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Russian Gas Attack - What was it?

johnboy

johnboy

Bluelight Crew
Joined
Oct 27, 1999
Messages
6,873
I'm starting to see all sorts of theories as to what exactly was the gas used by Russian security forces to end the siege of the Moscow theatre.

Some sources say it was "an opiate - a chemical related to morphine". others "have suggested a 1950s chemical weapon called 3-quinuclidinyl benzilate, or BZ, may have been used." This last quote was taken from New Scientist.

Here's more from that story:

Weapons experts have suggested a 1950s chemical weapon called 3-quinuclidinyl benzilate, or BZ, may have been used. This causes disorientation and hallucinations and was tested by the US on servicemen in the 1960s.
But according to Christopher Holstege of the University of Virginia, BZ takes an hour to start working and its effects peak at eight hours - whereas the Russian gas worked in seconds. Moreover, a hallucinogen seems a risky choice for terrorists strapped to bombs.

But reports that the victims are pale and weak, with memory loss, and that doctors are treating them with the cholinergic drug physostigmine, suggest that the gas belongs to the same class of anti-cholinergic agents as BZ.

The agents block some receptors for the neurotransmitter acetylcholine. This blocks the normal activity of the parasympathetic nervous system, causing higher heart rate and lack of sweating among many other symptoms. They also cross the blood-brain barrier blocking similar receptors in the brain, causing unconsciousness or disorientation, hallucinations and blocked memory formation.

Physostigmine would not be used to treat the nerve gases sarin, tabun and soman, and Valium or related anti-anxiety drugs.
Vil Mirzayanov, a former Soviet chemical weapons scientist turned campaigner, says the gas was a derivative of BZ developed by Russia during the Cold War.

Such agents should have been destroyed by now under the Chemical Weapons Convention. But the CWC contains what campaigners call a loophole, which allows gases for "law enforcement".
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Here's some background info on BZ I found in a book called "Acid Dreams: The Complete Social History of LSD: The CIA, The Sixties and Beyond":

It was from Hoffmann-La Roche in Nutley, New Jersey, that Edge-wood Arsenal obtained its first sample of a drug called quinuclidinyl benzilate, or BZ for short. The army learned that BZ inhibits the production of a chemical substance that facilitates the transfer of messages along the nerve endings, thereby disrupting normal perceptual patterns. The effects generally last about three days, although symptoms—headaches, giddiness, disorientation, auditory and visual hallucinations, and maniacal behavior—have been known to persist for as long as six weeks. "During the period of acute effects," noted an army doctor, "the person is completely out of touch with his environment."

Dr. Van Sim, who served as chief of the Clinical Research Division . at Edgewood, made it a practice to try all new chemicals himself before testing them on volunteers. Sim said he sampled LSD "on several occasions." Did he enjoy getting high, or were his acid trips simply a patriotic duty? "It's not a matter of compulsiveness or wanting to be the first to try a material," Sim stated. "With my experience I am often able to change the design of future experiments. . . . This allows more comprehensive tests to be conducted later, with maximum effective usefulness of inexperienced volunteers. I'm trying to defeat the compound, and if I can, we don't have to drag out the tests at the expense of a lot of time and money."

With BZ Dr. Sim seems to have met his match. "It zonked me for three days. I kept falling down and the people at the lab assigned someone to follow me around with a mattress. I woke up from it after three days without a bruise." For his efforts Sim received the Decoration for Exceptional Civilian Service and was cited for ex-posing himself to dangerous drugs "at the risk of grave personal injury."

According to Dr. Solomon Snyder, a leading psychopharmacologist at Johns Hopkins University, which conducted drug research for the Chemical Corps, "The army's testing of LSD was just a sideshow compared to its use of BZ." Clinical studies with EA-aiyy (the code number for BZ) were initiated at Edgewood Arsenal in 1959 and continued until 1975. During this period an estimated twenty-eight hundred soldiers were exposed to the superhallucinogen. A number of military personnel have since come forward claiming that they were never the same after their encounter with BZ. Robert Bowen, a former air force enlisted man, felt disoriented for several weeks after his exposure. Bowen said the drug produced a temporary feeling of insanity but that he reacted less severely than other test subjects. One paratrooper lost all muscle control for a time and later seemed totally divorced from reality. "The last time I saw him," said Bowen, "he was taking a shower in his uniform and smoking a cigar."*

