Mustard Gas

[Flake2m]

Dichlorodiethyl sulphide or Mustard Gas as it also known as, is a very nasty CW agent. It can cause permanent lung damage at low concentrations as well as blisters and burns to exposed skin.
How could it be synthesised in theory?

[mr.evil]

why does people it call 'mustard' gas? does it smell like it?
:confused:

sorry if this is a silly post :p

[Bitter]

Apparently, it does have a kind of mustardy smell in low concentrations, that's probably why it's called mustard gas.

I'd do a search for a topic called "patents" if you want information on mustard gas.

[PYRO500]

Also I downloaded an archive of posts a while back there was a post by NBK2000 on how to make mustard gas

[Celtick]

Chemistry of H (Mustard)
<img src="http://www.mitretek.org/home.nsf/42a4ebe6820c3dc785256af00060d784/31587ad073b3553f85256b98005aa875/Body/0.B6?OpenElement&FieldElemFormat=gif" alt="" />
Mustard "gas", (also known as H, yperite, sulfur mustard, Kampfstoff Lost) is actually a viscous liquid with the chemical name 1,1'Çthiobis[2Çchloroethane], molecular formula C4H8Cl2S, and formula weight 159.08. Its Chemical Abstracts Service registry number is 505-60-2.

General Information
Mustard was first used by the Germans on the night of 12-13 July 1917 near Ypres in Flanders. The French introduced mustard into their arsenal in June 1918, the British in September 1918. In one of the supreme ironies of the history of chemical warfare, the British had tested mustard during the summer of 1916, but the developers had been unable to convince the military of its utility. Meanwhile, the Germans began developing mustard in September 1916, and first filled shells with mustard in the spring of 1917. The Germans waited to introduce mustard to the battlefield until they had accumulated a large supply, knowing that it would be difficult for the Allies to catch up; indeed it took the French 11 months and the British 14 months before they were able to use the agent on the battlefield.

Subsequent documented uses of mustard include use in Morocco in 1925, during 1935 in Ethiopia, in China between 1934 and 1944, and in the Iran-Iraq war by both sides. Large quantities were prepared by both the Allies and the Axis during World War II. Although no chemical warfare agents were used in Europe or in the Pacific, there was a release of mustard into Bari harbor in Italy in 1943.3 Mustard was stockpiled by the Soviet Union and the United States through the Cold War.

Mustard was first synthesized by Meyer in 1886, although it had been produced in very poor yield by Guthrie some 25 years previously (had Guthrie's preparation produced a higher yield, he likely would have been severely injured). When pure, H is a colorless and odorless liquid. Agent grade material is typically yellow to dark brown; the odor is variously described as "similar to that of burning garlic," "a characteristic sweetish odor," and "a weak, sweet, agreeable odor." It is a strong vesicant.

[megalomania]

nbk2000's PDF does have the synth, a novel one I believe. Unless I am thinking of phosgene. I myself have scads of chemical weapons data I acquired this winter that I am slowly converting to my website. A sneak peak:

Lab preperation of dichloroethyl sulphide from Guthrie's original method. This basicially involves bubbling ethylene gas through sulfur chloride. The gas is bubbled through a series of bottles filled with conc sulfuric acid, 10% NaOH, and conc sulfuric acid again to wash and dry the ethylene. The washed gas passes into a flask equipped with an outlet for excess gas, an addition funnel to add more sulfur chloride. The ethylene gas may be generated by a mixture of 25 g of alum, 25 g of ethyl alcohol, and about 82 mL of 99% sulfuric acid. Gently heating the mixture (in a flask) will liberate ethylene. There should of course already be sulfur chloride in the flask (20 g) before ethylene is bubbled in, and you should wait to connect the bubbler until the gas is actually flowing (back flow into the sulfuric acid is not desireable).

Ethylene gas generation can be sustained by the dropwise addition of a mixture of 150 g alcohol to 300 g acid. An additional 30 g or sulfur chloride is added in 3 portions during the reaction as well.

The sulfur chloride containing reaction vessel should be cooled by water or ice bath to maintain a temp BELOW 35 &deg;C at all times. You can tell the end point of the reacion by adding some sodium iodide, although I do not yet know what this will look like. The final product is collected by distilling at reduced pressure (106-108 &deg;C at 15 mm Hg, I will adjust this when I write up the real thing).

There you have it folks. I must stress that actually preparing chemical agents of this nature are not in your best interests. Knowledge is power.

[inferno]

I believe its called mustard gas because it has a browny colour, though im sure that its more because of the smell.

