Wars Most Horrific Weapon...

in the 15th century a German man had the bright idea to ball Vats of urine and attempt to make gold unfortunately what he created doesn't make people Rich it suffocates it poisons and it burns to the Bone white phosphorus is a substance that inflicts Terror in anyone who knows enough about it it can't be extinguished and will tunnel through flesh until it's exhausted even then it could enter the body and kill the liver victims are easy to identify because their wounds will smolder their intestines May glow in the dark and if they're unfortunate enough to consume it their stools can give off smoke hearing this you might think it would be a war crime to launch that into a city but thanks to a loophole in the regulations it's not and Military organizations continue to use it to this very day [Music] white phosphorus is a wax-like chemical substance that's pyrophoric this means it ignites upon contact with oxygen once a light it burns fiercely between 800 and 1 300 degrees Celsius and it can't be extinguished until the phosphorus has been exhausted or it's starved of oxygen it was first discovered by Alchemist Hennig brands in 1669. in his quest to create the Philosopher's Stone an imagined art of act with the ability to turn cheap Metals into gold in one of his failed experiments he boiled urine and then burned the residue that formed this produced phosphorus gas which oh and condensed underwater formed an eerie glow-in-the-dark wax after Hennig had determined that this creation wasn't going to get him any gold he sold the instructions to a friend for 200 Taylors about a thousand pounds in today's money as work got out about this incredible new substance various other chemists began to develop their own recipes cooking dung bone Ash and even brain matter today why phosphate viruses manufactured using the much more palatable technique of heating phosphate Rock in the presence of carbon and silica unsurprisingly for a substance that can spontaneously combust and glows green at night why phosphorus can kill you in numerous ways each more terrifying than the last a first though no one considered this new chemical dangerous and pharmacists started selling phosphorus laced luminous pills to treat gout and Asthma and even improve intelligence the past everybody fortunately for most of their customers the phosphorus was oxidizing into harmless phosphate in between manufacturing ingestion so not too many people died and nobody became more intelligent then in 1831 Charles sauria had the bright idea of using white phosphorus in matches as an ignition agent and that's when the death actually started ramping up the first victims were the men producing the phosphorus and the women making these Lucifer matches Little did they know but phosphorus vapor is incredibly toxic and repeated in halation who caused a condition known as Fosse jaw which is early acute name for the bones of the jaw dissolving inside inside your face it's a substantially less cute in the best case sufferers experience tooth loss abscesses and disfigurements in twenty percent of cases though they died as soon as people finally figured out that white phosphorus shouldn't be ingested they started using it as a rat poison and well it was really effective at that a when consumed or absorbed into the bloodstream the substance attacks the kidneys the liver and the heart this causes the liver to swell and induces vomiting diarrhea seizures multiple organ failure and an incredibly painful death in both rodents and humans with a brand new poison on the market available as both soluble matches and easy to consume brand-based rat killer murderers were the next to embrace white phosphorus a popular method was to soak match heads in brandy or wine initially this concoction was invented to induce abortions and as a male aphrodisiac because of course it was but when 90 of drinkers died it was soon picked up as an easy way to kill someone fortunately why phosphorus matches were finally banned in 1906 not because they'd become a weapon for murder but due to a public outrage surrounding the suffering of the ex-match girls who were now struggling to survive without their jawbones with Lucifer's off the table people started hiding phosphorus-based rat poison roading in their victim's food in fact the ammo became so popular that agassa Christie used phosphorus in Dumb Witness where the victim was found dead and glowing from the mouth after a seance rat poisoning gained particular popularity in the north of England which experienced an outbreak of so-called roadine murders throughout the 1950s in one example straight out of a cliched murder mystery a housekeeper named Louisa Merrifield poisoned the old lady that she worked for why well because the woman had naively revealed that Louisa was the sole beneficiary of her will in another case a woman named Mary Wilson killed not one but two former husbands using Road in rat poison should actually killed two more with Beetle poison before switching to phosphorus and David joked at her fourth wedding that the leftover sandwiches would still be fresh enough for her groom's funeral unfortunately her change of tactic didn't work the burials created an anaerobic environment which preserved the phosphorus so when her third and fourth husbands were exhumed traces of the poison could still be identified fortunately not every poisoner was successful for example one man narrowly avoided a similar fate to Wilson's husbands when as he