posted October 13, 1999 08:53 PM            

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Knowledge is power, power leads to corruption, corruption is a crime, crime doesn't pay. So if you know to much you will go broke!!

posted October 14, 1999 05:34 AM            

RICIN: KITCHEN IMPROVISED DEVASTATION

For those unable or unwilling to tackle the more technically demanding tasks of nerve gas manufacture or botulin culture, Mother Nature's bounty has provided a considerably more low-tech alternative: Ricin. Ricin is an exceedingly toxic protein found in the castor oil bean. One pound of pure ricin is a lethal dose for over three million people if delivered by injection. If inhaled in the form of a fine dust, it is nearly as potent. Eating ricin also produces a lethal result, although the dose must be considerably higher due to partial destruction of the poison in the digestive tract.

In mass-attack situations, ricin has one great advantage over nerve gas. This advantage is a delay in the onset of symptoms of poisoning of 12 to 24 hours. As a result, a target most likely will not realize it is under attack Further, once symptoms do begin to appear in the unfortunate targets, it will be very difficult for investigators to back-track to the site of the original attack. These two factors combine to greatly increase the likelihood of success for the attack mission.

For assassination, ricin is similarly well-endowed with favorable qualities. There is no antidote or treatment for ricin poisoning. A lethal dose produces death, period. The long delay between administration of the poison and symptoms means that the mark will very likely not be able to make the connection to where or from whom he met his demise. Treatment and autopsy investigations are further frustrated by the fact that ricin leaves no traces of itself in the body, and there is no test for it. A couple of hours after administration of the poison, blood from a poisoned animal can be transfused into another animal with no harm to the receiving animal. This is because all the ricin has already passed from the bloodstream into individual cells. Pretty much the only way the ricin poisoning could be identified positively as such is if mushedup whole castor beans are fed to the mark. Then close examination of the resulting Hershey squirts will probably find fragments of the beans. A refined extract will not be detectable.

A tale from the heydays of the Cold War is instructive on this matter. Ricin was a favored assassination too[ of the KGB. One person who became a target of their wrath was a defector from the Eastern Bloc who fled to England where he proceeded to make trouble for his former oppressors. To silence him, a KGB operative walked up behind him on the crowded street, and poked him in the back of his leg with the tip of his umbrella. This specially rigged umbrella then injected into the ill-fated defector a small metal ball with a hollow core packed with ricin, and a couple of holes in the ball to allow for blood circulation to dissolve the ricin and release it into the blood stream.

Within a day, the doomed man made his way to a hospital, where his condition continued to deteriorate. Given his position, he rightly suspected that he was the victim of foul play, not the flu or some bad sausage. Run whatever tests they might, however, the doctors couldn't get a clue as to what his problem was Finally, X-rays revealed the small metal ball in his leg, and it was removed. Traces of ricin were found still on the metal, but nothing could be done to save him. Had this metal ball not been found, the cause would never have been determined.

The spectacular toxicity of ricin is due to its catalytic, rather than stoichiometric, mechanism of poisoning. The ricin protein molecule is constructed of two separate protein chains, called A and B chains. The function of the B chain is to bind to the surface of a cell, and inject into the cell the A chain. The A chain then goes from ribosome to ribosome within the cell, inactivating each, making them incapable of producing proteins for the cell to use. The A chain isn't consumed or otherwise effected in this process, so it's possible for one molecule of ricin to kill an entire cell.

The symptoms of ricin poisoning will vary with the method of ingestion. When it has been eaten, vomiting and the runs are very prominent, along with weakness and fever. Eventually, convulsions set in, and the person dies when the area of the brain that controls breathing stops working. When the substance has been breathed in or injected, then the puking and squirts aren't as pronounced. The symptoms of poisoning by ricin are quite variable from person to person, and this makes diagnosis of the problem very difficult.

