man it’s so hard to explain to people how miserably short and wretched existing in a chemical or biological warfare environment would be when shit got real.
like, you have no idea how much it would suck to have to wear protective gear over every square inch, basically encased in a rubber greenhouse, while trying to carry a combat load and put shit downrange. I can’t begin to describe the misery of having stinging sweat running in your eyes like a faucet, and having no ability to simply scratch or wipe your brow, because you’re in a protective mask and suit, or how miserable lives would be - eating? pfft, nope. defecating? urinating? probably gonna shit your suit bro, the odds of decontamination happening so you can conveniently drop deuces ain’t a consideration.
fuck, just getting your rifle in a position to aim down the barrel and acquire a sight picture becomes comically difficult. then you start thinking about what one tiny cut, one fuck up in your gear order leads to - what happens when nerve agents and blood clotting agents kill those around you, because they made a mistake somewhere, or the lady who sealed their mask at the factory was having an off day, and a tiny whiff of cyanogen chloride or arsine and bam your buddy’s on the ground, thrashing as their bloodstream turns into semisolid goop. Or a bit of nerve agent got past their seals / overlaps and into their nervous system, so homey’s over there flopping like a massive fish out of water, which might be funny if you didn’t know those violent spasms indicated they were dying in front of you.
And your only hope is to live long enough to make it to decontamination; most of the equipment isn’t meant to be field serviced, so doing something as simple as changing your mask’s filter (which you MUST do if you want to live) can be impossible (when I enlisted you had to remove your mask to change the filters which were stored in the cheek region - lol hope you’re good at holding your breath for a long time) or exceptionally hard (later we got canister based filters that you could screw on, but be gentle with it because you can tear up that connector seal and die anyway, ha-ha)…
It’s silly to hope we never go down these roads again, because so few people are aware of the utter dread these weapons deserve. The reality of NBC fighting should be on the telly ever other day, like a Threads marathon, to discourage all from letting their nations go to war with the shit.
man it’s so hard to explain to people how miserably short and wretched existing in a chemical or biological warfare environment would be when shit got real.
like, you have no idea how much it would suck to have to wear protective gear over every square inch, basically encased in a rubber greenhouse, while trying to carry a combat load and put shit downrange. I can’t begin to describe the misery of having stinging sweat running in your eyes like a faucet, and having no ability to simply scratch or wipe your brow, because you’re in a protective mask and suit, or how miserable lives would be - eating? pfft, nope. defecating? urinating? probably gonna shit your suit bro, the odds of decontamination happening so you can conveniently drop deuces ain’t a consideration.
fuck, just getting your rifle in a position to aim down the barrel and acquire a sight picture becomes comically difficult. then you start thinking about what one tiny cut, one fuck up in your gear order leads to - what happens when nerve agents and blood clotting agents kill those around you, because they made a mistake somewhere, or the lady who sealed their mask at the factory was having an off day, and a tiny whiff of cyanogen chloride or arsine and bam your buddy’s on the ground, thrashing as their bloodstream turns into semisolid goop. Or a bit of nerve agent got past their seals / overlaps and into their nervous system, so homey’s over there flopping like a massive fish out of water, which might be funny if you didn’t know those violent spasms indicated they were dying in front of you.
And your only hope is to live long enough to make it to decontamination; most of the equipment isn’t meant to be field serviced, so doing something as simple as changing your mask’s filter (which you MUST do if you want to live) can be impossible (when I enlisted you had to remove your mask to change the filters which were stored in the cheek region - lol hope you’re good at holding your breath for a long time) or exceptionally hard (later we got canister based filters that you could screw on, but be gentle with it because you can tear up that connector seal and die anyway, ha-ha)…
It’s silly to hope we never go down these roads again, because so few people are aware of the utter dread these weapons deserve. The reality of NBC fighting should be on the telly ever other day, like a Threads marathon, to discourage all from letting their nations go to war with the shit.