[nbk2000]

Download the archives and read the September 15, 2000 post by me called "Anti-freeze Mustard Gas". All about making the stuff using anti-freeze and commonly available chemicals to make liquid pain.

And it isn't called mustard gas just because of the odor. It's because it's chemically related to the allyl sulphide found in mustard which also causes vesication.

NBKv.2 PDF has the revised version of the synth, complete with pictures, diagrams, and technical details derived from varied technical journals. Much more entertaining reading. :)

[Synthetically Hopeful]

But still, the question of the year is, when are you releasing it? have you not decided yet?

[megalomania]

He has, it is undergoing peer review with selected people. I am sure once he has the fedback and makes the necessary changes, he will release it to the public.

[nbk2000]

Like a fine wine, it will not be served before its time. :D

Seriously, I don't know when it'll be done. It'd have been done already if it wasn't for all the turmoil in my life these last couple years. I've moved about 5 times (this last time 2,000 miles with nothing but my computer and the clothes I was wearing), lost everything twice (except the computer, 'natch), had a virus wipe out the hard drive once and took months to recover the data, been unemployed for the better part of a year, under virtual house arrest for that time with no means of travel in a fly speck of a town, had two lemons of a car that ate up $2,000, been to court, been evicted twice, etc. etc.

None of these things are conducive to working on a book.

Even so, I've got ~250 pages of new content and several video clips.

I've got hundreds of pages yet to go before it's even considered close to being done. I'm aiming for more than 800 pages for the PDF alone. Hundreds of original pictures and illustrations drawn by me (I'm getting REAL good with PS6 shortcuts :D ) are needed to illustrate the text.

Then there's the videos to be made (have to buy a camcorder) and edited.

Devices need to be built. Experiments need to be ran and results recorded and verified.

Then the references and bookz need to be compiled.

Then the warez, tools, utilities, and tutorials to be updated, checked for virii, and catagorized.

Then buying a DVD burner and compiling the DVD with the menus, music, etc, to my liking.

Then, &lt;B&gt;finally&lt;/B&gt;, it'll be done. :)

Oh, one thing about the DVD. Every copy is going to be individually PGP encrypted using the buyers choice of a passphrase. This serves several purposes:

Prevents customs authorities from knowing what's on the disk. It's better that they confiscate the disk, not knowing what's on it, than letting you pick it up and arresting you because they DO know what's on it.

(Boy, I'd hate to have to be the one who has to explain to a magistrate why I'm importing a DVD full of detailed instructions and videos about making mortars, claymores, chemical weapons, flamethrowers, landmines, TV guided weapons, cluster bombs, poisoned bullets, commiting murder, rape, arson, kidnapping, bank robbery, executing hostages, disposing of bodies, boobytrapping bombs to kill EOD and X-ray techs, breeding venomous insects for the toxins, and all the other little goodies that are going in the PDF.

They'll think you're the next OBL. Heheheehee!)

Prevents snoops (like parents, siblings, co-workers, etc) from finding out what you're interested in and ratting you out to the police.

Prevents copying (Both the DVD format and the encryption help). Oh, and every file will be watermarked in various ways that will uniquely identify the person who posted an unauthorized copy of it to the 'net. You WILL be found out.

The pre-beta copy I sent out for review by some of the Forum staff was just a RAW copy of what I had done a few months ago. I've been adding content when possible, but now that I'm working 12 hours a day to get some cash going, I don't have any free time. And I'm not going to have free time for several months yet till I can afford to quit one of these jobs. You may have noticed my general lack of presence here. But I still check in every day to purge morons and idiots at least.

So it'll be a while yet, but when it IS eventually (by the grace of God and the planets are alinged <img src="http://assaultweb.net/ubb/icons/icon7.gif" alt="" />) finished, you'll be damn grateful for the wait for what you're going to be getting for &lt;i&gt;only&lt;/i&gt; $50.

More likely than not, I'll be lucky to break even. What I'm going to do, when it's ready to be compiled and burned to DVD, is annouce it and take the pre-orders for it at $50. Once I've received enough to buy the burner, it'll be burnt and mailed out (postage to anywhere in the world is included in the price).

And anyone who can't afford the $50 is either too poor to have a DVD drive or lacks the funds to do anything with the information contained therein anyways. So :p

Oh, and about the mustard, you don't have to bother with the vacuum distilling if you're using it immediately. Distilling's only needed for storage stability.

[S. Toppholzer]

NBK....
Can't wait for this PDF to appear. And I definatley AM willing to caugh up 50 bucks for it. You're doing first class quality stuff and that's worth the price.
Nevertheless I would ask you to consider PGP encrypting this PDF on a regular CD as well. Take me, for example: I still own my trusty, old 486/66 DX2 and I have no plans of replacing it with another computer. This one's simply fine enough for me. Unfortunately, I cannot get any parts and hardware devices for this dinosaur anymore.
Some guys have the money to buy what you're offering - but there might be circumstances you just didn't think of...