To produce ricin, one first needs a supply of the castor beans which contain the ricin. How to best get these castor beans depends upon how much ricin is needed for the desired application. The typical concentration of ricin within the beans is in the area of 7/10 of 1%, through extraction and a series of purification steps the yield is about half of that. Smaller amounts of beans can be purchased through seed dealers, or Kurt Saxon's company: Atlan Formularies. Larger amounts should only be obtained by growing a crop. The castor bean plant will grow to maturity throughout the Southern US. It prefers fertile soil with reasonable amounts of moisture. Corn or cotton fields can easily be converted to castor bean production. A short listing of seed dealers who carry castor beans follows:

Atlan Formularies
P.O. Box 95
Alpena, AR 72611
501-437-2999

Mellinger's Inc.
2310 W. South Range Rd.
North Lima, OH 44452
216-549-9861

Joe Harris
3670 Buffalo Rd
Moeton Farm
Rochester, NY 14624

Hudson Seedsman
P.O. Box 1058
Redwood City, CA 94064

Stokes Seeds, Inc.
Box 548
Buffalo, NY 14240
416-688-4300

There are a numbers of varieties of the castor bean plant (Ricinus communis) from which one may choose. Generally, most of the varieties have only small cosmetic differences from one another that are unimportant to the end use. However, dwarf varieties such as Ricinus communis gibsonii should be avoided, as the resulting small beans require too much labor to hull prior to extraction. The typical castor bean is about the size of one's thumbnail.

In addition to being able to purchase castor beans from established seed sources, it may not be too difficult or suspicious to order a reasonably large quantity through a "feed and seed" retailer. It's probably wiser not to express interest directly in the castor oil crop, which is rare in most areas, but to request castor beans as a cover crop to benefit a cash crop which is common in your area. This will only ring true if you live in a warm region of the country, however. Further, if you happen to live in or travel to Florida, South Texas or Southern California, some retailers will probably have castor beans in stock during the planting season because it is in these regions that the small castor oil industry still exists.

Hybrid varieties of castor bean are superior in respect to crop yield, disease resistance, and robust growth. They are, however, a poor choice for this project because one would want to use some or all of the beans to have a larger crop in the following year. Since the seeds (beans) derived from hybrids tend to have a low germination rate and unpredictable qualities, one is better advised to stick to truebred or inbred varieties instead. By planting the many beans obtained from planting a single bean and letting the plant mature, one can, over a period of time, parlay even a small initial acquisition of castor beans into a large crop.

In tropical regions, the castor bean plant is a robust perennial that can reach 15 feet in height, and take on the proportions of a large shrub. In areas subject to frost, it can grow as an annual. It should be planted just after the danger of frost has passed, about 23 inches deep in fertile well-drained soil with full sunlight. When the plant matures, it bears fruits which are capsules covered with long, soft spines. These fruits contain the castor beans.

To extract the ricin from the beans, one should first remove the hulls from the seeds. This is a very labor-intensive task, and is hard on the fingers. The hulls can be made easier to remove by first soaking the beans in a solution made up of one 12 oz. can of lye dissolved in a 1/2 gallon of water. The soak should last for about one hour, then wash off the beans and spread them out to dry. This will help, but it's still not easy. If any of you know of a good tool for the task, feel free to write with suggestions.

Once the hulls of the beans are removed, one is left with the soft white meat of the beans. The castor oil must next be removed from the product. Acetone is probably the best solvent to use for this purpose, as it is easily available at the hardware store and the residue quickly evaporates from the bean pulp. Hexane is also a good choice if it is available to you. To remove the oil from the pulp, first mush up the beans with a hammer and load the bean meats into a blender until it is half filled. A plastic blender pitcher shouldn't be used with acetone as it will be dissolved. A metal blender pitcher should be used with this solvent. Now add acetone or hexane to the mushed-up beans until the blender pitcher is just about full. Then put on the cover and blend until a smooth, milky mixture is obtained. Pour this mixture into a covered glass container, and let it sit for a few hours, then filter through a coffee filter. Squeeze out as much solvent as possible from the bean pulp, either by packing with a spoon, or even better by using a Buchner funnel and filtering flask attached to a line of vacuum. Next return the bean pulp to the blender, and add a fresh load of solvent. Blenderize the pulp as before, and filter the mixture. Once the pulp has been drained of solvent, repeat the solvent extraction. Then it should be spread out to dry in an area without much wind movement, as breathing in the dust would be bad.

