What is novitsjok?

moscow - There is not much more known about the dangerous nerve gas novichok than it is extremely deadly and that Russians worked on it during the Cold War in the seventies and eighties. Those who inhale it can die within 2.5 minutes. Novichok is a new variant of the nerve gases made by Germany in the 1930s and England in the 1950s. Novitsjok is the Russian word for newcomers.

The Russian nerve gas is a chemical weapon that interferes signals from the brain to the muscles. As a result, muscles continuously contract. Cramps and trouble with breathing are the result. Eventually the heart stops with pumps. Novichok can be spread in gaseous form or in solid form (powder). The gaseous form is more quickly fatal than the powder, and the contamination only manifests itself after at least ten hours. People who have become infected with Novichok receive oxygen and atropine, or receive antibodies via injections.

Variants of the gas are up to eight to ten times more powerful than the battle gas VX, which was used last year in the killing of Kim Jong-nam, the half-brother of the North Korean dictator Kim Jong-un. According to Vil Mirzajanov, a Russian scientist who co-developed the nerve gas and then passed to the US, there is even a variant against which no drug works.

Novichok, literally translated as a newcomer, was developed in the laboratories of the old Soviet Union in the 70s to 90s. The combat gas was specially developed to circumvent NATO detection and defense measures. The existence of the nerve gas was not known until 1992, when Mirzajanov and a colleague revealed it in a Russian newspaper.

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