<small>[ June 07, 2002, 04:13 PM: Message edited by: S. Toppholzer ]</small>

[Spudkilla]

If it is anywhere near how big NBK said it would be, it won't fit on CD-ROMs. The most I've seen them able to hold is 812 mb, and NBK's stuff (sounds) like it will be far larger. A DVD-ROM holds 7 gigs or more, I think.

[S. Toppholzer]

250 pages... plus graphics.
Well,I cannot recall right now how many pages the average PBJB has - maybe half of it. But surely you'd agree that pure graphic pages (as is the case with PMJB) use up much more space than text plus graphics.
As far as I rmember PMJB's are arounfd 100 MB's - so even if NBK's pdf is triple that size it would fit on a regular CD.

[mongo blongo]

If it could fit on to a CD then I don't think he would be saving up and get a DVD burner. I could be wrong, maybe he just wants one. :)

[nbk2000]

Well, the final PDF is going to be more than 800 pages in size. But that'll only be about 10-12Mb at most.

Don't forget that each illustration can take up to an hour or more to make. Just one article Security Architecture has more than 40 original illustrations and photos I've made, along with the editing of 30 or more pictures and illustrations found on the net.

What's going to take up the space is the warez and videos. The warez, progs, and utilities alone is 1.2Gb. Bookz and references are another gig. Throw in another gig or two of high res video and it adds up quickly.

DVD-R is currently limited to 4.7Gb. There's double sided and multilayer DVD, but not in consumer grade.

Also, the whole point of the DVD is compactness of storage space, and the very low probability of someone copying it intact. If some k3wl wants to make a copy to pass around, he's going to have to rip it and burn it to 8-10 CDs. Make 'em earn it, ya know? :D

And being the only guy on these types of boards (not just the forum, but also Frugal Squirrel, Assualt net, Firing Line, etc) burning DVDs makes me feels all warm and gooshy inside. :p

When DVD burners become common, I'll upgrade to holomatrix (or whatever) to stay ahead of the herd. Basically, if it comes standard in a mainstream computer package at Best Buy or CompUSA, it's time to upgrade.

I suppose I could do an NBK-lite CD version. But that wouldn't for at least a year after the DVD was available, to motivate people to buy the DVD instead of waiting for a "bargain" CD. It'll also be devoid of a lot of the content (videos, references, warez, etc) that would make it worth buying. Though the price would be half the DVD.

In the future, years from now, there'll be an NBK v3. But only if I win the lottery, rob a bank, or inherit a whole shitload of money. The file I can make now, and what I'd do if I had unlimited financing, is worlds apart. Oh well...

[Synthetically Hopeful]

"The only books ever truly finished, are the autobiographys of dead guys" anonomous

[darkdontay]

In my 1947 "The BlueJacket Manual" isssued by the navy is says under CW gases, mustard gas: odor: that it smells like "Garlic,Horseradish"

[MrSamosa]

As NBK2000 said, Mustard Gas is so-called because one of the ingredients used in its synthesis smells like Mustard. An interesting fact though: pure, distilled Mustard is actually odorless. It is the impurities that give Mustard its characteristic "Garlic or Horseradish smell." In World War 1, troops would know that Mustard had been dispersed because they'd see birds falling from trees dead. Only in its early uses did they smell it, but not after the Germans discovered distilled Mustard.

By the way, does anyone know the precursors to use in the synthesis of Nitrogen Mustard? It causes larger blisters and is therefore, in my humble opinion, more effective than regular Sulfur Mustard.

<small>[ June 18, 2002, 03:43 PM: Message edited by: MrSamosa ]</small>

[nbk2000]

Alkylamines are the alcohol component of the nitrogen mustards. The most commonly used for making nitrogen mustard is triethanolamine. This is reacted with thionyl chloride in trichloroethylene to form HN.

The reasons the military is interested in the nitrogen mustards is because of their low freezing temps. Unlike regular mustard which freezes at about 58 degrees F, HN doesn't freeze till less than -10 degrees F.

They also cause systemic poisoning when it decomposes inside the body tissue, causing symptoms similiar to nerve gas exposure with massive exposure.

Look it up in a merck index (paper version) for some patent numbers to look up. It's not very complicated to make if you have the chemicals needed.

I'd also recommend using our improved search page for finding out such things since they're already explained on the web in great detail. :rolleyes: