https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2018/01/how-defeat-nerve-agent
Even 3 decades later, Seyed Naser Emadi’s first encounter with nerve agents haunts him. In 1987, as a soldier fighting for Iran in its war with Iraq, he came across a hillside strewn with comrades killed by an Iraqi nerve agent, perhaps tabun or sarin. Unable to breathe, the victims had clawed at their necks to try to open a hole in their throats, recalls Emadi, now a dermatologist in Tehran. In fact, their windpipes were clear; the nerve agent had shut down control of breathing in the central nervous system. They “had no choice except death,” he says.