
What is Novichok? A neurotoxicologist explains - gmays
https://theconversation.com/what-is-novichok-a-neurotoxicologist-explains-99736
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rurban
The guy is missing several critical points, but raises another good one
everybody else forgets.

Missing: The Novichok family consists of 3 used and 9 known two-component
agents, which are scientifically known since an Iranian paper published the
formulas. They are quite trivial to produce, even for a lay student.

The good point: potence. Since the Novichoks are so potent, they usually kill
within minutes or at least the patient will not awake from the coma. Which
renders the whole Skripal and Nawalny affairs moot. Since Novichok was
designed for military use, it needs to be very potent to be able to deliver it
effectively over enemy territory. In the secret services, i.e. criminal
usecase it doesn't not need to be that potent. You don't need to kill tens of
thousands soldiers, only one. Just the use of a two-component agent will not
kill the killer, it is much safer to use. So the new usecase for these agents
changed. Military abandoned it, because it was ineffective. Secret services
still like to use it, because it is effective.

Now to the blame game. Russia developed it, because they heard that americans
and british developed such a new, secret two component nerve agent. So they
came up with their own variants. We don't know the formula of the US and UK
agents, not even their names. We just know that they exist because the
designer of the Russian variant deflected to the US and wrote a book about it.
Most likely they are the very same, Russians just found the same.

So the Skripal attacks could have been done by everybody, and it certainly
wasn't Novichok. Looks more like fish poisoning. As assumed by the doctor who
treated them. You don't awake after two weeks from Novichok poisoning and need
to shield them from the public. You only need to shield them if you are having
something to hide.

The Nawalny attack now looks like a GRU attack with a very low dosis, but this
doesn't fit the description with the tea cup. So it could be a weak Novichok
variant with an extremely low potency so that the patient will survive. As
similar GRU attacks before. Just fry their brains a little bit. It's still
safer to use.

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h2odragon
> much of what is known about Novichok is conjecture

Remember when ricin was a thing? at least that's a _real_ thing, though never
as dangerous as they made it out to be in the news.