After extensive clinical testing at Edgewood Arsenal, the army concluded that BZ was better suited than LSD as a chemical warfare agent for a number of reasons. While acid could knock a person "off his rocker," to use Chemical Corps jargon, BZ would also put him "on the floor" (render him physically immobile). This unique combination—both "off the rocker" and "on the floor"—was exactly what the army sought from an incapacitant. Moreover, BZ was cheaper to produce, more reliable, and packed a stronger punch than LSD. Most important, BZ could be dispersed as an aerosol mist that would float with the wind across city or battlefield. Some advantage was also found in the fact that test subjects lapsed into a state of "semi-quiet delirium" and had no memory of their BZ experience.

This was not to belittle lysergic acid. Although LSD never found a place in the army's arsenal, the drug undoubtedly left its mark on the military mind. Once again LSD seems to have acted primarily as a catalyst. Before acid touched the fancy of army strategists, Crea-sy's vision of a new kind of warfare was merely a pipe dream. With LSD it suddenly became a real possibility.
During the early 1960s the CIA and the military began to phase out their in-house acid tests in favor of more powerful chemicals such as BZ, which became the army's standard incapacitating agent. By this time the superhallucinogen was ready for deployment in a grenade, a 750-pound cluster bomb, and at least one other large-scale bomb. In addition the army tested a number of other advanced BZ munitions, including mortar, artillery, and missile warheads. The superhallucinogen was reportedly employed by American troops as a counterinsurgency weapon in Vietnam, and according to CIA documents there may be contingency plans to use the drug in the event of a major civilian insurrection. As Creasy warned shortly after he retired from the Army Chemical Corps, "We will use these things as we very well see fit, when we think it is in the best interest of the US and their allies."

*Pentagon spokespeople insist that the potential hazards of such experimentation were "supposed" to be fully explained to all volunteers. But as Dr. Snyder noted, nobody "can tell you for sure BZ won't have a long-lasting effect. With an initial effect of eighty hours compared to eight for LSD you would have to worry more about its long-lasting or recurrent effects."
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As amusing as the tales of giggling, falling over scientists are, a reminder that this substance may have killed over 120 people. Perhaps it is the ultimate case of getting the dosage wrong.
Anyone have any ideas?

EDIT: I forgot the last two paragraphs of the New Scientist story.
[ 29 October 2002: Message edited by: johnboy ]

EDIT: fixed layout
 
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I have been intrigued by this too jb. From the reports I saw on the news, it described those deceased as having been paralysed by the gasThough I know stuff all about chemical weapons, I was a bit sus of the "opiate related to morphine" claim, because opiates alone don't paralyse people. Sure they can kill by respiratory depression, but this is not the same as paralysis.
Then there was the claim it was "an anaesthetic gas", but as I understand it, most anaesthetic gases don't cause paralysis either. That suggests to me some sort of neuromuscular blocking agent, such as this BZ. But honestly, I have no idea and I doubt we will ever know.
 
