Background: A Binary Sarin Shell as a Makeshift Bomb

It is important to note that for all of the emotional and political energy that attaches to chemical weapons and their use, this bomb was only marginally effective. The shell was not fired as it was designed to be, and it did not disperse a nerve agent over a wide area. It killed no one. According to the available accounts, it wounded only the two people who handled it without wearing protective clothing and masks. The highway quickly reopened. The war went on as before. For a so-called weapon of mass destruction, the damage was limited.

This is not to minimize the seriousness of sarin’s effects on Sergeant Burns and Private Yandell. Those effects were striking and pernicious: Sergeant Burns, now retired, reported a lingering cluster of neurological complaints, including problems with memory, dexterity and balance. But the bomb, as it was constructed and used, did not prove to be a grave menace. Had the bomb maker used a conventional high-explosive shell instead of the sarin round, the device might have done more harm.

Many of the ordnance technicians who have reviewed the attack say they suspect that the bomb maker who fielded the weapon, using a shell from the 1980s, was not even aware that the shell was a chemical round, and that if he was aware, he did not know how to maximize its potential sarin dispersal.

It is also worth noting that even if the bomb maker knew what he had, an improvised explosive device containing a nerve agent would not have been a new concept. It would have been a low-tech echo of a far more efficient design worked out in the United States during the Cold War.