Tonights Spooks was probably the best of the series so far. The team are trapped inside HQ doing a terrorist attack drill which they suddenly start realising may actually be real. The threat they face is a VX gas attack on London and with the whole war on terrorism fear, I suppose it’s not necessarily something that can be ruled out.

VX is nasty stuff. Not quite as protrayed in The Rock (1996) with Sean Connery and Nicholas Cage where victims suffer rather hideous deaths more akin to skin blistering agents than VX. VX is a nerve agent - it cuts off the nervous system, inhibiting nerve signals in the body so that muscles no longer “turn off”, become fatigued and failing. Eventually this will lead to suffocation and breathing failure and, obviously, death. A small amount - 10mg - can be lethal.

As for who invented VX and why - VX is a good old British invention and it was developed as replacement for the insecticide, DDT. As it happens, Britain no longer has any VX in it’s arsenal. We prefer nuclear weapons (on account of them being more humane perhaps?)

I guess I should be more scared than I am considering that I work right in the heart of the City - in fact, spitting distance from Buckingham Palace which is probably a potential target. If there was a repeat of the Sarin gas attack on the Tokyo subway in 1995 but with VX on the London tube? In the light of 9/11 shouldn’t we all be a little more afraid? The threat is definitely very real.

But then, for us Brits, it always has been. There have been several attacks on mainland Britain by the IRA - Warrington, Harrods, Brighton, Manchester… none quite on the scale of 9/11 granted, but still designed to strike at innocent people and still show that it could happen anytime, anywhere. Back in 1989, the largest IRA arms cache to be found on mainland Britain was discovered less than five miles from where my parents live. That’s quite close to home. An unsolved double murder in the same year was likely to have been as a result of the couple accidentally encountering the IRA soldiers while they were stashing their stash and were executed for their misfortune. This was never proven but seems the generally accepted theory. So I can safely say that the threat of terrorism is something I’ve always grown up with and something which has taken place quite close to home. I’m very lucky in the fact that I haven’t known anyone personally who has been a victim. For that I count my blessings.

Well, this has rambled aimlessly and depressingly for long enough. Time for bed said Zebedee, donning his NBC suit and heading towards his bunker…