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Novichok Nerve Agent Poisoning

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11–20 of 55 posts

Re: Novichok Nerve Agent Poisoning

#11
If Russia would like to kill people discretely, they would could use various other venom's and poisons. Ricin, for example.

Russians use Novichok or Polonium because they are signature weapons that signal everyone that Russian intelligence agencies were involved. Polonium is FSB's signature. Novichok is chemical weapon in the hands of military, so G.U. (GRU).

Re: Novichok Nerve Agent Poisoning

#12
post #10

Polonium, Dioxin, Novichok. I wonder what they use when they want to be more stealthy about it.

Polonium is actually very stealthy. It's an alpha emitter which is not detectable by most equipment, and it was very nearly not detected even by the UK government. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poisoning_of_Alexander_Litvine...

Re: Novichok Nerve Agent Poisoning

#13
post #4
post #2

Does anyone have a link to the full text?

https://sci-hub.se/10.1016/S0140-6736(20)32644-1

Damn, this is worth a read. Among many other things, the day after poisoning his body temperature was 34 deg C (!) and heart rate only 44 bpm. The poor guy was on a ventilator for 24 days, and would almost certainly have died if not mechanically ventilated within 2 hours. It's downright astonishing that he recovered as well as he did.

How many people would willingly return to the lion's den where this happened to them?

Re: Novichok Nerve Agent Poisoning

#14
post #11

If Russia would like to kill people discretely, they would could use various other venom's and poisons. Ricin, for example. Russians use Novichok or Polonium because they are signature weapons that signal everyone that Russian intelligence agencies were involved. Polonium is FSB's signature. Novichok is chemical weapon in the hands of military, so G.U. (GRU).

Ricin is easily screened for. Novichok not so much until recently. Who knows how many people they had poisoned we don’t know about. Bellingcat research suggests that a lot. Polonium wouldn’t have been detected if not for some radiology expert who accidentally listened in on some side conversation

Re: Novichok Nerve Agent Poisoning

#15
It's odd to hold as an assumption that the Russian government is the only entity that can synthesize this molecule.

It's also odd to take the word of "a laboratory of the German armed forces" as some sort of independent source in a clear political conflict.

Re: Novichok Nerve Agent Poisoning

#16
post #11

If Russia would like to kill people discretely, they would could use various other venom's and poisons. Ricin, for example. Russians use Novichok or Polonium because they are signature weapons that signal everyone that Russian intelligence agencies were involved. Polonium is FSB's signature. Novichok is chemical weapon in the hands of military, so G.U. (GRU).

Ricin is easily screened for. Novichok not so much until recently. Who knows how many people they had poisoned we don’t know about. Bellingcat research suggests that a lot. Polonium wouldn’t have been detected if not for some radiology expert who accidentally listened in on some side conversation

The paper discusses this a bit:

Identification of an individual organophosphorus compound is a complex and time-consuming process. [9] In fact, ascertaining the involvement of a novichok agent and its biotransformation products in this case was only achieved several days after establishing the diagnosis of cholinesterase inhibitor poisoning and did not affecttherapeutic decisions.Organophosphorus nerve agents exert the same mechanism of action as do organophosphorus pesti-cides (ie, inhibition of acetylcholinesterase) and clinical management is largely based on experience with organo-phosphorus pesticide poisonings, which still pose a major health burden in southeast Asia, with more than 100000 deaths per year. [10] Clinical diagnosis of organophosphorus poisoning should be straightforward.

---

[9] John H, van der Schans MJ, Koller M, et al. Fatal sarin poisoning in Syria 2013: forensic verification within an international laboratory network. Forensic Toxicol 2018; 36: 61–71.

[10] Mew EJ, Padmanathan P, Konradsen F, et al. The global burden of fatal self-poisoning with pesticides 2006–15: systematic review. J Affect Disord 2017; 219: 93–104.

Re: Novichok Nerve Agent Poisoning

#18
post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://sci-hub.se/10.1016/S0140-6736(20)32644-1

Damn, this is worth a read. Among many other things, the day after poisoning his body temperature was 34 deg C (!) and heart rate only 44 bpm. The poor guy was on a ventilator for 24 days , and would almost certainly have died if not mechanically ventilated within 2 hours. It's downright astonishing that he recovered as well as he did. How many people would willingly return to the lion's den where this happened to th…

> It's downright astonishing that he recovered as well as he did.

Given the poor track record of what intelligence agencies have tagged as "deadliest poison ever" I am not particularly surprised, neither is MoonOfAlabama in that regard

https://www.moonofalabama.org/2018/09/a-curious-timestamp-in...

Re: Novichok Nerve Agent Poisoning

#19
post #6

The things happening in Russia before the protest on Saturday is dystopian. Police take into custody anyone who is trying to promote it, schools are suddenly open and students are being scared by threats of disqualification if they go outside on that day. I hope this dictatorship ends soon. I wouldn’t want to live in a country where nearly all your taxes get spent on building a palace and enforcing more police and mi…

no different than what was happening in Victoria, Australia recently regarding COVID protests, people getting arrested at home for promoting the protest on facebook etc.

Re: Novichok Nerve Agent Poisoning

#20
post #11

If Russia would like to kill people discretely, they would could use various other venom's and poisons. Ricin, for example. Russians use Novichok or Polonium because they are signature weapons that signal everyone that Russian intelligence agencies were involved. Polonium is FSB's signature. Novichok is chemical weapon in the hands of military, so G.U. (GRU).

Ricin is easily screened for. Novichok not so much until recently. Who knows how many people they had poisoned we don’t know about. Bellingcat research suggests that a lot. Polonium wouldn’t have been detected if not for some radiology expert who accidentally listened in on some side conversation

Consider the assassination of Mahmoud Al-Mabbouh. It was intended to look like a natural death, without raising suspicions. To do this, they snuck into his hotel room, injected him with a muscle relaxant, then suffocated him. It took local authorities ten days to realize it was actually a murder. They did eventually figure it out, but I don't think it's hard to imagine intelligence agencies have done similar things before and gotten away with it. In the case of Litvinenko, authorities were pretty sure he'd been poisoned from the onset. The poisoning drew a whole lot of attention that Russia probably could have avoided if they intended to be subtle.
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