Sarah here, the reporter on the chem weapons story. What's so interesting about Haber's fertilizer discovery is that the same process was used by the Germans in WWI to make the nitrites necessary to produce TNT and other explosives. If Haber hadn't figured out a way to make explosives from the nitrogen in air, Germany couldn't have waged war past 1916 because the Allied embargo nixed German supplies. So yes, Haber's discovery has fed billions, but initially it also killed millions in WWI. It's no surprise that Haber was hailed as a WWI war hero by the Germans... He solved their explosives shortage AND introduced a new form of warfare.

This is Sarah, the journalist who wrote the chem weapons package. One of the interesting things (in a macabre way) about Tabun (the first nerve agent that then spawned Soman and Sarin) is that it was originally discovered by a chemist trying to create a pesticide to improve food storage. After nearly killing himself and his lab mates, he decided it was probably too potent for the food industry...

Hi - This is Sarah, the reporter on the chem weapons package. You are absolutely right that factories for producing seemingly OK/useful chemicals (dyes, pesticides) can easily be converted to making chemical weapons. After WWI, many chemists argued that there was no point making treaties against chemical weapons because you'd effectively have to outlaw the entire chemical industry... Chlorine gas & phosgene were both part of the dye industry. (Of course these chemists may have been swayed in their opinions by the promise of amazing funding for the weapons research.... but they did have a point on the factory front.)