Yet, unreported in the British media, recent events show that the US has enormous nerve gas stockpiles. On the morning of Thursday 5 September, an intruder was spotted at the Deseret Chemical Depot in Utah. A security alert was sounded as a “terror alert” got underway, reported US media organisations. Deseret is the world’s largest stockpile of chemical weapons - the base currently holds 1300 tons of VX gas, and 6100 tons of mustard gas.

VX gas is one of the most toxic substances known. 50 percent of people will be killed by a dose of 10mg - a raindrop weighs five times as much. The gas at the plant, if widely dispersed, would therefore kill literally millions of people. The use of VX is banned by the International Chemical Weapons Convention.

Mustard gas was first used in World War One. As Reuters put it, the gas “can dissolve tissue on contact” - it dissolves the lungs if inhaled, and causes cancer and birth defects if it doesn’t kill immediately. War poet Wilfred Owen described the effect of mustard gas in the trenches: “hear, at every jolt, the blood come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs.” In the Iran-Iraq war, both sides manufactured mustard gas.

The depot is located about 45 miles from Salt Lake City, the capital of Utah. The Salt Lake area has a population of 830 thousand. The US army has controlled much of Utah for decades: in the 50s it conducted atomic bomb tests which caused horrific illness in some towns. However, many of the state’s population are Mormons and right-wing, and so there is little chance of protest movements developing.

• VX Gas Pages, Bristol University
• Wilfred Owen page including the poem Gas
• Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons
• Website for the Tooele Army Depot, where the Chemical Depot is located