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Poison Gas: The Myths Versus Reality (Contributions in Military Studies)

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While not a how-to chemical defense manual, it may be that reading this book will diminish your perceived need for one of those books.

Writen by a former Marine officer, _Poison Gas_ makes the case that chemical weapons are first and foremost a military weapon, employed to deny the enemy use of terrain or to attempt to cause a short-term disruption in troop effectivness. As a terrorist weapon, they are much more difficult to employ and in general cause far fewer deaths than the popular imagination has been lead to believe.

Should America include chemical weapons in it's military arsenal? Hammond makes some thought-provoking observations on this point: that conventional weapons are far more likely to kill than chemical weapons, that operations can be conducted in a chemical environment (as longstanding Soviet doctorine illustrated), that chemical weapons were portrayed as evil weapons of mass destruction after WWI more out of political expediency than fact. A particularly interesting argument compared the "humanity" of employing casualty (not death) causing chemical weapons (despised by the public) vs. conventional strategic bombing, such as occured at Dresden during WWII. Which was the greater evil?

In short, if you are looking for a thought-provoking, historically-based read on chemical weapons and the conventions regulating their use, this is a good pick. If you want a First-Responder manual, look elsewhere.

Excellent for Military as well as Social Historians