When the pulp has dried of solvent, it should have a chalky, talcum-like consistency. If it still seems oily, it should be extracted again with solvent. If extraction of the ricin from the defatted bean pulp isn't going to be done right away, the powder should be stored in a freezer. Always wear a very good dust mask when handling this powder. Everything which comes in contact with the bean powder should be washed very thoroughly or destroyed.

To extract the ricin from the pulp, I direct the reader to several references. All of them are relevant. See US patent 3,060,165. Also see European Journal of Biochemistry, Volume 105, pages 453-5 (1980) and Biochemistry, Volume 12, No. 16, pages 3121-26 (1973). An article from Toxicology, Volume 2, pages 77-102 (1974) is also interesting. For many examples of how not to go about this procedure, see The Weaponeer and The Survivor by Kurt Saxon. His bumbling and fumbling of the extraction and isolation is almost comical, and very instructive. He ultimately gave up, since he was only able to produce small amounts of a weak product. I really shouldn't make fun of him, since his formal chemistry training is obviously rudimentary. Rather, the model which will be followed here is that of Dr. Albert Hoffmann, the discoverer of LSD, and the experimental tactics he used to isolate and find the molecular structure of psilocybin, the active ingredient of fumy mushrooms. Dr. Hoffmann was able to far outpace his competitors in the race to isolate and identify psilocybin because he an the members of his research team were willing to taste-test their extracts to assure that the active ingredient was being isolated. This idea never occurred to his competition, as they were too chicken shit and too tied-up with the establishment to contemplate such a course. Obviously, taste-testing one's extracts will bring this project to a rapid and fatal conclusion. For this job, one should recruit a series of white lab rats, available at the pet store as food for your boa constrictor. This project will keep him quite hungry.

The extraction of ricin from castor bean pulp is a pretty standard protein extraction, very similar to procedures used to extract and isolate other proteins from a plant matrix. The first and most important point to keep in mind is that the extraction must be done at refrigerator temperatures. This prevents other enzymes extracted out of the bean from degrading the product ricin in solution. Exact control of the pH during extraction doesn't appear to be so crucial to success, as the European Journal of Biochemistry article used full-strength vinegar (5% acetic acid) as the extractant. This gives an extraction pH of under 3. Both the US patent and the Biochemistry article preferred a pH of 3.8 to 4, with the Biochemistry article using dilute vinegar to reach that pH, and the patent using dilute sulfuric acid. I am mildly suspicious of the patent, as I feel it may contain some deliberate misinformation. Beyond that, it was filed in 1952, and kept secret until 1962, so their procedure represents antique technology. The procedure followed here is a melding of the three procedures.

The defatted, solvent free bean pulp obtained from one kilo of castor bean meats (it now weighs considerably less than a kilo with the oil removed) is suspended in 4000 ml of distilled water cooled to about 4C (refrigerator temperature). Then, with stirring, add white distilled vinegar until the pH reaches 3.8 to 4. A good, accurate, properly calibrated pH meter is best for measuring pH. The beans must be thoroughly defatted to get good extraction, so don't skimp on the solvent in the previous step. The oil would act to prevent good wetting of the bean pulp and prevent extraction. Now let this mixture sit in the fridge overnight. When morning comes, pour it into a blender, and while it's still cold, grind it hard, at maximum speed, for a minute or two, then return it to the fridge, where it should be magnetically stirred for 24 hours. Place a layer of cardboard between the stirrer and the product to prevent heat transfer from the stirrer.

