Talk:Tabun (nerve agent)

message: Please note that the volatility of a substance is not directly related to whether that substance may be used contaminate water supplies. Effective contamination of water with nerve agents is primarily dependent on the solubility and hydrolytic stability of those agents.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.202.140.109 (talk) 06:57, 23 May 2012 (UTC)
replies: text: I was reading Inside the Third Reich by Albert Speer and in it he mentions tabun as the nerve agent he would've tried to introduce to the Führerbunker to kill Adolf Hitler. Speer says he abandoned the plan because "it turned out that tabun became effective only after an explosion." This sounds not true though, now, right? Obviously Speer was writing decades ago, before the Internet and ready access to information, and may have assumed no lay reader would be able to perceive or challenge the shakiness of his claim? We obviously can't know for sure what he was thinking, or even if he was ever really serious about killing Hitler, but can someone confirm that Speer was incorrect and an explosion was not needed to make tabun "effective" and that it could've been dispersed as an aerosol via a ventilation system? Someone should set the record straight! I was just checking the SPeer article on wikipedia and it doesn't reference Tabun by name or link to it, so I'm going to make that change now, but we should really clear this up. Azx2 17:33, 25 July 2013 (UTC)
replies: text: Speers accounts are at some points at least (including the assertion he was plotting to gas the Führerbunker, which as I understood is nowadays at least according to several german historians at least) very doubtful, but that is another topic.  As to the delivery:  the Wehrmacht actualy devised such a munition, I mean a "Grünring-III" hand grenade, a sealed canister containing several ounces of Tabun along a small central burster (that being a simple standard LA/PETN blasting cap as in most german hand grenades), but it never got into serial mass production, because the concept of a soldier throwing a nerve agent bursting type munition at short range was judged insane/suicidal and of little to no tactical value.  So, throwing a hand grenade or a bomb with Tabun fill along with a proper bursting charge (GA is the most detonation labile nerve agent and this dispersal has been problematic, just a little more HE in the burster charge that was needed to aerosolise the fill and the GA fill would "flash over" = burn off before taking effect) down a ventilation intake of the bunker, supposing the air was not filtered, which I find highly doubtful at the least -- the SS had its own CW service and they were sure evil but not dumb, and also they were commited to protect Hitler by any means necessary and beyond -- but the whole concept cannot be dismissed only by the lack of probability.  It would be possible for Dr. Speer (being the Reich armament minister at that time still and considered loyal and actualy a kind of a personal friend to Hitler) to obtain a portable explosive tabun device.  It cannot be ruled out or hold to with certainity whether he made this all just up after the war to sound less covardly on the Nurenberg trial, it could have been that he got this idea and dismissed it or found it not being possible to do or he not being capable of doing it in the end.  Post-war accounts by Speer himself should always be taken with a grain of salt, he surely had a lot of guilt he could have diverted to others and such.  But basicaly, no, the conception he asserted that he learned the agent needed an explosive dispersal (hence not being highly volatile, as for instance HCN or phosgene are) -- he could have mistook that with the more broader concept that the agent was persistent, of low volatility and needed an effective aerosolisation mechanism to be effective via inhalation -- one has to remember that Speer was an architect and not a chemist, and this stuff was at that time Top Secret, and he wasn't all that into combat, munition design, unconventional warfare etc.  He was a laymen on this, even though if he wanted he would have access to most of the contemporary german data, but frankly, imagine being an architect trying figure this stuff out in at best few hours time to read thousands of pages of classified, highly technical data, with no prior concept of chemical warfare, it is near impossible. Cheers,--147.251.55.2 (talk) 01:08, 6 September 2013 (UTC)
thread_title:  method of delivery 

message: How long will Tabun keep keep its toxicity? How long does it take to degrade?  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 76.171.244.205 (talk) 23:17, 9 August 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: It depends. Highly pure tabun stabilised with 5 - 20% chlorobenzene can be stored for several years in hermeticaly sealed steel containers (e.g. shells and aerial bomb bodies) at normal temperatures not exceeding 25°C. Storing it at a higher temperature decreases its stability, half-life being about 6 months at 50°C; impurities such as traces of moisture, acids or bases do also lower the stability of tabun. Noteworthy, even its degradation products (hydrogen cyanide, dimethylammonium cyanide and others) are quite toxic as well, so even degraded chemical ammunition containing tabun stays dangerous. Cheers,--109.193.167.14 (talk) 09:52, 20 September 2011 (UTC)
thread_title:  Degradation Rate 