I'm not so sure. A lot of officials around the world are grumpy about this incident:
Whitehall demands identification of gas.
The British government will lodge a formal request through an official chemical weapons inspectorate this week for information about the identity of the gas which killed more than 100 hostages during the Moscow siege, according to official sources.
The Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW), which is funded by member states of the Chemical Weapons Convention which include Britain and Russia, will receive the formal request from London this week, a source close to the OPCW said.
Russia has ignored requests - including many from the US embassy in Moscow - to identify the gas. It now faces international pressure to comply as international fears over the legality of the gas, and its subsequent death toll, threaten to grow.
That story also contains these interesting clues:
Confusion about the identity of the gas grew last night. One western embassy reportedly sent doctors to examine the corpses of hostages asphyxiated by the gas. They found the causes of death to be more related to opiate overdose than a nerve agent, said diplomatic sources.
Patients also responded well to naxolone, a chemical used to revive heroin addicts who have overdosed. They did not respond to atropene, the main antidote for nerve agents.
Professor Julian Robinson, of the University of Sussex, said he was not aware that either the US or Russia had found the "holy grail" of a fast acting gas sedative that did not have an unacceptable mortality rate. But he said an opiate-based substance called a "fentanil" could have been used.
He added that the chemical weapons expert Ken Alibek, who used to work on the Soviet chemical weapons programme before defecting to the United States, had mentioned secret programmes called Flute and Bonfire.
"They were trying to develop chemicals of this sort for the security services and military," he said.
He also said that the chemical weapons convention did not prevent countries developing new weapons for "law enforcement purposes - like sedating riots."
Experts were sceptical that BZ, the substance initially thought to be the gas, was used as the hallucinogen makes people more agitated in the short term.
"If you've got people with their finger on the trigger, it's unlikely you would use it. Not if you knew what you were doing," said Terence Taylor, the head of the Washington office of the International Institute of Strategic Studies.
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does anyone remember the Kursk saga? the Russians are dodgy and will come up with at least another two "offical" stories before the truth even begins to emerge.
i can draw parallels between the treatment of the soldiers on that sub and that of the hostages in the theatre. russian policy is odd at best imho.
 
Isn't this also within the realm of the Pentagon Joint Non-Lethal Weapons Directorate that are looking into using ghb, ketamine, and other non-lethal drugs for use as crowd control devices?
(Austin and Hamburg, 1 July 2002) - The Advantages and Limitations of Calmatives for Use as a Non-Lethal Technique, a 49 page report obtained last week by the Sunshine Project under US information freedom law, has revealed a shocking Pentagon program that is researching psychopharmacological weapons. Based on "extensive review conducted on the medical literature and new developments in the pharmaceutical industry", the report concludes that "the development and use of [psychopharmacological weapons] is achievable and desirable." These mind-altering weapons violate international agreements on chemical and biological warfare as well as human rights. Some of the techniques discussed in the report have already been used by the US in the "War on Terrorism".
The team, which is based at the Applied Research Laboratory of Pennsylvania State University, is assessing weaponization of a number of psychiatric and anesthetic pharmaceuticals as well as "club drugs" (such as the "date rape drug" GHB). According to the report, "the choice administration route, whether application to drinking water, topical administration to the skin, an aerosol spray inhalation route, or a drug filled rubber bullet, among others, will depend on the environment." The environments identified are specific military and civil situations, including "hungry refugees that are excited over the distribution of food", "a prison setting", an "agitated population" and "hostage situations". At times, the JNLWD team's report veers very close to defining dissent as a psychological disorder.
The drugs that Lem called "benignimizers" are called "calmatives" by the military. Some calmatives were weaponized by the Cold War adversaries, including BZ, described by those who have used it as "the ultimate bad trip". Calmatives were supposed to have been deleted from military stockpiles following the adoption of the Chemical Weapons Convention in 1993, which bans any chemical weapon that can cause death, temporary incapacitation, or permanent harm to humans or animals.
Calmative is military, not medical, terminology. In more familiar medical language, most of the drugs under consideration are central nervous system depressants. Most are synthetic, some are natural. They include opiates (morphine-type drugs) and benzodiazpines, such as Valium (diazepam). Antidepressants are also of great interest to the research team, which is looking for drugs like Prozac (fluoxetine) and Zoloft (sertraline) that are faster acting.
http://www.sunshine-project.org/publications/pr010702.html
I've often thought that ordinance releasing an aerosol of the very powerful synthetic opioids that we have would be a very effective weapon.
BigTrancer :)
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mmm.. this is a quality thread. I will be back when I have more time to reply.
 
