Comments on: The Sheep Incident

By: eye-doc

eye-doc — Wed, 29 Feb 2012 21:24:55 +0000

My father was one of the developers of VX, working as a contracted chemist. He was fully aware the gas had caused the sheeps death. He was so disgusted by the army’s cover up that he quit working with them. It’s so typical for the army and government to cover up everthing. Just glad my father had the integrity to walk rather than put up with the government games.

By: Azronus

Azronus — Sun, 10 Apr 2011 09:32:30 +0000

[quote]1c3d0g said: “Damn, that was an interesting read. I already knew VX was highly poisonous if airborne and inhaled even in extremely small quantities, but I wasn’t aware that if the chemical came in contact with your skin you’d be dead in 10 minutes or less. How does it achieve this? Is it like some type of acid, where it burns through your skin and goes into your bloodstream?”[/quote]

No, Many things are simply absorbed through the skin and into the blood stream, Muscle Rubs, Neosporin, and other creams are a prime example of this principal.

By: bolivar

bolivar — Tue, 29 Mar 2011 02:42:42 +0000

Well, the last comment was about 2 years ago and this topic is probably pretty much dead.
But, I’ll throw this out anyway.
I was there at Dugway. I was in Bio Test, the guys in Chem Test ran the failed test. But I, along with most of the enlisted people at Dugway got to bury the sheep.
Several smaller wrong things have been stated. The sheep were not buried on Dugway. Of course, the land was/is owned by BLM, Bureau of Land Management and leased to LARGE ranchers for sheep grazing. In the mid-90′s they dug all the remains up and took them somewhere for destruction.
The valve on the spray tank did not fail before the test, it was the cutoff mechanism that failed and this, of course, was at the end of the test.
The test failure was because setting up the test was extremely expensive. Thousands of test samplers were set out (very simple, just pieces of paper in a holder). Extensive photographic equipment, weather instumentation, etc, etc, etc was set up. Arming the F4 with 320 gallons of VX in two spray tanks. Several ‘chase’ planes and a photo plane were in the air. (I think the Air Force (right about not being Army) were from Elgin AFB, Fl not Hill). Even starting out that morning the weather was ‘marginal’. High winds, snow were there in the morning. They were ‘losing the light’ when the test officier gave the go-ahead to run the test late in the afternoon. This was the mistake. It was run because of the pressure of calling off a test that took a huge amount of money/manpower to set up. Immediately after the test there were thunderstorms just to the north and south of the test area. Wind blew over a trailer and blew down a weather instrument tower just after the test. 50mph winds. I’m talking within the next 10 minutes or so. This caused the problem. The cutoff valve did malfunction and who knows how much VX was put high into the air at the end of he run. But the thunderstorm moving thru the test grid picked up a large amount of the agent cloud and blew it off Dugway. It got two large herds of sheep, one just at the end of Dugway, the next about 5 miles or so further in Skull Valley. But it also went about 10 miles further and sickened several sheep at the rancher’s headquarters. And it also passed across or thru a pass in a very tall mountain range and also sicked a few sheep on the other side – about a total of 50 miles downrange. I knew the ‘counters’ at the holes where the sheep were dumped. About 3,500 sheep were buried. The Army paid for about 6,500.
The rancher put 10 healthy marked (big red smear of paint) sheep, brought in from outside, into a pen right where the first herd went down. Within just a few days (5 or so) about 6 of the sheep, eating same grass that the herd ate, showed the same symptoms that the other thousands showed. This mean the agent was there and was still viable. And, this was the same time we were picking up the dead sheep. With NO PROTECTIVE GEAR. We wore fatigues, caps, and regular boots. No rubber gear or breathing masks.
I have several health problems. I tried for over 5 years to get VA comphensation for my health problems. I was rejected each time. At the last rejection, the VA ‘Judge’ admitted, in writting, that I had been ‘exposed’ to VX. But I have no proof there is any long-term health danger to being exposed. So my claim was rejected again. To file an appeal to this, it would have to be done in person in Washington DC, and would require a lawyer. I don’t have the money to continue with this, so it’s the end of my claim.
The only reason people get Agent Orange benefits is because a medial school, Texas at Austin I think, took this up as a ’cause’ and spent about 10 years reseaching and capturing info to submit to the VA about veterans health problems. There are now about 20 illnesses that are accepted as being caused by Agent Orange exposure. One of these I have. If I had been in Vietnam for 30 days, I would be receiving VA benefits now. Noone has ever took up anything about VX exposure, so me, and many other military and civilian R&D people that were exposed have no ‘evidence’ to quote for health problems.
There wasn’t much ‘coverup’ when this happened. I was national news for a couple of weeks. No way to cover it up. Utah State University and Utah University were heavily involved in digging into this. Utah State has large vet school and were highly involved. But since they had no idea what VX was or what it did, there was little they could report.