Now it is time to separate the vinegar extract from the bean sludge. Filtration won't work very well, because it's just too gooey. Centrifugation is far superior. The articles recommend a centrifuge speed of 10,000g for 30 minutes. The extract must be kept cold. Work outside in the winter, or in a walk-in freezer in order to maintain proper temperature. The clear-colored vinegar extract should be separated from the centrifuge-compressed bean sludge (termed a pellet), and stored in the refrigerator. The pellet should then be extracted with one more portion of dilute vinegar at pH 3.8 to 4 at a temperature of 0-4° C with stirring overnight. This extract should then be similarly obtained by centrifugation. The US patent claims that the extract can be separated from the bean sludge by filtration, if a filter aid such as Celite 503 is added to the bean sludge-vinegar mixture to the extent that it is about 10% by weight of the defatted bean meal used. Your comments on this variation are welcome.

Now the combined dilute vinegar extracts, while still kept cold, are gradually brought to 100% saturation with solid ammonium sulfate. This requires about 70 grams of ammonium sulfate per 100 nil of extract. It should be added slowly, with stirring. This precipitates the ricin out of solution. Once saturation has been reached, keep the solution overnight in the refrigerator.

The precipitated crude ricin is now collected by centrifugation. The article recommends 23,000g for two hours. The product is the pellet. Remove the supernatant vinegar, collect the pellet, and dry it under a vacuum. Now our animal friends come into play to test the extraction process. Feed some of them bean sludge residue to test for completeness of extraction. Feed some of them supernatant vinegar to test for completeness of precipitation, and feed some of them your crude product. Varying degrees of dilution are called for to judge just how much of this very potent poison has been wasted, and how much has been captured.

This vacuum-dried, crude ricin is likely to be good enough for most practical purposes; however, all of the articles move onward to get pure ricin. The scientific articles use chromatography, while the patent uses another extraction and precipitation step. Let's follow the patent here. Suspend the still-wet crude ricin pellet in three times its weight of distilled water, or suspend the vacuumdried ricin in 30 times its weight of distilled water. The water should be cold, and kept cold. Now dropwise, with strong stirring, add 5% by weight sulfuric acid solution until a pH of 3.8 is reached. Stir for about an hour, then filter. Then to the filtrate, dropwise add 12% sodium carbonate solution until the pH rises to about 7. Now the pure ricin can be precipitated by slowly adding a solution made up from two pounds of sodium sulfate dissolved in 10 pounds of water to the neutral ricin solution until the amount of sodium sulfate added equals 20% of the original weight of the neutral ricin solution. For instance, let's say you have about a pint of this ricin solution. It weighs about a pound. You will want to add sodium sulfate solution to it until you have added about 90 grams of sodium sulfate.

This requires adding about 540 ml of sodium sulfate solution. Stir in the cold for an hour or so to complete precipitation, then filter. The filter cake should be rinsed with some more of the sodium sulfate solution to remove more non-toxic proteins. Just one good rinse is called for here, as more does no good. Finally, vacuum dry the filter cake.

This produces a product which is about half pure ricin, and half solid sodium sulfate. The sodium sulfate does no harm to the ricin. However, for use as an airborne weapon of devastation, it's necessary that the size of the ricin particles be reduced to a very small size, on the order of a few microns, which is similar to smoke particles. The small size is needed so that the particles remain airborne, rather than settling out as dust. Also, the small size is needed to make sure that the particles get all the way down into the lungs, rather than being caught in the snot-filled slime that covers one's air passages.

The patent addresses this problem, and says that the best results were obtained with air grinding. Putting the dried ricin into a blender and letting the blades whip it up and grind it would seem to me to be to be analogous. To prevent detoxification of the ricin, it must be quite free of water when it is ground, and kept cold. They also suggest ball-and-hammer milling of dried ricin in a slurry of CCl4. Keening it cold is also important here. Spray-drying a 20% solids slurry with CC14 was also used. See the patent. Once ground, all one needs is a fan to propel airborne death on its way to the target.

A really good method for getting a small ricin particle size can be used if the plan is to spray the enemy territory from some height, as from the top of a reasonably tall building or from a low-flying plane. This method is to dissolve the ricin into water adjusted to pH 4 with acetic acid or vinegar. No more than one gram of ricin should be dissolved in each liter of water. Then when this mixture is sprayed from a reasonable height, the water in each droplet will evaporate as it falls through the air, leaving a tiny particle of ricin to float on the wind. Naturally, the use of this plan requires that weather conditions be favorable for evaporation of the water droplet.