carried his soup from the kitchen he noted it glowing in the dark eventually in 1963 rodim was officially banned not to prevent the murders though but as part of the animal cruel poisons act unfortunately though this wasn't the end of deaths by white phosphorus and when adopted by the military they'd get so much worse the first factory made white phosphorus weapons were created in the first world war by the British army who added the substance to grenades America and Japan soon followed suit and by World War II a number of deadly options were available including mortar bombs shells rockets and grenades they were nicknamed Willy Pete or William Peter for the initials WP latex was also added which created huge billowing clouds of opaque white smoke the main goal of these first weapons wasn't necessarily to kill it was to produce as much smoke as possible then this served a few purposes firstly why phosphorus creates an incredibly effective smoke screen by deploying it agrestors could temporarily blind opponents allowing them to approach without receiving fire and therefore attack at a shorter range the U.S found this invaluable against German Panther tanks which could withstand U.S armor-piercing rounds at a distance but not at close range this also incredibly effective at obstructing infrared vision and or weapons tracking systems another useful feature is that the smoke is a respiratory irritant so inhalation could cause coughing and pain this means that when it's fired into a concentrated area of enemy troops they'll panic and Scatter trying to escape the toxic cloud this was an effective tactic used by Allied soldiers against attacking German troops during the end of World War II of course this isn't to say that the smoke doesn't kill though exposure is toxic and inhaling enough can induce liver damage and organ failure and in a confined space one can even suffocate this was a particularly horrendous tactic employed by the US in Vietnam that far white phosphorus into the Viet Cong tunnels and as it burned it would consume all the oxygen and suffocate the men hiding inside however none of this is why the weapons are truly feared all right the real horror of white phosphorus is learning at 1 300 degrees Celsius a single fragment can sear through skin flesh muscle and then tunnel all the way down to the bone it's also sticky and nearly impossible to remove once it comes into contact with skin in the military soldiers are advised to dig out particles with a knife as quickly as possible if it remains in the flesh it will continue to burn and it can only be extinguished by removing the oxygen source this is usually done by covering the wound in water or mud horrifically though as soon as either is removed the phosphorus can spontaneously reignite sometimes this could be weeks later this means the medical personnel have to be incredibly careful when dealing with phosphorus patients as smoke and Flames have been known to LEAP from wounds when bandages are removed for example in 2009 Israeli forces utilized white phosphorus shells in the northern part of the Gaza script and civilians were caught up in the attack one 18 year old received severe burns as particles of phosphorus embedded themselves business skin at the hospital nurses uncovered the wounds to find that they were emitting white smoke when they attempted to clean the area a particle of phosphorus was dislodged and burned a nurse's neck the Abu Halima family suffered the worst of the Gaza attack so oh while Sheltering at home three shells filled with white phosphorus crashed through the roof and the house was engulfed in flames that couldn't be extinguished of the 12 family members seven were able to escape badly injured and five perished those that could rushed outside for help but received none to quote we cried and shouted and called out to neighbors to help us but no one could come near us and save us because the Israeli Army was about a hundred meters away and shooting at anyone who approached who'd been nursing her infant daughter at the time later described what happened everything caught fire my husbands and four of my children burned alive in front of my eyes my baby girl my only girl melted in my arms how can a mother have to see her children burn alive I couldn't save them I couldn't help them when dealing with burn victims a vital measure is the total body surface area affected or tbsa typically a five percent tbsa burn won't need hospitalization Burns of up to 15 percent will need to be admitted for treatment and burns over 15 percent can include kidney or multiple organ failure and will require intensive care in the same Gaza attack sabar's daughter-in-law 21 year old Garda was badly burned speaking from the hospital she described her experience quote I ripped the clothes off my body and cried out that I was burning I was naked in front of everybody in the house the pain was excruciating I could smell my flesh burning my whole body was burned end quote she survived for three months and was treated with debridement surgery wound disinfection and skin grafts but sadly she didn't make it husband later reported that quote a chain interaction had been triggered in her body by the white phosphorus shutting down her cells this happens because white phosphorus is incredibly fat soluble and therefore easily absorbed through the skin if enough enters the body it triggers systemic toxicity which occurs in three phases the symptoms of phase one are gastrointestinal so patients