Talk:Incapacitating agent

Text and/or other creative content from this version of Date rape drug was copied or moved into Incapacitating agent with this edit. The former page's history now serves to provide attribution for that content in the latter page, and it must not be deleted as long as the latter page exists.

Nothing I have read from military documents suggests incapacitating agents, such as BZ, 3-quinuclidinyl benzilate, render the subject or victim unconscious. They are fully awake but totally out-of-control. There is no way to know just what will be the subject's actions. If anything a knockout gas could be an incapacitating agent.User:Kazuba 21 Mar 2007

Col. James S. Ketchum, MD, US Army (ret), in his book Chemical Warfare Secrets Almost Forgotten: A Personal Story of Medical Testing of Army Volunteers confirms what you said. Dr. Ketchum was the man responsible for human experimentation of BZ and three or four chemical analogues while at Edgewood Arsenal in the mid-late 1960s to early 1970s. His experience, as related in his book and in a interview with The New Yorker's Raffi Khatchadourian, "Operation Delirium" was that even after large-scale testing of BZ at a site in Utah (probably the US Army's Dugway Proving Grounds), it was shown that (a) the effect of BZ could not be predicted accurately enough for it to be an effective weapon, and (b) for the use seriously considered, incapacitation of Soviet spy trawler crews in US waters off the coast of Alaska, it would have been impossible to deliver enough agent to the crewmen to incapacitate them all reliably. loupgarous (talk) 00:36, 19 February 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Weaponized LSD

I know that LSD was researched for this use, but I've never seen anything that indicated it was ever "weaponized", as the article claims. On Thermonuclear War (talk) 23:04, 26 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

The burden for confirming weaponization of LSD falls on the editor making that claim. It'd be nice if someone could cite a WP:RS-compliant source for that statement, otherwise we may have to remove or revise it to be supported by WP:RS-compliant sources. loupgarous (talk) 00:36, 19 February 2017 (UTC)[reply]

BZ Use by the United States Military in Fallujah

It seems to say that the United states hasn't used BZ yet there were numerous reports of BZ being used in Fallujah. Perhaps this is something to address in the article. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 216.58.127.196 (talk) 09:04, 2 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I'd welcome any sources meeting WP:RS standards stating where and when BZ was used - at any time. I researched Agent BZ on Google last night looking for ANY online record of its military use or use of other new nonlethal incapacitants (other than lachrymators and vomiting agents that have been in use since World War I and considered exceptions to the Chemical Weapons Convention ban on chemical weapons by the US and other militaries), and came up empty, apart from a fictional scenario of use of sufentanil in an aerosol sprayed from helicopters to subdue an entire Middle Eastern town called "Halifa" held by Al Qaeda radicals in Chemical Warfare Secrets Almost Forgotten: A Personal Story of Medical Testing of Army Volunteers by Col. James S. Ketchum, MD, US Army (ret).

Sterling Seagrave, in his book Yellow Rain, does mention use of BZ against Viet Cong guerrillas, but only briefly as part of a summary of the United States Army Chemical Corps's program for developing nonlethal incapacitating agents in the 1950s and 1960s. Frustratingly, in his otherwise excellent "Notes" section, Seagrave doesn't identify which of the sources he lists in a seven-page bibliography is the source document for that claim. The reference to use of BZ in Vietnam is something I've seen pop up over the years, but never with attribution to a good source.

While not specifically addressing military use of BZ, there is a good article in The New Yorker, "Operation Delirium" by Raffi Khatchadourian including interviews with James S. Ketchum, one of the US Army's leading researchers on BZ, which goes into good detail about use of BZ on Army personnel who volunteered to assess the compound's physiological effects and its effectiveness as a weapon. That's as good as it gets (apart from Ketchum's own book, which I provided a link to above). You're welcome to read the Ketchum book, as I plan to, to find reference to military use of BZ on foreign personnel. Ketchum reports that the human volunteer tests at the Dugway Proving Grounds in Utah were to evaluate the potential usefulness of BZ to incapacitate crews of Soviet spy trawlers, but the extreme unpredictability of action of BZ and the unlikelihood that useful concentrations of it could be sprayed on Soviet trawlers in practice ended that project (and led to the Nixon administration's announcement that agent BZ would not be used by US military forces). loupgarous (talk) 23:48, 18 February 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Moscow theatre terrorist incident

Use of an unconfirmed gas "unavoidably" resulted in the deaths of "fewer than 15%" of hostages? Citing CNN as a reference? Hardly a neutral point of view; apologist for a baldy planned, badly executed operation about which too many questions remain unanswered by the Russian government more like.

The active ingredients of the gas were identified by residue on hostages' clothing and in the urine of one hostage: carfentanil and remifentanil, according to "Analysis of Clothing and Urine from Moscow Theatre Siege Casualties Reveals Carfentanil and Remifentanil Use", by James R. Riches, Robert W. Read, Robin M. Black, Nicholas J. Cooper and Christopher M. Timperley in the Journal of Analytical Toxicology. A paper in the Annals of Emergency Medicine, "Unexpected “gas” casualties in Moscow: A medical toxicology perspective" by Paul M. Wax, Charles E. Becker, and Steven C. Curry speculates that since all fentanyl derivatives are lipophilic (tend to be stored in body fat), that enough of the carfentanil and remifentanil used in the Barricade Theater might have been stored in body fat to require repeated doses of opioid antagonists such as naloxone and naltrexone over an extended period of time to prevent deaths from a phenomenon known as "renarcosis".