This simple procedure works well. One caveat, however: this solution will begin to grow a bustling bacteria population in no time flat. Within a day or so, floating strands of slimey gunk will be in solution, ready to plug up the sprayer. Worse still, the bacteria may well be able to digest the ricin, rendering it harmless. For this reason, the solution must be used quickly.

Happy hunting!

WARNING.. Possession of refined ricin will likely get you a life term! Beyond experimental runs to perfect your technique, these procedures should only be done under war situations. If stockpiling must be done, it should only be in a very secure place, with freezing temperatures to assure freshness of the product.

posted October 14, 1999 10:49 AM            

But considering how toxic it is you don't need very much. The one thing that is very important to remember is that any heat will deactivate the toxin. Cold soda, ice cream, cold sandwhichs, etc. are the foods to use.

I'm not sure how practical the fester method is since it relies on a centrifuge. How common are those?

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"The knowledge that they fear is a weapon to be used against them." www.50megs.com/nbk2000

posted October 14, 1999 12:36 PM            

POISON

[1] makes most of these points:

* Most drugs cause vomiting. To help stop this, take one or two anti-
histamine tablets (travel sickness, allergy, hayfever tablets etc)
about0 an hour before, on a fairly empty stomach.
* If the drugs are in tablet form, take the first 20% as they are, and
the rest crushed and dissolved / mixed in with strong alcohol / food.
This helps the drugs to hit at the same time.
* Alcohol helps dissolve the drugs. Don't drink any beforehand, but wash
the tablets down with vodka or similar, and then drink afterwards
while you're still conscious.
* Use a large airtight plastic bag over your head, + something around
your neck to hold it on. This transforms a 90% certainty method into a
99%...
* Friday night is a good time if you life alone - nobody will miss you
until Monday if you work. Bolt all the doors you can. Say you'll be
out over the weekend visiting someone, so people don't expect a reply
to telephone.
* Some painkillers etc have less effect if you use them normally
(tolerance).
* In general, you need to stay away from medical help until you actually
die, but there are exceptions to this (that have been pointed out in
the text).

Common drugs:

* Cyanide (HCN, KCN)
Dosage:
50 mg Hydrogen Cyanide gas, 200-300 mg Cyanide salts
Time:
seconds for HC, minutes Cs (empty stomach) hours (full s)
Available:
very difficult to get hold of
Certainty:
very certain
Notes:
It helps to have an empty stomach (since the salts react with the
stomach acids to form H.C.). A full stomach can delay death for
up to four hours with the salts. Antidotes to cyanide poisoning
exist, but they have serious side effects. What you can do, is
instead of taking the salts directly, drop 500mg or so into a
strong acid, and inhale the fumes. This will be pure Hydrogen
Cyanide, and you should die in 10 to 20 seconds.

[3]: "Hydrocyanic acid is one of the most poisonous substances
known; the inhalation of its fumes in high concentration will
cause almost immediate death. Hydrogen cyanide acts by preventing
the normal process of tissue oxidation and paralyzing the
respiratory center in the brain. Most of the accidental cases are
due to inhaling the fumes during a fumigating process. In the
pure state it kills with great rapidity. Crystalline cyanides,
such as potassium or sodium cyanide are equally poisonous, since
they interact with the hydrochloric acid in the stomach to
liberate hydrocyanic acid. This poison has been used for both
homicide and suicide; in recent history, a number of European
political figures carried vials of cyanide salt for emergency
self-destruction and some used them. Death resulted from amounts
of only a fraction of a gram. A concentration of 1 part in 500 of
hydrogen cyanide gas is fatal. Allowable working concentration in
most of the United States is 20 ppm. Two and one-half grains of
liquid acid has killed. The acid acts fatally in about 15
minutes. The cyanide salts kill in several hours. The average
dose of solution is 0.1 cc.