message: "Although lethal doses absorbed though the may result in death in 1 to 2 minutes, death may be delayed for 1 to 2 hours."
Doesn't make sense.
"Faintly fruity odor"-who gave it the sniff test?
A: The product's discoverers initially didn't know what they had produced, and because of the substance's relatively low toxicity, they were able to smell small quantities of the agent (though doing so resulted in unpleasant sweating, tremors, mild fever, and radically constricted "pinpoint" pupils that left the unfortunate scientists temporarily blinded for a week or two. Subsequently, the slave laborers who were to manufacture it also were routinely exposed to small quantities of the agent, and also reported the fruity scent, as well as a fishy odor at larger concentrations. (Dranzini 01:35, 12 March 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I think I got a lot of it, still needs work but getting closer to C-class. RockManQ (talk)
You forgot to ask about "tasteless liquid". I would not like to be on that panel..."here try this"71.108.138.191 (talk) 02:52, 11 December 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  Grammar 

message: Source #10 appears to be a semi-dead link.  Should I remove it?  --Thenewguy34 (talk) 21:36, 10 July 2012 (UTC)
thread_title: Note

message: The sentence Tabun was the first nerve agent to be discovered by accident in January 1936 is unclear. Presumably it wasn't the first to be discovered in January 1936 (as opposed to those discovered in October 1935 or April 1938). However was it the first to be discovered by accident (as opposed to those which had been discovered on purpose) or should this read Tabun was the first nerve agent to be discovered. This was by accident, in January 1936? And given that it's a completely synthetic product I'm not sure whether "discovered" is a less appropriate term than "invented", in any case. 213.122.147.41 (talk) 22:28, 5 August 2014 (UTC)
replies: text: The chemical was synthesized for another purpose; its human toxicity was discovered by accident. I overhauled several sentences in that section; let us know if it's clearer. DMacks (talk) 08:07, 6 August 2014 (UTC)
thread_title:  Unclear sentence 

message: :The following is a closed discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review after discussing it on the closer's talk page. No further edits should be made to this discussion. 
The result of the move request was: No consensus. -  UtherSRG (talk) 12:54, 30 September 2022 (UTC)
replies: text: This is a contested technical request (permalink). Dr. Vogel (talk) 23:40, 8 September 2022 (UTC)
replies: text:  Since 2005? Might be better to discuss this one since that means a claim for no primary topic stood for about 15 years prior to Tabun (song) existing in 2020-ish. Steel1943 (talk) 21:45, 8 September 2022 (UTC)

text: To be clear, the proposed target is a redirect, because the requestor had already boldly moved the dab page to Tabun (disambiguation), but of course could not boldly complete this move over the resulting redirect that targets a different page than that being moved, and the TR was contested. All this says nothing regarding the central question of whether there is a primary topic or not. Mdewman6 (talk) 21:24, 13 September 2022 (UTC)

text: Added move of associated dab. Rotideypoc41352 (talk · contribs) 20:47, 14 September 2022 (UTC)
thread_title:  Requested move 8 September 2022 

message: Needs a lot of wordsmithing... BeingObjective (talk) 17:16, 4 November 2023 (UTC)
thread_title:  Poorly written. 

message: LD50 of 0.01 mg/kg is unrealistically low. This is 1 mg/human. There is no way to describe the smell and taste at this toxicity. 
Russian wiki states 5000mg/human, which is unrealistically high (cyanide used in synthesis kills human at a dose of 300 mg).
Most of the nerve agents kill at 30 mg/human. This was the first agent in the family. So, I would guesstimate 60 mg/human or 0.6 mg/kg. 89.113.155.116 (talk) 13:10, 23 January 2024 (UTC)
thread_title:  LD50 

message: In the Synthesis section—which is sourced, but to an impossibly difficult source to verify (in German, dating to the DDR)—the different tabun-solvent technical product mixtures are referred to in a manner different than in the History section. Hence, the latter section was tagged, along with the confusing sentences in each. 73.73.49.62 (talk) 20:13, 31 March 2024 (UTC)
thread_title: History section tag