2005 EXPEDITION: YAMASH-I-T-A ( JAPS) TREASURE
jeff of pi..... Funny you should say that there is no loot in the PI when you have a photograph of the "kin" symbol, which is the Japanese word for gold. It's flawed if you look at the actual word, but looks close enough to me. I understand your need to be discreet about the looting that took place so the PI isn't innundated with foreign treasure hunters, but you have me all wrong. If you look at my other posts you will see that I look far beyond treasure as a means to conduct a humanitarian project to help allieviate the poverty in the PI. People get so involved with the treasure aspect that they forget about the children that have to eat in the dump in Tondo.
As to your question about the drum, this is a note from my friend that gets attacked in the forum more than he deserves. Bear in mind that his father was the famous surgeon of Burma that founded the Seagrave hospitals, and he also views this as a humanitarian endeavor. Also bear in mind that he authored Yellow Rain in 1981, an expose' on chemical and biological warfare, so he does know what he is talking about. In light of the kin symbol, I hope that this is helpful for you. If it saves your life, you also owe me lunch :P Also, I know that there are a gazillion "Ben's", maps, etc. but this Ben was tested far beyond just lie-detector tests and passed everything that was thrown at him, impossible for a a fake pointer to do.
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Wayne ~
Some thoughts on CBW. The Nips played around with a lot of biologicals, both living organisms and toxins produced by living organisms. But it would have been illogical for them to place biologicals (including toxins) in the vaults. So much time has passed anyway that its shelf life would be long since gone. The only poison that has an endless shelf life is plutonium and its relatives. Some biologicals like anthrax and botulin occur in spores that can lie dormant for a very long time, then be reactivated when disturbed, but these would be so problematical that the Nips would not have used them in the vaults. That would have been much too risky for their own recoveries down the road. They used things that they could deliberately avoid (like vials of cyanide placed in sand traps or in boobytrapped entrances), or the black powder described repeatedly by Ben, which must have been a cocktail of chemical poisons. Because it was a cocktail, blended from various things, we can't really be certain what it contained. I've heard various speculation about the composition, but nothing that I thought was convincing. Kimsu (Prince Takeda) told Ben when he opened the pit where his trunk was buried, he should pour kerosene into the pit and light it so it would burn off the residue of the black powder. And he told Ben that when he opened the trunk he should immediately pour kerosene into it and burn it, to get rid of the black powder inside. This does not sound like a nerve agent, because a nerve agent acts instantly and closes down the organic connections in the body, so that muscles contract and then cannot release. The organic chemicals that would tell the muscles to release have been shut down by the nerve agent. Such things are called anti-cholin-esterase, because the cholin-Esters are the body chemicals (Esters - as in Estrogen) that tell the muscles to relax. So an ANTI-cholin-Ester stops the chemical Ester from doing that. This takes only about six seconds MAX. That's also how the venom of a viper works, as opposed to the venom of a cobra (which is conveyed through the blood stream, ie., haemotoxic) so it takes considerably longer for a cobra's venom to kill you because it has to pass through your blood stream to your heart. A viper's venom acts in six seconds by closing down your nervous system. About the cyanide, there are two types, which you can read about at Google. Most commonly used is potassium cyanide. It was unlikely that the black powder used by Kimsu included nerve agent, because that would have killed Ben before he could pour kerosene on it and burn it off, and its' similarly unlikely that the black powder contained cyanide, because that also would have killed Ben before he could have burned it off. So the most likely agents in the cocktail would be mustard, possibly mixed with phosgene, but also possibly some other stuff, which would have made you sick but not necessarily kill you. So you are most likely to encounter boobytraps with bombs, boobytraps with water or fine sand, boobytraps with vials of cyanide, and probably some places (or some situations) where there could be the black powder. For example, drums of loose gems might have had black powder sprinkled on the loose stones. So it would be prudent to lift these drums out intact (without opening them), then open them in fresh air. Whoever opens them should (as a precaution) be wearing proper protective costume, of the type commonly available for men working in boatyards where they apply bottom paint. A lot of bottom paints contain toxic chemicals including heavy metals like lead, etc., and some anti-cholin-Esters. I've owned a couple of sailboats including a 43-footer that I built myself, so I am familiar with this bottom paint issue. Such suits include a mask and head-gear, and the best ones involve positive pressure, which means supplying compressed air or air under pressure to the suit, from a compressor, so that the person in the suit is protected even if there is a hole in the suit or some place where the costume is not perfectly fitted, like around the wrists or the wait or ankles. You only need one suit, and if you splurge on a positive pressure version you also must splurge on a small compressor. But this can be further justified financially by using it to pump fresh air down into the vault or tunnel where your crew is working. That helps to eliminate the gases from long-buried bodies, which makes workers sick. It's possible that the workers at T2 in 1975 got sick from such decay gases, but it's equally possible that they got sick from residual black powder (or both). Anyway, when you open a vault or a tunnel, you must give it a week to air out (at the very least). You can (1) pump air under pressure into a tunnel to force its ventilation faster, or (2) pour in some kerosene and burn it out - although this is risky and hard to control. For example, if you were to reach a point like Rogelio Roxas did, where you find a concrete vault in the floor of a tunnel , you could jack-hammer an opening, pour in kerosene, and ignite it, much as Kimsu suggested to Ben. But you want a low-level, low-intensity, burn. Not an explosion. If you expect to encounter concrete vaults like that, consider buying and taking one of the thermite wands available from a company in Florida for around $500 per unit. It is less likely to agitate a boobytrap bomb than a jackhammer. I hope these thoughts are useful. Sterling
hes done it several times, me once pa lang, but there are others who have recovered morethan I have. 
![:-\](https://www.treasurenet.com/smilies/undecided.gif "Undecided :-\")