[1, DGHS talking about KCN]:
on an empty stomach, take a small glass of cold tap water. (Not
mineral water nor any sort of juice or soda water because of it's
acidity). Stir 1 -> 1.5 grammes of KCN into the water. More than
that causes irritation to the throat. Wait 5 minutes to dissolve.
It should be drunk within several hours. Consciousness will be
lost in about a minute. Death will follow 15 -> 45 minutes later.

* Aspirin (acetylsalicylic acid)
Dosage:
20-30+ grammes (too many cause vomitting)
Time:
hours to days, variable
Available:
easy to get hold of (get soluble ones, & dissolve them)
Certainty:
unreliable
Notes:
Not recommended, fatal dose varies wildly, could cause liver &
kidney damage instead of death. OD causes strange noises in your
ears (like a video arcade) & projectile vomiting after about 10
hours. Medical help generally effective, so stay out of hospital
for a couple of days. May cause bleeding in your stomach/upper
intestines. Take with sodium bicarbinate (eg, bicarb. of soda),
which speeds up the absorption (sp?) significantly. Take 1 or 2
antihistamine tablets.

* Paracetamol (aka acetaminopren / tylenol)
Dosage:
15+ grammes, 20+ is better
Time:
10 hours fatal damage, but 2 weeks to actually die
Available:
easy to get hold of
Certainty:
fairly reliable
Notes:
Once 10-12 hours is up, you've had it, but you still live for a
week or two after that. Probably better to wait 15 hours just to
make sure. Horrible side effects during this time (some of which
are: acute toxic hepatitis, renal failure, cerebral oedema,
intra-abdominal bleeding, aspiration pneumonia, haemophilia). Too
small dose causes severe liver damage. Accidental deaths are very
common. There are few if any side effects before the damage
becomes fatal; occasionally vomitting and nausea.

* Sleeping tablets (see specific notes for each kind)
See later entries for amobarbital, butabarbital, diazepam, flurazepam,
glutethimide, chloral hydrate, hydromorphone, meprobamate,
methyprylon, meperidine (pethidine), methadone, morphine,
orphenadrine, phenobarbital [also check trade names in same entries].

* Alcohol (spirits preferably, your choice)
Dosage:
1/2 litre vodka?, similar. Varies from person to person.
Time:
about 8 hours
Available:
good
Certainty:
unreliable
Notes:
will cause liver and kidney damage if 'rescued' before death.
Drink it all at the same time, quickly as possible. Dosage is
questionable, I don't have any figures. Taking the spirits as an
enema is supposed to be a very quick way of absorbing alcohol,
but a less unpleasant way is to inject it. The dosage it takes to
kill you depends on whether you drink normally, the state of your
liver, whether you pass out on your back or not.
[3]: "The fatal dose of pure alcohol in an average adult is
300-400 mL (750-1000 mL of 40% alcohol) if consumed in less than
one hour. Apart from the effects of overdosage, death after
alcohol consumption can occur as a result of choking on vomit
while unconscious. ..... Consequences such as liver damage occur
after chronic consumption." Alcohol helps other drugs to
dissolve. Don't drink it in advance, wash down tablets with it, &
follow by drinking another few glasses of spirits.

* Water
Dosage:
14 litres mentioned
Time:
12 hours or so?
Available:
always available
Certainty:
unknown
Notes:
works by washing out the salts in your body, until the cells fail
(osmotic balance buggered up). You need to keep drinking
continually until you collapse. Unusual method. Someone suggested
it would also cause cramps. The following is something from [2]:
"About a year ago a local newspaper carried a story about a woman
who had drunk herself to death. Apparently she had ingested
something mildly poisonous, and when she called her doctor asking
him what to do, he told her to drink lots of water and see him in
the morning. She got to it and managed to drink no less than 14
litres of water before the osmotic balance in her body was so
upset it could no longer function and she died (don't know how
quickly)".

Calle: The above anecdote originally came from me, and the death
described occured in Växjö, Sweden. Unfortunately I no longer
remember which newspaper I saw it in. Recently, I was told about
a similar case in San Antonio. It supposedly happened a couple of
years ago and was reported in the local San Antonio Express/News.

