Coelacanths are cool! And the fact that those were found somewhere in the 1970s (until then it was assumed that coelacanths only existed in prehistoric days, matter of fact dino times) gave way to a lot less scepticism of other weird things which might swim in the world’s oceans.

But the coolest fish has got to be the Golomyanka or fat-fish. It only lives in the Baikal lake, and since it has no skin but consists for the largest part of fat tissue it melts if you take it out of the water 😀

Hope he recovers soon. I wish him (nor anybody else of course) no harm except for the occasional insult here.

Sarin is a nerve gas, which blocks the transfer of certain neurotransmitters between nerve cells. While neurotransmitters giving a nerve the order to act will still function, the neurotransmitter giving the ´off´ signal will be blocked. Effectively this means that nerves constantly stimulate glands and muscles without relaxation. Your limbs will be cramped, but also your heart and lungs so you’ll suffocate and suffer a heart attack as well. And since the glands will be running overtime, you’ll be drooling, sweating like a pig and throwing up too. It’s not one unpleasant way to die, it’s several. Other nerve agents (VX, Tabun) work in a similair way but Sarin is nice and volatile so it spreads out quite fast, and it also dissolves in water if you want to poison the local well of Washington DC (i guess this is about the time the anti-terror-webcrawlers start beeping alert. NSA guys, sorry for waking you up!). It doesn’t just work when inhaled, skin contact is enough.

But the effectiveness of Sarin shouldn’t be overestimated. It’s vapour is heavier than air, so either you’ll have to spread a lot of the stuff around otherwise people in decent boots won’t be affected. The stuff will evaporate quite fast to a non-clinical level too, so the threat doesn’t take too long. Even in a nice closed system (which would appear perfect for a chemical attack) like the Tokyo metro the fatality percentage wasn’t all too high.
Even more so, since Sarin is so volatile it is extremely dangerous to prepare the stuff for an attack.

So is the stuff a threat? Definately. Should we overestimate it? Nope. If I were a terrorist, i would hire myself a nice and big SUV at Hertz and started running over people in a crowded city. It’s a much easier way of making a lot of victims.

Dagger

alarm clock

sugar

(no matter how sweatened your cereal is, adding lots of sugar is part of the routine)

soviet

(that’s where anything got you a nice, shiny medal)

Originally posted by Snowman
Or is that yet another example of the tired old “joke” which is wearing thinner and thinner by the day?

Of course it’s a joke. I thought is was quite funny really – the M16 having quite a poor reputation and such. I’m sorry the joke was lost on you, and you can be sure that the disrespect i have for the French military isn’t any worse than the disrespect i have for other armed forces 😉 .