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Comment by module0000 | Hacker News Reader

In the US(Army) we all have to do a gas exercise. We go into a chamber with our gas masks on and watch the agent being activated and released. Then we remove our masks, recite our name, rank, and serial number, then put them back on. It doesn't last long, but no one in my platoon "barely noticed". It was pretty debilitating - vomiting, coughing, snot smeared all over your face...etc.

That said, there are a lot of different gas varieties, and I've only been exposed to that one.

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We did that exercise too. But we also did one outside which is more realistic. There the distribution was very uneven. I don’t think think you can find a dosage that makes sure the bad guys are incapacitated while not killing others.

As far as I know this is also a factor why chemical weapons weren’t used in WW2. They are way too hard to control to be useful.

I have done these a few times and there is usually one or 2 that seem to shrug it off as mildly irritating, as the rest of us choked and teared. Seems to happen more with CS based stuff than 'Teargas'. Also, the new generation pepper spray is a legitimate torture device and I question its use, ethics and legality. I would rather be waterboarded again.

During the Moscow theater attack, there were 40-50 assailants holding at least 850 people hostage using, among other weapons, explosives. Vomiting from tear gas can't be relied on to stop assailants resigned to suicide from detonating explosives to kill hostages.

It was pretty damn shitty that the Russian government did little to assist doctors treating hostages in the aftermath, but aside from that their gas plan worked pretty damn well, considering the circumstance they were up against. The only other realistic option was for the Russian government to give in to the demands, as they did years before during the lesser known but larger Budyonnovsk hospital attack after conventional attacks failed (over the course of which something like 150 hostages were killed and hundreds more injured.)

when i went through the chamber it got me a bit, but for me it wasn't especially debilitating... at least in comparison to some.

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