By: Mirage_GSM

Mirage_GSM — Wed, 15 Apr 2009 11:02:50 +0000

Seems the Forum swallowed part of the code.
The first paragraph should be a quote from post #152.

By: Mirage_GSM

Mirage_GSM — Tue, 14 Apr 2009 14:49:24 +0000

[/quote]They blamed the entire incident on the “relocation” of a waterhole. The sheep got confused and disoriented. So confused that 3,483 to 6,400 suddenly died of thirst. If that were the case, it strikes me that the animals not yet dead would recover quite nicely in fairly short order if they were wet down and allowed to drink a bucket of water. Yet the surviving sheep here were “euthanized.” Why?[/quote]
If you read the article carefully, you will note that the story with the relocated waterhole had nothing to do with the sheep incident. That was regarding an incident six years later with about 50 dead horses. Of course it is a very dubious explanation for that incident as well…

By: golight

golight — Tue, 03 Feb 2009 03:54:57 +0000

The battle cry of the British during their efforts to retake the Falkland islands..”Don’t give up the sheep”.

By: Lareth

Lareth — Tue, 09 Sep 2008 13:51:56 +0000

“When you’re taking the casuality tolls of massive sheep death, how do you manage to stay awake?”

Nothing funnier than this, you deserve a medal.

By: Anthropositor

Anthropositor — Thu, 31 Jul 2008 10:22:43 +0000

Commander, to my mind your remarks are not credible or well supported. You say you read the original report twenty to twenty four years after the incident. You rely on this report absolutely. I’m not going to characterize that. Wouldn’t be polite.

Instead, let me highlight some of the things that stood out for me in the story, and perhaps relate them to your extremely limited remarks.

Thousands of sheep die. Estimates range from 3,483 to 6400. That sets off no alarm bells in your mind?

But to go on. Now according to the story, veterinarians were called in to euthanize the few remaining surviving animals. That rather pisses me off. The government paying veterinarians premium bucks to do what a nickle .22 calibre slug could accomplish. But never mind… I’ll come back to this point.

Then we do find a slight oddity; the use of the word acetylcholinesterase. In common parlance, one would refer to the neurotransmitter acetylcholine, or the enzyme that neutralizes it as cholinesterase. Before my stroke I could have told you the exact chemicals resulting from this action, but I couldn’t really say now with any certainty. If I was guessing, one of the resulting residues is probably acetic acid. But I digress.

I see nothing about the Peck family or Mr. Baranowski getting compensated for anything that happenned to them as a result of this incident. I’ll bet they did not get a cent. Nice to hear that some of the sheep owners recieved some compensation, but I’ll bet it was the absolute minimum the government could possibly get away with. (I’ll admit that I have a little bias here, since I know with certainty that the government, on several occassions deprived me of my own resources even though I proved, using the IRS’s own criteria that I had been improperly assessed for many years. The so-called IRS “appeals officer” Larry Staubaugh laughingly told me I could only get the last three years of these improper assessments back. If WE make a mistake, the government can go back on us for a decade. But if the government makes a long standing mistake for many years, we lose all they took, when we prove it except for the last three years, at the time of the discovery of the error. A logical error and an outrageous double standard.)

But getting back to the issue at hand. Was the Army consistant in this matter? I think not. And I think it is quite significant that Baranowski’s medical records so conveniently disappeared. Do you think the Freedom Of Information Act might be able to come up with them?

