FOOF: The stuff of nightmares


Remember the VX nerve gas from the movie The Rock? This is a lot worse:

FOOF is only stable at low temperatures; you’ll never get close to RT with the stuff without it tearing itself to pieces. I’ve seen one reference to storing it as a solid at 90 Kelvin for later use, but that paper, a 1962 effort from A. G. Streng of Temple University, is deeply alarming in several ways. Not only did Streng prepare multiple batches of dioxygen difluoride and keep it around, he was apparently charged with finding out what it did to things.

via xkcd what-if