this is from another article:
Professor Malcolm Dando, an expert in chemical weapons at Bradford University, said the use of the gas in Moscow would not break the Chemical Weapons Convention, because it allows chemical use for peaceful purposes - which includes riot control.
"But if we go down the road of allowing these sorts of chemicals to be developed, then God help us," he added.
"It's a very, very important issue, because if it's refined, then 10, 20 or 30 years down the line, you end up with mind control. The good thing about this incident is that it raises the possibility of talking about such issues."
my emphasis added
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Finger pointed at fentanyl in this article from The Times.
DOCTORS who are treating two German survivors of the Moscow theatre siege believe that they may have identified the gas used by Russian special forces.
After examining an 18-year-old woman student and a 43-year-old businessman who were knocked out by the powerful drug, experts at a clinic in Munich believe that a narcotic called fentanyl could have killed the 115 hostages.
The drug is often found in powerful pain-killing body patches used by cancer sufferers. It is also sought by heroin addicts as it is an opiate similar to morphine and is very strong in its pure state.
Experts at the Pentagon said yesterday that they also strongly suspected that an opium-based drug had been used, but would not say if American doctors had tested any of the survivors.
.
.
.
The Russians were reluctant to allow foreign embassies to airlift the injured, to prevent independent examinations, but Professor Zilker and his team at the Munich Klinikum Rechts Der Isar said it was “strongly indicated” that the two German survivors had consumed an unknown quantity of a synthetic narcotic with chlorinated hydrocarbons, including fentanyl.
He said that there was a very fine line between an appropriate dose of an anaesthetic and a potentially fatal overdose leading to suffocation. “You wouldn’t really have the opportunity to regulate the dosage in such a large theatre,” he said. It was possible that so much gas had been pumped into the theatre that there had not been enough oxygen.
Andy Oppenheimer, a nuclear and biological weapons expert with Janes Defence Weekly, said that fentanyl was an anaesthetic and was used as an alternative to morphine, but had never been used as a chemical weapon before. He said it was “very likely” that the Russians were reluctant to reveal the type of substance used because it would alert the US to their experimentation with it as a chemical weapon.
“These have not been outlawed by the Convention on Chemical Weapons,” he said. “There are grey areas in the way these gases can be used and the Russians may be exploiting this to be able to develop chemical weapons without contravening international law. The symptoms caused by fentanyl in this context would have been vomiting, disorientation and a collapse of the respiratory system.”
Fentanyl was first synthesised in Belgium in the late 1950s and has been used in clinical practice since the 1960s. It is an exceptionally potent analgesic for use in heart surgery.
Illegal use of the drug first appeared in the mid-1970s among the medical profession and quickly spread to other drug-users. Its biological effect is indistinguishable from that of heroin, with the exception that it may be hundreds of times more potent.
Doctors in Moscow say they are treating the former hostages with naxalone, a product used for the treatment of secondary respiratory ailments.
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Fentanyl is listed as one of the classic "designer drugs". For a moment I had confused it with Meperidine analogues and was about to talk about MPTP contanimation and it's links to Parkinson's disease, but I was wrong. Forget I said it ;)
Anyways fentanyl, and the hype around "designer drugs" was one of the reasons that MDMA was scheduled so quickly.
 
Hmm... this has just reminded me of a section of Shulgin's TIHKAL I read recently where Shulgin spoke of recieving letters from a mysterious Russian man with links to Russian intelligence agencies. In these letters the man spoke of techniques for synthesizing extremely potent fentanyl analogues and demonstrated a strong understanding of opiates and their methods of action. Don't have the book on hand at the moment but I can post up some sections tomorrow.
 
Meperidine = Pethidine = ethyl 1-methyl-4-phenylisonipecotate hydrochloride
RxList: Meperidine hydrochloride is a narcotic analgesic with multiple actions qualitatively similar to those of morphine; the most prominent of these involve the central nervous system and organs composed of smooth muscle. The principal actions of therapeutic value are analgesia and sedation.
Also: Several analogues of meperidine have been clandestinely produced. One noteworthy analogue is a preparation with a neurotoxic by-product that has produced irreversible Parkinsons (MPTP).
Fentanyl = Sublimaze = N-(1-Phenethyl-4-piperidyl) propionanilide citrate
RxList: Fentanyl, a pure opioid agonist, acts primarily through interaction with opioid mu-receptors located in the brain spinal cord and smooth muscle. The primary site of therapeutic action is the central nervous system (CNS). The most clinically useful pharmacologic effects of the interaction of fentanyl with mu-receptors are analgesia and sedation. Other opioid effects may include somnolence, hypoventilation, bradycardia, postural hypotension, pruritus, dizziness, nausea, diaphoresis, flushing, euphoria and confusion or difficulty in concentrating at clinically relevant doses.
Also: Preliminary pharmacological results indicate that 4-methyl fentanyl is a super potent narcotic analgesic, about four times more potent than fentanyl.
A point of interest, that I found while searching for information on opioid research: The analgesic activity of fentanyl analogues can be assessed using the "mouse hot plate" test...
BigTrancer :)
 