Let me ask you to entertain a little logic, as an officer and a gentleman, and see if the Army’s position is in the slightest degree credible.

They blamed the entire incident on the “relocation” of a waterhole. The sheep got confused and disoriented. So confused that 3,483 to 6,400 suddenly died of thirst. If that were the case, it strikes me that the animals not yet dead would recover quite nicely in fairly short order if they were wet down and allowed to drink a bucket of water. Yet the surviving sheep here were “euthanized.” Why?

Let me put a finer point on this. I was once dizzyingly, deliriously thirsty. Close to finding out if there was a diety. Then, accross a ravine, I saw a wooden water tank. I scrambled desperately. I got to it. I climbed the rebar ladder hoping against hope that I would find access to water on top and that there was no padlock requiring me to climb back down to find a big rock to smash it with. I could tell there was water in there by kicking the wall of the tower on the way up, but I couldn’t tell how full it was. If the tank was only half full, I couldn’t jump in with any assurance I could get back out again. In which case, I could assuage my thirst and then drown.

I got to the top. There was a hinged door right there by the rungs I was climbing. No padlock! I heaved that sucker open. Right there, within six or eight inches from the top was dark scummy water right below the cobwebs and ancient corpses of many dead insects. I just swept my forarm accross it, sweeping the surface debris aside, immersed my face and drank. And drank. And drank. And barfed (over the side, not into the water) and drank some more. Best damn water I ever came accross.

My point is, I recovered my wits and my health very quickly. I was still lost, but it was no longer a critical emergency. Sheep are pretty delicate I guess.

I love my country, but I would be very pleased if equity were more readily available from its’ various agencies. Basic honesty is really a good thing for government. It may actually be even more important than capitalism or socialism. I hold it to be subversive for government to as untrustworthy and arbitrary as I have seen them be. Patriotism should be inspired by the full spectrum of current behaviors of our various government appendages. So why is it that at every turn they lie? Two quick examples: There is a Taxpayer Advocates office. Sounds encouraging doesn’t it? But it is an employee with an IRS I.D. number who you will make contact with if you try to avail yourself of their “services.” And at every turn, when you appear in U.S. Tax Court, and in the voluminous exchanges of paperwork before you actually get to court, you are frequently and gratuitiously assured by the judges or their clerks, both in writing and over the phone, that the U.S. Tax Court is entirely independent of the IRS. Nonsense! And that fiction is not made more true by its’ constant reiteration.

Your last remark, Commander, indicates to me that you have made your pronouncement of the “facts” of the matter, and that’s that. Guess I’m stuck with believing what I will.

By: dugwayvet

dugwayvet — Wed, 16 Jul 2008 22:20:01 +0000

I was the airfield commander at Michael Army Airfield on Dugway from 1988 to 1992. I have read the original report on the sheep kill incident. This incident, as reported here, is grossly inaccurate. The report is available to anyone who wishes to read it under the Freedom of Information Act. The chemical agent was released by an Air Force F-4 Phantom (not an Army aircraft) due to a malfunctioning valve. This aircraft, from Hill Air Force Base, was to participate in a test on Dugway but the test was cancelled when the valve prematurely opened. The altitude of the F-4 and the small amount of agent released made it impossible for the number of dead sheep. There was no statement released because any explanation would be met with skepticism (as seen here). Several autopsies (more than 50) were performed on the sheep. There were no chemical agents found in the sheep, however, there was evidence of toxins. These toxins are common to the Skull Valley area (hence, the name) and are found in the desert vegetation. When sheep are moved from one location to another, they WILL graze on any vegetation found enroute (as they did here). After these findings, the Army purchased the dead sheep from the owner and disposed of them. The incident was closed without comment. These are the facts. Believe what you wish.

By: Anthropositor

Anthropositor — Fri, 11 Jul 2008 05:53:47 +0000

Thank you Kombinat #145.

I look forward to seeing what appears on the new currently empty blog with your name and the description “collaborating strategically towards new integration.”