Elements in Times of War

     Surprisingly, the elements have been greatly involved in wars; some more than others. Some have been used in war as much as any other weapon. Strategies have gone from smoking cities to using machine guns. When the Hague Convention of 1899 banned chemical based weapons, militaries worked secretly on chemicals, especially bromine. This elements shreds weaker elements to get its eight valence electrons, and it can irritate the eyes and nose. Chemists developed bromine-based lacrimators that could incapacitate a man by 1910. To test it, "the French government collared a ring of Parisian bank robbers with ethyl bromoacetate in 1912," and soon their neighbors found out. In August of 1914, war broke out and bromine shells were lobbed at German troops, but they had little immediate effect.
     A German chemist, Fritz Haber, worked to convert the nitrogen in air into an industrial product, NH3 (also known as ammonia, the "precursor of all fertilizers.") But the real reason he did this was to help Germany make nitrogen explosives. When they finally made and tested shells on the British army, they were made ineffective by the wind. To fix this, and us a loophole they found to the Hague pact, Germany created "shells that delivered shrapnel and gas" by 1915. It was called weisskreuz, or "white cross," and it was first used on Russia, but the xylyl bromine froze solid.
     After so much failure, Haber moved on to chlorine, which changes skin color, glasses over eyes with cataracts, and causes fluid to buildup in the lungs. Chlorine was used to create grunkreuz (green cross), blaukreuz (blue cross), and gelbkreuz (yellow cross), which were all used in the first successful gas attack in history, led by Haber.
     **As a side note, Haber's wife disapproved of his research. When he stopped home before leaving to launch more attacks, Clara (his wife), went out in the garden and shot herself. Haber, of course, did not let this inconvenience him or stop his attacks. He left as planned without planning a funeral - what a jerk!
     After the whole bromine-gas-mess, during World War 1, the German military began to experiment with using molybdenum and tungsten. In fact, the most remote battle occurred at a molybdenum mine in Colorado. Molybdenum has been used to strengthen Germany's Big Berthas ("a suite of superheavy siege guns that battered soldiers' psyches as brutally as they did the trenches of France and Belgium.") It was able to to withstand the excessive heat that ruined the weapons. It was also used in Japan to make the island's most coveted Samurai swords - they never dulled or cracked.
     Eventually, molybdenum was superseded in steel production by tungsten. Its symbol, W, comes from the German name for the metal, wolfram. Nazi Germany so desperately wanted tungsten to use when making armor-piercing missiles and machinery. They traded with Portugal, who also fed the German's appetite of tungsten. It is one of the hardest metals know.
    Nevertheless, these two metals are not the only ones that have a niche. In fact, many weren't found since about 1950. Gadolinium, for example, is used for MRIs. Neodymium helps create powerful lasers. Scandium was used to make lightweight helicopters. Two elements, tantalum and niobium, "were named after two Greek mythological characters know for great suffering." (Long story short, Niobe was slaughtered and "Tantalus had to stand for all eternity up to his neck in a river with a branch loaded with apples dangling above his nose.") Both are dense, heat-resistant, noncorrosive, and can hold a charge well. These qualities make the metals desirable for compact cell phones. The Democratic Republic of Congo in central Africa holds 60% of the worlds' supply of the two metals. When people found out it was easy to mine these metals, many farmers ditches their farms to gain a fortune. Soon people had to hunt gorillas for meat, which virtually wiped them out. Once all phone makers realized what was happening, they started buying from Australia, even though it was more expensive. Tin was another element that caused fighting in Congo. For these reasons, Congo is called "the vilest scramble for loot that ever disfigured the history of human conscience." More than five million people have died in Congo since the mid-1990s, which is the largest amount of deaths since World War II.
   
     Amazing how something like an element can lead to a war in a country? This periodic table sure has caused many problems! But that's not to detract from all the good it has caused in the world!