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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: July 4th, 2023

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  • Yeah, fair enough, it would be odd for immediate retaliation. However, let me present another scenario. Imagine harassing agents are permitted to be used in war. How long do you think it would take the war industry to develop significantly worse harassing agents than CS, and how much lawyering would end up happening to argue a certain chemical weapon is actually a harassing agent and not something that’s banned? Now that retaliation scenario isn’t that far out of the picture. Force A gets hit with some super harassing agent bordering (or actually) lethal chemical weapons, force B retaliates with mustard gas.

    It’s easier to just ban them all.


  • The regulation regarding harassing agents is not about treating service members a certain way, it’s about avoiding escalation to lethal chemical warfare. The risk of a civilian escalating to mustard gas or nerve gas after getting hit with CS is very low.

    A better example for what you’re talking about would be hollow point bullets. 100% war crime to use because of its effects on the body, never saw one the whole time I was in the Army, yet it’s the type of bullet used by police nearly everywhere. It’s also what most home defense ammunition is.


  • As far as I understand it, this is due to fears of escalation rather than any acute effect of the gas itself. Someone gets hit with CS gas, they don’t know what it is right away, and they retaliate with lethal chemical weapons. Nonlethal chemical agents just increase the chance for confusion on the battlefield so they banned chemical agents altogether, including harassing agents like CS.

    Along similar lines though, the rules of engagement for soldiers are way more stringent than the rules of engagement for police (do they even have any in the US?). I consider this much more egregious than tear gas regulations. Tear gas isn’t fun but it’s survivable. Bullets on the other hand, not so much.


  • I’d say world wars involve multiple major powers in full total war economy. We haven’t seen any major power do that since WW2 to my knowledge. Involvement of multiple nations does not make it a world war IMO, otherwise the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan count, among many others in history. There’s also not side conflicts occurring in all the colonial possessions like in the other world wars.









  • I rode back from a Phish show in Albany, NY when there were big fat flakes coming down at night on I-90. It was my first show and also first mushroom chocolate. It was like going warp speed the entire way home, long white snowflake tracers across a black background. Very fun to watch, although the trip home took a lot longer because we could only do 45 rather than 65.