As far as your other concerns, the theater was loaded with enough explosives, electrically controlled by the hostage takers, to kill all the hostages. The Russians could have told medical responders earlier that they were treating hostages for poisoning with highly potent fentanyl derivatives, and asked for supplies from overseas of naltrexone, the specific antidote for carfentanil, but did not do so in time to prevent hostages from dying. Apart from that, what would you propose they do? Storming the Barricade Theater with conventional weapons would have given the hostage takers the time they needed to set the explosives off and kill many more people than died from exposure to the chemical agents used.

The outcome of this event shows that it's essential if you use strong opioid agonists as a military weapon to subdue rather than kill, you must have - in advance - large supplies of the antidotes for your weapon to treat those people whose deaths are unacceptable. loupgarous (talk) 00:10, 19 February 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Fentanyl or fentanyl-like gas

An opioid gas such as fentanyl has been used in several recent hostage incidents such as the Moscow theater incident and allegedly in Vietnam in covert capture missions. Johnvr4 (talk) 20:09, 9 January 2017 (UTC)[reply]

The active ingredients of the agent used in the Moscow Theater rescue were identified by residue on hostages' clothing and in the urine of one hostage: carfentanil and remifentanil, according to "Analysis of Clothing and Urine from Moscow Theatre Siege Casualties Reveals Carfentanil and Remifentanil Use", by James R. Riches, Robert W. Read, Robin M. Black, Nicholas J. Cooper and Christopher M. Timperley in the Journal of Analytical Toxicology. As their names suggest, those are chemically related to fentanyl but much stronger. Carfentanil is used to sedate large animals in the wild. Its specific antidote is an opioid antagonist called naltrexone. loupgarous (talk) 00:19, 19 February 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Iran hostage rescue attempt

I believe I saw reference to the potential use of incapacitating agents in the failed attempt to rescue the US embassy hostages in Iran. Johnvr4 (talk) 20:02, 9 January 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Could you find the source you saw it in? It'd be great if you did. loupgarous (talk) 00:36, 19 February 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Proposed merge with Sleeping gas

Seems to be more of an umbrella term lacking coverage in medical literature. Most information can easily be merged into incapacitating agent — MusikAnimal ^talk 16:11, 18 February 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Moved from User talk:MusikAnimal

Thanks for your recent edits to Sleeping gas. They did improve the article, but do not establish the notability of the logical entity Sleeping gas. However, they would be good additions to the articles Incapacitating agent and General anaesthetic.

But regarding one of your user summaries, the US chemical warfare agent with NATO code BZ, 3-Quinuclidinyl benzilate, isn't a sedative or sleeping agent - it's a deliriant. Its typical effects include induction of stupor, but not somnolence or sleep. There are other errors like that in our article Sleeping gas which, even when corrected or properly supported by a source don't change the fact that the article's subject isn't notable. loupgarous (talk) 04:40, 15 February 2017 (UTC)[reply]

No problem. I went by the source that said BZ was known as "sleeping gas". Whether or not it puts you to sleep, not sure. This is not my field of expertise, nor am I particularly interested in it, I just didn't think the page on this term should be deleted. You claim it's not notable, but I see usage of the term in a wide variety of reliable sources, including the ones I added. It seems to me more like an umbrella term, and in that sense perhaps it's not notable. For instance, I didn't find any scientific or medical literature defining such a term. I think it is most closely tied to incapacitating agent and content should be merged there, in which case we can make sleeping gas redirect, but I don't have to time to work on that right now :/. If all else fails, consider redirecting, not deleting! Best — MusikAnimal ^talk 17:02, 15 February 2017 (UTC)[reply]

"Merge with incapacitating agent, and redirect" seems our consensus. If I can find the time, I'll learn how to do both, then do them with sleeping gas. It would definitely improve incapacitating agent. Thanks for your time on this project. loupgarous (talk) 08:34, 18 February 2017 (UTC)[reply]

I've added the material on the use of a sedative aerosol spray to subdue 130 women to be raped over a period of four years in Bolivia to incapacitating agent and changed the heading of the section I put it in from "Date rape drugs" to "Rape drugs" to show the phenomenon is wider than just the use of drugs during dates to facilitate the act of rape. The remaining thing to be done is redirecting "Sleeping gas" to incapacitating agent, and I may get to that tomorrow. loupgarous (talk) 01:05, 19 February 2017 (UTC)[reply]

To all editors who are watching this page, I'm going to redirect Sleeping gas to Incapacitating agent probably in two days. I've added mentions of items formerly not contained in our article Incapacitating agent to assure the reader loses no content on being redirected to that article from Sleeping gas. I'd like to thank editors of our article Sleeping gas for their work on that article and congratulate you - your work has been central to making Incapacitating agent a more comprehensive and encyclopedic article, and wikipedia a better digital encyclopedia. If you have concerns or requests, please leave word here. loupgarous (talk) 10:45, 23 February 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Merger complete. Klbrain (talk) 14:47, 29 July 2018 (UTC)[reply]

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Separate sections for sleeping gas and knockout gas

Why are sleeping gas and knockout gas listed separately? They're the same thing. 2601:282:C00:ABB0:C0D1:91D6:DAFA:1FE7 (talk) 15:58, 3 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]