[Corvettaholic]

I get an all expense paid trip to Utah tomorrow, for 2 weeks. I get to be a sergeant, yay! And get gassed. Does anyone know why the army uses CS gas as opposed to CN gas?

[movies]

CN gas is just a lachrymator, right?  I don't think you would get all the nausea and such from CN.  Certainly not as badly as you would from CS.

[limpet chicken]

I have never had the dubious honor of having been gassed with CS, just how bad is it, compared, to say chloroacetone, acrolein, capsaicin, bromobenzyl cyanide etc?

I found chloroacetone worst on the nasal passages, very intense, like having a hornet sting and then a red hot bit of metal up the nose.

Acrolein was more of a tearjerker though, not as much pain, but a great deal more lacrimation.

Capsaicin...need i say more

BBC was just nasty, only been exposed to it once, and don't plan on a second treat of that nature, as bad or worse than chloroacetone.

I plan on testing the cyanogen halides, and the xylyl halides sometime, although I gather the iodide is hard to synthesize.

[Corvettaholic]

Just got back from Utah, that place sucks! Luckily, they didn't have any CS gas available to use on us!

I've only been exposed to pepper spray, CS, and capsaicin in the form of burning tabasco sauce. I hate CS the most, it turns you into a human snot factory and you want to die depending on how long you're in it. A few seconds is plenty for me. Your eyes burn horribly (you better not touch them!), it sticks to your uniform so it will follow you all day, and anything resembling mucus comes flying out your nose and mouth. You'll probably barf too.

[limpet chicken]

Heh, I did the same thing when I was a kid, I had a few "friends" that I didn't much care for at my house. boring me with typical childish inanities, I set light to a couple of dried chilli peppers that I had lying around from an attempt to isolate capsaicin, so I set alight to them, the smoke soon sent them packing