highly toxic acetylcholinesterase-inhibitor

found this on a russian site, supposedly several times more potent than VX. The product is described as a yellow-tinged viscous oily liquid.

This should really not be so surprising because the molecule also has structural elements of sulfur-alkylating agents and a cyanide group that can hydrolyse off.

Not really concerned about safety of posting this information, because the actual synthesis would be more complex. If one just tried to mix these chemicals together without knowing the details, it is doubtful that the product could even be formed. But these types of synthesis routes are interesting from a purely academic perspective (would never want to try anything remotely similar to this!!)

one could suppose the high toxicity is likely due to the absence of oxygen atoms, meaning no hydrogen bonding, making the molecule hydrophobic. not sure how those alkylating groups affect the toxicity, this molecule would be very toxic on its own even without the acetylcholinesterase enzyme-inhibition effects. Of course, the cyanide group will eventually hydrolyse off to HCN, but this effect would be insignificant compared to the other mechanisms of toxicity

Apparently there are two routes to prepare the 2-chloroethyl- sulfenyl chloride, ClSCH2CH2Cl, a laboratory procedure and the industrial route.

The thermal disproportionation reaction of the posphorous tri( chloroethylthionate) is also interesting. There must be a method to make posphorous tri(chloroethylthionate) from phosphorous trichloride, but not sure what this would be.

I think it is obvious why this candidate was never seriously investigated; its production would be inconveniently hazardous (even much more so than the other agents of this family). That phosphine is pyrophoric and would create a danger of ignition. And they would essentially be combining extremely deadly gases just to make an even more deadly substance. Also the yields in some of these steps are probably rather low; the production would be very inefficient from the stockpile precursors. Another possible reason this compound never came into production could be because the vapor pressure was low.