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Hidden History: The 1968 Utah Sheep Kill [1]
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Date: 2025-01-21
In 1968, a malfunctioning nerve gas test at the Dugway Proving Grounds in Utah killed several thousand sheep and provoked an outcry.
"Hidden History" is a diary series that explores forgotten and little-known areas of history.
VX nerve gas in bulk storage photo from WikiCommons
In March 1968, researchers at the Dugway Proving Grounds in Utah were scheduled to perform three experiments involving a lethal nerve gas known as “Agent VX”.
The United States, along with most other industrial nations, had been carrying out research on chemical weapons since the First World War, when poison gases such as chlorine, phosgene and mustard were heavily used. During the Second World War both sides stockpiled quantities of chemical weapons but neither side ever used them. During the war, however, chemists in Nazi Germany discovered a new organophosphate compound, codenamed Tabun, which was chemically similar to insecticides but which was far more lethal. Because Tabun works by interfering with the transmission of electrical impulses along the nervous system, it became known as “nerve gas”. After the war, researchers in Britain discovered an even more potent nerve gas, originally developed as an insecticide, which was adopted by the US into its arsenal and became known by the codename “Agent VX”. As the Cold War with the Soviets kicked into high gear in the 1950s, the Pentagon produced an enormous stockpile of VX along with another nerve gas known as Agent GB.
During the Second World War, the US needed a remote and empty area where it could test new military equipment and weapons, and converted a patch of Utah desert about 100 miles from Salt Lake City into the Dugway Proving Grounds. Here the Army began testing new versions of flamethrowers, aerial bombs and artillery shells. By 1942 they had constructed exact reproductions of a German and a Japanese urban area in order to test the effects of high-explosive and incendiary bombs on realistic targets. After the Japanese surrender in 1945 Dugway, now expanded to almost 1200 square miles, was briefly closed but then reopened to be used as a test range for new chemical, biological and radiological weapons and for equipment designed to protect against them.
Three tests were scheduled at Dugway on March 13, 1968. All of them involved Agent VX. In the first, a special chemical artillery shell containing liquid VX was fired and its effects measured. Upon impact, the shell was designed to burst open and release a fine mist of poison (most “poison gases” are actually liquid aerosols, not gas). In the second test, designed to measure the possible effects that might result from the destruction of outdated VX, a tank of 160 gallons of VX was burned in an open pit, and measurements made of the resulting contamination.
The third experiment was designed to test the dispersal of nerve gas using an aerial spray tank. An F4-E Phantom II fighter-bomber was fitted with an external tank carrying 320 gallons of liquid VX, and was assigned to fly a designated course across the Proving Grounds and release the chemical over a target area so its dispersal and concentration could be measured.
During the test, however, something went wrong, one of the valves malfunctioned and became stuck open, and some 20 gallons of VX was accidentally released as the jet climbed for altitude and flew away from the target area. Carried by wind gusts of up to 35 mph, the drifting nerve gas settled in the appropriately-named Skull Valley, an agricultural area about 27 miles away.
VX, physically, takes the form of a thick liquid with the consistency of motor oil. This is a military advantage, since it results in a characteristic known as “persistency”—meaning that the heavy liquid coats everything in the target area with a thin film and stays without evaporating for a period of days or even weeks after it is delivered, continuing to poison anyone who touches any contaminated surface with bare skin. A single drop of VX the size of a printed period is enough to kill a human in ten minutes.
Although soldiers can be protected against nerve gas with gas masks and protective suits, this equipment is bulky and awkward and interferes with tasks such as firing a rifle, communications, or operating equipment. So the real military value of nerve gas does not lie so much in outright killing the enemy, but in forcing them to operate impeded by their anti-contamination suits. It is particularly useful against rear areas like airfields, supply dumps and command centers.
And so, the oily VX settled onto the ground at Skull Valley, where it would persist for several days. Although the area was only sparsely settled by humans, it was the site of many large sheep ranches with huge flocks of several thousand. Over the next several days, these sheep wandered around innocently eating the grass and unknowingly swallowing some of the VX.
The effects were lethal. Within days, thousands of sheep were dead and thousands more were dying. Some estimates have the number of dead sheep reaching as high as 6,500. Unaware of the military’s nerve gas test and mystified by the sudden deaths, ranchers flooded the veterinary department at the University of Utah with phone calls, and from there the finger of suspicion was inevitably pointed at Dugway. The local people knew what Dugway Proving Grounds was for, and everyone suspected that their military tests had something to do with all the suddenly-dead sheep.
Almost reflexively, the Cold War ethos of clandestine secrecy kicked in, and Dugway denied everything, despite the fact that several of the sheep were necropsied and exhibited traces of VX in their tissues (these reports, however, were not declassified until 1998).
The press quickly picked up the story and it went international, which increased the pressure on the Pentagon. After a time, while still refusing to acknowledge any responsibility, the Army grudgingly agreed to pay some of the ranchers for the value of their lost sheep, and gathered all the dead carcasses and buried them on the base. In all, Dugway paid claims for 3,483 sheep.
The incident had a profound effect on public opinion. Most people viewed chemical warfare as repugnant and distasteful, an outdated relict of the brutal trench warfare of 1918. Under public pressure, President Nixon announced in November 1969 that the United States would suspend its biological warfare programs, disband the Army’s Chemical Corps, and would begin negotiations with the Russians to ban chemical and biological weapons. In 1972, this resulted in the international Biological Weapons Convention which outlawed all forms of germ warfare, and in 1975 the US finally ratified the 1925 Geneva Protocols which outlawed the first-use of chemical weapons in warfare.
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