Thank you! I have been posting this for days. No way the rescuers in those videos were dealing with Sarin or they would have been victims themselves.
So how would they know what it was other than what they were not going to try and help obvious victims in distress only after getting the lab report. They have seen far more chlorine so how are first responders, especially in a third world war zone, to know what agent it is that is killing the victims right now. Seconds mattered as far as their perspective was concerned.
Professor’s bio
http://sts-program.mit.edu/people/emeriti-faculty/theodore-postol/
Theodore Postol is Professor of Science, Technology and National Security Policy in the Program in Science, Technology, and Society at MIT. He did his undergraduate work in physics and his graduate work in nuclear engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. After receiving his Ph.D., Dr. Postol joined the staff of Argonne National Laboratory, where he studied the microscopic dynamics and structure of liquids and disordered solids using neutron, x-ray and light scattering, along with computer molecular dynamics techniques. Subsequently he went to the Congressional Office of Technology Assessment to study methods of basing the MX Missile, and later worked as a scientific adviser to the Chief of Naval Operations. After leaving the Pentagon, Dr. Postol helped to build a program at Stanford University to train mid-career scientists to study developments in weapons technology of relevance to defense and arms control policy. In 1990 Dr. Postol was awarded the Leo Szilard Prize from the American Physical Society. In 1995 he received the Hilliard Roderick Prize from the American Association for the Advancement of Science and in 2001 he received the Norbert Wiener Award from Computer Professionals for Social Responsibility for uncovering numerous and important false claims about missile defenses.
Sarin is a clear, colorless and tasteless liquid that has no odor. It can evaporate into a gas and spread into the environment. Because it evaporates quickly, the threat is immediate — but not long-lived.
The threat would have been gone pretty quickly, especially in that climate. Sarin is not like chlorine or other ground-hugging chemical weapons that linger and collect in low points. It would dissipate pretty fast and at low concentrations easily go unnoticed. Handling someone exposed to sarin is not dangerous after relatively short intervals.