader of Iraq who was captured in December 2003 by the United Nations, used chemical agents to kill thousands of soldiers and civilians when his nation fought against Iran in the early 1980s.  He even used them against his own citizens!  But chemical weapons were being used long before Saddam Hussein came into the picture.

 

The first major instance of chemical warfare came during World War I.  As they hid in trenches or crawled through barbed-wire and heavy enemy fire, the soldiers fighting in the “Great War” had to be constantly ready to react when deadly gases were released into the air.  Many soldiers were given gas masks, so they could go on fighting in spite of the lethal chemicals.  The masks, of course, limited vision and were extremely uncomfortable.

 

During the course of World War I, which lasted from 1914 to 1918, about 100,000 men were killed by poison gases, many of whom were Russian soldiers.  It is estimated that nearly 1,000,000 soldiers from different nations were injured by the dangerous gases (about five times more than the total number of casualties suffered by America during the war).

 

The chemical weapons of choice during World War I were chlorine gas, mustard gas, and phosgene gas.  Unfortunately, new technology has helped produce chemical weapons that could be far more deadly than those used eighty years ago.

 

There is good news.  The United Nations and several international leaders have worked to rid the world of chemical weapons.  Thousands of tons of deadly chemical agents have been destroyed since the early 1990s, and numerous treaties have been signed denouncing chemical warfare.  Nonetheless, the threat still exists that terrorist groups might try to launch a chemical attack, so precautions are still being made to defend against it.