* Bleach and other corrosives (lye, drain cleaning fluids)
Dosage:
A bottle (litre or half litre)
Time:
Hours/days
Available:
Easily available
Certainty:
Uncertain
Notes:
Bloody painful - depends on your stomach getting corroded, the
stomach acids escaping, and doing their dirty work in your vital
organs.
[1] says: "I have heard of people throwing themselves through
plate glass windows in their death agonies after drinking lye."

* Insulin (injected)
Dosage:
No idea
Time:
death in hours to days
Available:
Difficult to get hold of unless you're a diabetic or a vet
Certainty:
reasonable
Notes:
Supposed to be quite pleasant (eg insulin shock treatments used
for some psychiatric condition).

* Petrol (in lungs/injected)
Dosage:
"A Thimble-full" -20 ml?
Time:
Seconds/minutes
Available:
Common
Certainty:
I'm not sure of the dosage, but fairly certain if correct
Notes:
Can also use LPG (propane/butane) on skin surface (since these
are light enough to go through the skin). Stick your hand in a
bucket of propane and see how many seconds you last...

* Oil of Wintergreen/Methyl Salicylate (in lungs/injected)
Dosage:
Probably similar to petrol (20 ml)
Time:
Don't know
Available:
Not available in concentration
Certainty:
Don't know
Notes:
Don't have enough information on this one to be able to say
anything about it. If it is just taken normally, it is the same
as aspirin.

* Malathion (insecticide) (entry revised by Calle)
Dosage:
A few bottles, at least
Time:
2 to 3 hours
Available:
From a large garden centre or DIY shop
Certainty:
not so good
Notes:
A correspondent mentions that the LD50 of this stuff is 1 g/kg in
rats, and adds that there is not nearly that much in a bottle. He
also mentions that it is treatable. Instead of this, he
recommends parathion, if you really want to use an insecticide.

* Phosphine gas from aluminium phosphide pesticide (ALP)
Dosage:
Single 3 gramme tablet (".. is enough to kill 10 people")
Time:
About 2 hours
Available:
Difficult. Used in India, sold on black market.
Certainty:
Without medical help, and using fresh pill, very good
Notes:
This is a common way of committing suicide in Indian villages.
There is no specific antidote to this. The pills are 3 grammes of
ALP, which produces lethal phosphine gas when it comes in contact
with hydrochloric acid or water in the stomach. After severe
vomiting, the victim loses consciousness, the blood vessels
rupture, and body cavities fill with blood. While the pill is
exceedingly lethal, some escape death because the rate of the
gas' release declines with the pill's age and use, and exposure
to moisture. Trouble with this one is the availability, and it
also looks like a rather unpleasant.

* Rat poison (Warfarin)
Dosage:
not known
Time:
Hours to terminal damage, days to actual death
Available:
Available
Certainty:
Certain given suffient dosage. Most probably treatable.
Notes:
This is one of the truly unpleasant poisons, along with
Paracetamol/Acetylminopren. I think it causes cerebral haemorage
(rat poison works by giving the unfortunate rat haemophillia).
Doctors can't do anything about it, they just leave you to die in
agony on an intensive care ward.

Calle: Since human haemophiliacs usually live quite ordinary
lives, the above sounds rather improbable.

* Caffeine
Dosage:
20 grammes (someone said 8 -> 10 grammes)
Time:
not known
Available:
Caffeine tablets available in Chemist shops
Certainty:
don't know
Notes:
I don't know very much about this. There isn't all that much
caffeine in coffee, maybe 200 mg.

* Potassium Chloride (injected in solution) / KCl
Dosage:
not known (try 20cc injection of strong solution)
Time:
Seconds to minutes
Available:
Widely available
Certainty:
Certain given correct dosage
Notes:
Causes heart attack (which is painful). May be difficult for
coroner to realise it was suicide rather than a natural heart
attack. An excess of K+ in the blood interferes with nerve
signals, and stops muscles and nerves from working. So when it
reaches your heart, the heart stops.

