How fast could the U.S. develop chemical weapons?

[beerftw]

gas masks alone are of little protection against modern nerve agents and other chemical weapons.

The soviets and chinese had their own nbc gear as well made in large numbers, all generally sold or passed on to poor allies as they replaced old systems. Here is a way to look at it, north korea can not have a chemical weapons program or even a nuclear program without ppe, and the ppe to make such is actually rather cheap to make for the average soldier, and much more expensive at the scientific level where scientists have to be exposed directly near chemical biological or nuclear materials in high concentration for research.


North korea likely has plenty from russia and china, and even if both cut them off it is too easy to make them, activated charcoal and rubber and synthetic materials are not some super secret squirrel crap so sensitive only america can access it, infact much of what we use today is based on ww1 tech between chemical weapons research and early nuclear research that got refined by the time ww2 was at full swing.