NBC - Nuclear Biological Chemical

Just got back from the CS gas chamber and my first day of NBC training. For those of you who don't know what CS gas is, it's basically a more potent version of tear gas. You can read a bit about it here: CS Explanation

Here's the mask everyone wears.(Click to enlarge, my apologies for the poor quality, I don't have an image editing program here.)


For the training we were assembled into groups of seven and sent into an old army tent with a few CS tablets thrown into a can and heated with some sort of open flame. The room was dark and there was a thick cloud of smoke swirling around. After a few minutes a small burning sensation can be felt where it seeps through the covering of your mask and onto the neck. Oddly enough my hands were never irritated even though they were completely exposed.

You're then tasked with pulling up your gas mask, opening your eyes and then resealing and clearing your mask of whatever was sucked in. One soldier who's mask malfunctioned ran out of the tent. The initial gas that seeps into your mask when you do this brings back painful reminders. Once everyone has done this (and the drill instructors have stalled as they see fit) you're placed in another line where you must fully remove the mask and open your eyes. At first there is mild stinging and your main goal is to move out of the tent as fast as you can without falling over.

Once outside the real burning begins. To make matters worse you cannot rub your eyes or face or it will just make things more irritated. Soon after this your body decides it's not so happy with the gunk in your nose and mouth and it sends it cruising on out. Needless to say everyone was looking not so pretty when they got out. The comical thing of it all was that people whipped out cigarettes almost instantly after they popped out of the chamber.

I figured by this point the excitement was over but I was wrong. The drill instructors informed us that there were records for the amount of pushups and situps one can do in the gas chamber with no mask on. Amazingly the record for males was 80 pushups in this environment. Obviously that record was safe, I don't know many people who can do 80 in a clean air enviroment in one sitting let alone that burning mess. The situp record sat at 8, and our resident situp specialist decided she would have a try at it. She knocked out 18 I believe, a hefty feat, and then proceeded to set the mark for females doing pushups by doing around 22. Everyone was impressed.

Sometime later this week we'll be doing a live fire exercise at night with our masks on.