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Russian ‘sleeping gas’ may have been halothane/fentanyl cocktail
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| 31 October 2002 |
Russian ‘sleeping gas’ may have been halothane/fentanyl cocktail
By John Eldridge, Editor, Jane's Nuclear, Biological & Chemical Defence
It appears from US reports that there may have been two constituents to the notorious sleeping gas used in Moscow on 26 October to overcome around 50 Chechen rebel hostage-takers.
It was suggested in an earlier janes.com/JNBCD article that the agents used were either very new or very old. It may have been a mixture of the two. Reports emerging from Germany today (30 October) indicate the existence of a second constituent of the gas: a material called halothane. This is an old-established, powerful anaesthetic primarily used in the veterinary world. The implication that gaseous fentanyl may have been used in combination with halothane would go a long way to explaining the Russian reluctance to reveal the true nature of the gas.
The possibility of fentanyl having been used has raised the whole issue of what have been described as mid-spectrum agents: those that fall between the classic definitions of chemical and biological weapons (CW/BW). Arms-control experts have been concerned for a number of years that the BW and CW control regimes have become prescriptive and difficult to manage.
Running counter to all this, of course, is the need to address New Terrorism. It is hard to think of a method that would have resolved the kind of situation recently faced by the Moscow authorities without loss of life. A clever knock-out gas -- which acts extremely quickly, cannot be seen or otherwise sensed and incapacitates without causing death -- will surely be the subject of many hidden research programmes.
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