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Admirable_Nothing t1_j9kq3vp wrote

Using a jet to spread VX seems pretty egregious but it happened. I am surprised no humans were killed. If I lived near Dugway Proving Grounds today I would keep atropine injection modules on hand in case of any more accidents.

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orionsanon t1_j9krl9k wrote

Reminds me of the current situation in Ohio

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BrokenEye3 t1_j9ku0j6 wrote

Why did the sheep have nerve gas?

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On-mountain-time t1_j9ldc8v wrote

Nobody ask me about the Camp Pendleton buffalo near the .50 and mk-19 range.

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basaltgranite t1_j9lf7u0 wrote

Spielberg used stock footage of the event in Close Encounters. ^^/s

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cardboardunderwear t1_j9lqfph wrote

Interesting tidbit from the link:

>In 1975, Congress approved the protocol and President Gerald Ford ratified it. The U.S. would no longer use chemical weapons—lethal or nonlethal—in warfare. Ironically, tear gas has continued to be used as a weapon of pacification domestically; law enforcement from local police officers to the National Guard have continued to use tear gas to quell riots and prevent property damage.

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greengo07 t1_j9lwnau wrote

decimating republican voter base? musta been a dem president.

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IndependenceMean8774 t1_j9lxtrf wrote

IIRC, this was the event that inspired Stephen King's novel The Stand. You know, the book where 99% percent of the world's population dies from a superflu virus the government accidentally releases.

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JoshuaZ1 t1_j9my2s4 wrote

This is a very neat TIL.

The article is really good too. One part that jumped out from it was how much Senator Richard McCarthy was responsible for revealing how much of a chemical weapons program the US had. Almost seems like a shame that we so much remember the other McCarthy and so much less so this one.

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Lessthanzerofucks t1_j9n4wlt wrote

I remember hearing this story when I lived in Wendover. The locals that told the story always said they never found out what killed the sheep. One guy said he heard there might have been a gas leak, but nothing ever proven. I never even looked into the whole thing because I thought it was just the locals sharing stories.

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HotPocket_Consumed t1_j9n9i0w wrote

In the Army I maybe saw a SPC accipurposely Mk-19 a deer at Ft. Campbell.

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tostuo t1_j9ncjin wrote

Replying to cardboardunderwear (#1,927,168)

Nothing Ironic about this. Nations dont use non-lethal gas in warefare because it causes too many issues (leads to friendly fire incidents, escalations in retaliation with lethal gas, etc). Those aren't really worries with domestic use.

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coffeeinvenice t1_j9nglt0 wrote

For those of us old enough to remember it, the 1968 Dugway Sheep Incident had a significant impact on public consciousness and pop culture in the late 1960s. It happened at the height of the Vietnam War when there was rising public doubt in the US on what the Pentagon was doing and what it was spending money on.

The Dugway Sheep Incident may have been the basis for The Andromeda Strain, a 1969 techno-thriller novel by Michael Crichton that made it to the 1969 New York Times Best Seller list. In the novel, a team of scientists at a secret underground government laboratory investigate the outbreak of a deadly extraterrestrial microorganism in Arizona. Images of dead people in the 1971 movie were/are reminiscent of fields of dead sheep from the Dugway incident.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9o9Iwtp0xcg

In 1971, Charlton Heston stared in a post-apocalyptic science-fiction film called The Omega Man, later remade into I Am Legend. In the 1971 film, a Sino-Soviet border conflict escalates into full-scale war in which biological warfare destroys most of the human race.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=av_1t7LLRFk

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