From the MIMS (referring to parenteral administration):
Fentanyl is a potent narcotic analgesic with a rapid onset and short duration of action.
terminal elimination half-life of 219 minutes and
Following intramuscular administration, the onset of action is from seven to eight minutes and the duration of action is one to two hours.
Aren't there still people in hospital many days after exposure to the gas? It doesn't seem like fentanyl should incapacitate someone for so long.
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Just heard on the radio confirming the main active ingredient was fentanyl, i'd consider being a chechan rebel if only they attacked with a gaseous LSD cloud, but fentanyl just sounds nasty!
 
The Russians were reluctant to allow foreign embassies to airlift the injured, to prevent independent examinations, but Professor Zilker and his team at the Munich Klinikum Rechts Der Isar said it was “strongly indicated” that the two German survivors had consumed an unknown quantity of a synthetic narcotic with chlorinated hydrocarbons, including fentanyl.
Times online
This was interesting. My German is very poor, but this was a **** poster’s summary and comments of the below links.
German doctors find halothane, but no fentanyl...
What is the deal with this? German Doctors found evidence of halothane in the blood and urine of the hostages, but no fentanyl. I'm sure Dr. Zilker knows what he's doing (he's a fairly prominent toxicologist), but do you suppose he just forgot to look for any fentanyl analogs? I mean, you can look at the fragmentation pattern of fentanyl from the MS, find a fragment that would be common to most analogs (I'm guessing something like Ph-N-COEt), and then find all the GC peaks with a fragmentation with the same molecular weight to narrow down the number of candidates. From there, most modern systems have spectral search capabilities, and so it should be relatively easy to characterize.
I'm trying to figure this out, but it just doesn't make any damn sense. As soon as the Russian Interior ministry gassed a whole bunch of foreigners, they should have known the identity of the gas would be known as soon as a GC/MS scan on the residue left over was done. So why the secrecy? Why didn't they tell the local hospitals to load up with naloxone immediately, or at least give them plenty of "antidote X" to treat the patients with and worry about the coverup later?
welt.de
Tagesschau.de
There are several known analogues of fentanyl.
Below list auto translated from German
Potency compared to morphine
[*]alpha methyl fentanyl (China White) 200X [*]Paraflour fentanyl [*]acetyl alpha methyl fentanyl 10X [*]Thio fentanyl 175X [*]alpha methyl thio fentanyl 450-600X [*]3-Methyl-thio-fentanyl 1000X [*]Beta-hydroxy-3-methyl-thio-fentanyl 1500X [*]3-Methyl-fentanyl 3000X [*]Carfentanyl 7500X
fentanyl analogues
Here’s an overview of some open chained variations of the molecule. 2,3 “seco” fentanyl is rated at ca. 30 times lower than fentanyl but still several times higher than morphine in CNS activity. Fentanyl is about 80 times the analgesic potency of morphine and Carfenanil is rated by the DEA as being 10,000 greater than morphine!
seco-fentanyl
DEA concern
CARFENTANIL
Carfentanil is a narcotic that can be administered via unconventional means (see below). This feature of carfentanil may be very useful in treating non-compliant or unmanageable individuals. New compounds such as Morphdex and AB-101 are being studied for their ability to alter pain sensations. Carfentanil has a unique utility in the practice of sedating animal populations. This drug has been used successfully to immobilize a variety of large exotic animals and is the only opioid approved in the United States for this purpose…..
…Although not yet used in human populations, this drug offers the potential of being administered to non-compliant or violent patients and requires only indirect contact.
..Although a very powerful analgesic, fentanyl also has a high abuse potential…..(and serious life threatening respiratory depression) This versatility of drug delivery offers distinct advantages over other pain relievers that are ineffective due to routes of administration limitations.
Thus, the development of new pain-relieving opiate drugs capable of being administered via several routes is at the forefront of drug discovery.
New compounds such as Morphidex and RB-101are being studied for their ability to alter pain sensation…. RB-101 is a non-opioid compound that acts to inhibit enzymatic breakdown of endogenous opioids thereby enhancing their analgesic ability……
http://www.sunshine-project.org/publications/jnlwdpdf/psucalm.pdf
The advantages and limitations of calmatives for use as a non-lethal technique
[ 31 October 2002: Message edited by: phase_dancer ]
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In answer to the bee's question "Why?", well that's Russia for you.
I found it a little amusing that some said "Remember the Kursk?" Errr that was only a couple of years ago, after the fall of the Soviet system.
Back in the old Cold War days absolutely insane shit would happen and would never get reported. Chernobyl was an important turning point in this history, as the hard liners said "Deny everything!" and it was only new school Gorbachov-types who pressed for disclosure. Mind you most of their reason for (at least partial) honesty was knowing that they could in no way deal with the problem. That and the fact that all of Scandanavia was glowing. If the wind was blowing the other way you may never have heard of the town of Chernobyl.
Here's an incident in the late 70s where many civilians died from an anthrax leak at biological weapons plant. It took until 1992 for them to admit it wasn't tainted meat that killed these people, but an "incident" at the plant.
Of course the United States is not without it's unspoken attrocities.
 
