http://www.hindu.com/2006/10/24/stories/2006102403161500.htm Yes, I know it isn't banned. Doesn't really make it better ..
*shrug* they're pretty horrible, true. i'd never heard of an initiative to have them classified as chemical weapons, but that makes sense actually. personally, i've always lumped them with incindiary weapons like FAE bombs and napalm and the like. mind, I tend to think *those* are horrific enough to warrant banning as well.
Um... White phosphorous munitions are used for smoke screens. From my own familiarity with our army munitions, there aren't any other white phosphorous munitions in use with the possible exception of incendiary grenades.
i've never heard of WP used as a base for smoke screens, man. typical smoke grenade is just caster's sugar and saltpeter. you can get good results just mixing them, but if you melt them together into the 'caramel' form, it works even better. add a bit of sulphur and you get some more interesting results. add charcoal and phosphorus, and you no longer have a smoke screen, you now have a potent little ka-bang that hurts like fuck.
I tried to post a link to Wikipedia, but that kinda failed. Just copy-paste the following: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_phosphorus_(weapon)#Smoke-screening_agent
[quote:b817b08cb5="Garner"]interesting... still sounds rather wicked for smoke purposes.[/quote:b817b08cb5] *shrug* Widely used for smoke screens and smoke bombs when speed is essential. And the smoke isn't any more dangerous than other smoke.
eh, i dunno about that... i mean, that sounds like you'd have associated heat burns with the smoke bomb, where as a sugar based one doesn't give you the same quick cover, but doesn't scald or blind anyone caught in the cloud, either.
While white phosphorous smoke may cause small burns (the smoke is hot. Not [i:4a08a59031]that[/i:4a08a59031] hot, but still hot), other forms of smoke-screen mixtures are either poisonous or corrosive. Heck, the only real advance in the past sixty years is that smoke-[i:4a08a59031]grenades[/i:4a08a59031] aren't certain to cause cancer anymore. Large-scale smoke screens aren't all that safe.