will experience vomiting and diarrhea occasionally they may also go into shock which could be fatal and kill within 48 hours in phase two patients will become asymptomatic for between eight hours and three days at this time though may think the worst has passed and that they'll survive the ordeal unfortunately though four to eight days later many will enter phase three this is when the toxins have inflicted significant central nervous system injury and to produce multiple organ failure the likely outcome at that point is death [Music] treatments of white phosphorus patients is incredibly difficult and usually Complicated by the lack of doctors and medical resources in the active War zones where it's deployed however occasionally it's possible to save patients even oh when they've got extensive burns the radio an eight-year-old girl in Afghanistan was struck by white phosphorus in her home outside of Kabul in 2009. she received burns on 40 to 45 percent of her body including her head and face her father reported that as she ran to him engulfed in flames he held her tightly then as he lifted his hand the top of her scalp and part of her face peeled off like a mask he took her to an Afghan army base as fast as he could but they couldn't treat her so she was taken to a French base and then to a U.S one in search of help all the while he poured water on her face to keep her conscious when the US medical team finally began treatment they fitted her with an oxygen mask but as her face and throat were still full of phosphorus it re ignited on contact with the oxygen and the mask and belted when they tried to scrape off her burned flesh Flames leapt from her wounds and as a nurse tried to clean her a piece of her ear came away in her hand miraculously though Razia survived and began the long and grueling process of healing she had to undergo multiple skin grafts and required so many that she had to wait for her donor sites to Keel in between her movement was severely restricted she couldn't move her mouth to eat and she had to roll her eyes downward to sleep as she couldn't close them eventually after three months she was released but she still suffered severe pain and had extensive scarring she's also lost all of her hair which will never regrow devastatingly her father could not afford either plastic surgery or counseling for Asia and neither the U.S French nor Taliban militants will admit responsibility but all have used white phosphorus in the area so hearing these harrowing stories it's really hard to believe that white phosphorus isn't banned and isn't considered a war crime however due to its usefulness as a smoke screen it's been able to slip through the net of regulations as it stands Article 1 of protocol 3 in the convention on certain Conventional Weapons defines an incendiary weapon as any weapon or munition which is primarily designed to set fire to objects or to cause burn injury to persons through the action of flame heat or combination thereof Article 2 bans the use of any of these weapons against civilians or in areas with high civilian concentrations this means various military organizations can argue that as long as they're using white phosphorus as a smoke screen and not who intentionally kill people they're actually on the right side of the law for example in 2004 the U.S were accused of using white phosphorus during the first battle of Fallujah as 50 000 civilians sought shelter in the city initially they denied it as Zed known there was a high concentration of civilians even usually though they conceded that yes they had used it but only for masking and screening purposes which was legitimate this didn't go far enough for the multiple eyewitnesses who insisted that they're deployed it as an incendiary weapon but the U.S wouldn't budge then in 2005 they outed themselves in their own Army Journal field artillery which read why phosphorus proved to Be an Effective and versatile munition and as a potent psychological weapon against the insurgents in trench lines and spider holes we've hired shake and bake missions that the insurgents using WP to flush them out and high explosives to take them out this was not legitimate use and tragically it's estimated that up to 6 000 people were killed in the attacks most of them were civilians later in 2005 an Italian documentary entitled Fallujah the hidden Massacre was released exposing the devastating atrocities and one Marine who fought in the battle reported quote I heard the order to pay attention because they were going to use phosphorus on Volusia phosphorus Burns bodies in fact it melts the flesh all the way down to the bone I saw the burned bodies of women children end quote to many this proves the white phosphorus was used as an offensive Weapon by the U.S and amounts to a war crime human rights Watchers repeatedly tried to highlight the devastating impacts of the substance and to close the gaps in protocol 3. unfortunately they've been blocked at every turn notably by the U.S and by Russia who want to reserve the right to use it as a smoke screen despite other non-deadly Alternatives being available as the use of white phosphorus continues so does the pain of its victims a Sabah who lost a baby girl told Amnesty International quote I was on fire now I'm still burning all over [Music] foreign [Music]

Channel: Into the Shadows

Views: 832,939

Keywords: phosphorus, white, chemical, warfare

Id: sV2VurgIhtw

Length: 16min 49sec (1009 seconds)

Published: Thu Sep 07 2023