I'd say "What sort of FUCKWIT uses an opiate as a disabling agent for a fuckload of already weakened and stressed hostages?" but its evident. Russian idiots, that's who.
-plaz out-
 
So if they really did use an opiate, why didn't they have enough naloxone to reverse it's effects, potentially saving the lives of everyone involved? *shakes head*
 
The russians are still covering things up apparently :
Taken from the Age
Signs of cover-up as Kremlin goes quiet on siege deaths
By Julius Strauss
Moscow
October 31 2002
Suspicion was growing yesterday that the Kremlin had concealed the true death toll in the raid that ended the Moscow theatre siege on Saturday in an attempt to stifle criticism of its tactics.
The fate of more than 70 hostages in the Melnikova Street siege is still unknown, four days after Russian special forces attacked the building and killed 50 Chechen hostage-takers.
The last time authorities issued an update of the number of victims was on Sunday night. There are now fears that the final death figure, if it is ever published, may be above 200.
So far the authorities have admitted that 117 people died, all but two of them from the effects of anaesthetic gas pumped through the theatre's ventilation system to disable the Chechens, who had wired the building with explosives.
Estimates of the number missing vary. Between 70 and 100 names have not appeared on official death lists or at hospitals where hundreds are being treated for gas poisoning.
As Moscow began to bury its dead, the US ambassador to Moscow, Alexander Vershbow, yesterday criticised the Kremlin for withholding the name of the gas used to end the 58-hour siege.
US embassy officials have expressed increasing frustration at not knowing what kind of gas the hostages, who included four Americans, were exposed to. They said this made effective treatment difficult.
The ambassador, who is normally positive towards the Kremlin, said: "We regret that the lack of information contributed to the confusion after the immediate operation to free the hostages was over. It's clear that with perhaps a little more information at least a few more of the hostages may have survived."
At Hospital No. 1 a middle-aged woman stood stock-still just inside the entrance gate. "I can't find my son," she said bitterly. "I have looked everywhere. He's not on the lists."
Two hundred metres away a 17-year-old boy was seeking news of his 20-year-old flatmate and best friend. They are orphans sharing a squat. "He was my only family," the boy said.
Critics say fiddling the numbers is easy for a state apparatus that still has enormous control over the lives of its citizens. For an outsider, accounting for all the dead is almost impossible. Russian officials have failed to issue an estimate of the total number of people in the theatre when it was seized.
On Melnikova Street the psychiatric help centre set up at the beginning of the crisis for relatives of the hostages was being closed down and police refused access. "It is empty, go away," one said.
At the hospitals the situation is no better. Hospital No. 1 refused to say how many patients it had, how many had died or how many had gone home. Hospital No. 13 will not even open its gates. Doctors have been forced by authorities to sign forms promising not to release information to the media.
 
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