* Nitrogen gas (or other inert gas)
Dosage:
Several litres uncompressed is minimum
Time:
Minutes
Available:
Try plumber, or welding supplies company
Certainty:
Certain
Notes:
This is really a form of asphyxiation, (see later), but is
particularly good since you don't experience the lack of oxygen
(what people really experience is the EXCESS of carbon dioxide).

* Nitrous oxide (N20? NO2?)
Dosage:
Unknown
Time:
Minutes
Available:
Dentists supply would be good
Certainty:
reasonable
Notes:
Asphyxiate yourself with laughing gas. Nice.

* Carbon Monoxide (CO)
Dosage:
5% concentration or so?
Time:
Minutes to hours depending on concentration
Available:
You get it out of a car exhaust, you used to be able to use "town
gas" (eg, stick your head in the cooker) but this is no longer
available
Certainty:
Fairly certain, as long as you aren't "rescued"
Notes:
Causes brain damage.

Calle: A correspondent from Denmark, where you still can use
"town gas" to kill yourself, says that even though it's possible
it's not a good idea. He tells of an incident where a family
committed suicide by turning on the gas and waiting. Apparently,
the heavier-than-air carbon monoxide leaked through the floor and
reached the people in the apartment below. Not nice.

The actual cause of death is asphyxiation, since the carbon
monoxide binds tighter to haemoglobine than oxygen does (the
oxygen gets crowded out, so to speak).

* Chlorine gas
Dosage:
not known
Time:
not known
Available:
tricky
Certainty:
Good
Notes:
This was used in the first world war in the trenches. Probably
very unpleasant, does something to the lungs.

* Hydrazine
Dosage:
As produced by reaction
Time:
Not known, fortnight?
Available:
Bottle of bleach & bottle of ammonia
Certainty:
not known
Notes:
[2]: "This is no joke, D----. Several years ago at my high
school, one of the janitors innocently mixed together half a
bottle of bleach with half a bottle of of ammonia in a small
closet where the cleaning fluids were kept. He passed out due to
the hydrazine (not chlorine) gas released in the reaction between
the two chemicals. This man was in agony for two weeks in an
intensive care unit in a local hospital with the majority of the
inside surface of his lungs damaged and untreatable before he got
lucky and died."

* Chloroform
Dosage:
not known, just put a splash onto a rag
Time:
several minutes probably
Available:
not known
Certainty:
good
Notes:
If you tape the rag over your mouth so that you get knocked out,
you should die as you continue getting the stuff into your lungs.

* Digitalis (Foxglove, Digitalis Purpurea)
Dosage:
not known
Time:
not known
Available:
extract from foxgloves
Certainty:
bad due to vomiting
Notes:
[4]: Gives you a heart-attack. Symptoms: nausea, vomiting,
abdominal pain, diarrhoea, headache, and slow irregular pulse.
Also sometimes trembling, convulsions, delirium, and
hallucinations. Its difficult to take a fatal amount because
vomiting usually gets rid of it.

* Yew (Taxus Baccata, the "English Yew")
Dosage:
not known
Time:
Can be very rapid (minutes), occasionally 3 or 4 days.
Available:
Grows wild in the UK, don't know about elsewhere.
Certainty:
not sure, but it sounds good if you eat enough
Notes:
[4]: All parts of the plant, _except_ for the fleshy red bit of
the fruit, contain poisons. The seeds are poisonous, so if you
eat the berries, chew them. Symptoms: nausea, abdominal pain,
coma, death. The mode of death is a heart attack which occurs
rapidly after eating sufficient. If no heart attack occurs,
you'll probably survive. Sometimes the sudden collapse leading to
death is preceded by lethargy, trembling, staggering, coldness,
dilation of the pupils, rapid pulse that becomes weak, and
convulsions. Other species in this genus are said to be equally
poisonous. See "plants in general".

posted October 14, 1999 04:51 PM            

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Knowledge is power, power leads to corruption, corruption is a crime, crime doesn't pay. So if you know to much you will go broke!!

posted October 21, 1999 03:50 PM            

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Knowledge is power, power leads to corruption, corruption is a crime, crime doesn't pay. So if you know to much you will go broke!!