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Things I Won't Work With: Thioacetone (2009)
- mnemotronic 4y agoSounds like a possible weapon. Not fatal or toxic but certain to temporarily disable troups downwind.
- jamiek88 4y agoAaand you’ve just hit the problem with chemical weapons. Wind shifts. Before you know it your own troops are vomiting and choking on their uvulas.
- mywacaday 4y agoHow are smells transferred and detected far away after a few seconds when the air is not moving that fast?
- qup 4y agoThey aren't. The air is moving that fast.
- taneq 4y agoA quarter mile in seconds? That’s brisk! More likely, I guess, that the distance was up to a quarter mile and the time was as low as seconds, but for different observers at different distances.
- dTal 4y agoThe velocity of an average air molecule at normal atmospheric pressure is about 1000 mph, so yes - brisk indeed. Of course the mean free path is only a few dozen nanometers, so it'll take about 10^10 collisions before a molecule reaches that far - but they started with "a drop", or something like 10^21 molecules, so statistically there's plenty of opportunity for a few "lucky" molecules to make it - and it's so stinky that we can detect it even in those absurdly low concentrations.
- mywacaday 4y agoThanks for the answer, what terms should I be googling to get more info?
- Sniffnoy 4y ago(2009)
- _a_a_a_ 4y agoRelevant? Not sure noses have evolved much in 14 years :)
- Kye 4y agoIt's required for submissions older than the current year. It's not in the guidelines as far as I know, but people will complain (rightly in most cases) and the headline will magically change to include it.
- _a_a_a_ 4y agoMy impression is people complain only if it's news that ages, this isn't. --- "Romani Invadest Albion!" > Please add 40BC to the title ^^ like that
- andreareina 4y agoI saw the submission before the year was added, I was excited that it might be a new post by the author.
- brookst 4y agoHow many Romans?
- dclowd9901 4y agoSpeak for yourself. I’ve had two kids in that time.
- lwansbrough 4y agoA YouTuber went to the trouble of making it. https://youtu.be/LmAG8-V_WQY https://youtu.be/LmAG8-V_WQY He ends up doing the final step of the process on an uninhabited island in the middle of a lake for safety.
- rkagerer 4y agoAwesome. Although it's a pretty small lake. In the video he shows a map and mentions there were some houses 200m downwind.
- chrisdalke 4y agoHe seemed to not react too much to the smell. With all the other crazy stuff he does, he must be seriously desensitized to strong smells if that’s even possible…
- 3s 4y agoIn the article: “The odours defied the expected effects of dilution since workers in the laboratory did not find the odours intolerable.”
- rsfern 4y agoI think that bit is saying the chemists who synthesized the compound were desensitized to it, it’s right after a passage where they were ostracized and sprayed with deodorant at a restaurant during lunch
- CommitSyn 4y agoFull quote, which seems to say it defies the expected effects of dilution _because_ the chemists weren't bothered by it when they were right next to it, but when they were many yards away they could. "The odours defied the expected effects of dilution since workers in the laboratory did not find the odours intolerable ... and genuinely denied responsibility since they were working in closed systems. To convince them otherwise, they were dispersed with other observers around the laboratory, at distances up to a quarter of a mile, and one drop of either acetone gem-dithiol or the mother liquors from crude trithioacetone crystallisations were placed on a watch glass in a fume cupboard. The odour was detected downwind in seconds." In other words, the smell intensity increases with dilution, _not_ decreases. We must protect this data from the homeopaths.
- pdpi 4y agoIf this is your first time reading one of these, Derek Lowe’s “things I won’t work with” series is a great way to spend a Saturday afternoon.
- memling 4y agoFOOF is my favorite. Come for an analysis of Streng's papers and stay for Satan's kimchee.
- cushychicken 4y agoAt seven hundred freaking degrees, fluorine starts to dissociate into monoatomic radicals, thereby losing its gentle and forgiving nature. Referring to fluorine’s “gentle and forgiving nature” got a good laugh out of my wife, who has a chemistry degree. It also got me a good education about just how gross elemental fluorine is.
- ikiris 4y agoF is for Flags, they be of red.
- erik_seaberg 4y agoI first read https://www.science.org/content/blog-post/sand-won-t-save-you-time https://www.science.org/content/blog-post/sand-won-t-save-yo... so I will always have a soft spot for it. "[...] it can potentially go on to “burn” things that you would normally consider already burnt to hell and gone, and a practical consequence of that is that it’ll start roaring reactions with things like bricks and asbestos tile."
- jiggawatts 4y agoIf you keep researching, it’s a fun rabbit hole of the Internet to go down. The Material Safety Data Sheet from one of the few(!) manufacturers is… something else. The MSDS warnings for ClF3 read like the State Department travel advisory warnings for Bhakmut.
- robinsonb5 4y ago
- russfink 4y agoPSYOPS potential?
- EdwardCoffin 4y agoAnyone thinking this might have potential as an unconventional weapon might find it interesting to read Neal Stephenson's Zodiac. The protagonist, a chemist-turned-environmental-activist, makes some Putrescine (a similarly stinky substance) for self defence.
- xkcd-sucks 4y agoPutrescine and cadaverine actually smell just like... Semen. Gross, overwhelming splooge. But not particularly incapacitating or vomit-inducing, looks like Neal didn't do his research. Bradford pears also smell similar, though tending a bit more fishy. (Grad school, a project next door involved making a whole library of polyamine derived chemical probes, so we got basically all the flavor notes of semen in succession. The lols outweighed the unpleasantness.)
- sokka_h2otribe 4y ago[flagged]
- actually_a_dog 4y agoI'm a little disappointed by this article. After all, I'm sure the author knows that anything that stinks with sulfur can be made stinkier by substituting selenium! Selenoacetone is worse than thioacetone! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=031vrZAMEHU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=031vrZAMEHU
- voxadam 4y agoIf you're interested in other terrifying compounds be sure to read 'Ignition'.[0] My footnote is for a scan of the original printing but I believe the book has have recently been reprinted in multiple formats. Regardless of the format you choose, it's a hell of a read. [0] https://library.sciencemadness.org/library/books/ignition.pdf https://library.sciencemadness.org/library/books/ignition.pd...
- Cthulhu_ 4y agoI've tried to read it, and while I can see it's an entertaining read, at the same time it reads like a long string of chemical compounds and formulas being read. I'd only recommend it if you have a better grasp of and interest in chemistry than I have.
- masklinn 4y agoFrom my recollection (I haven't re-read it recently), it's pretty easy to skip the raw chem stuff if you're not interested. Though that may be a skill I acquired from my youth misspent reading Alexandre Dumas and Jules Vernes (as writers of serials, padding chapters was a very common occurrence which makes for frustrating reads when you hit 5 pages of fishes in 20000 leagues under, the ability to quickly skim and skip is necessary to reach the end).
- mhb 4y agoI agree. I muddled through it because the non-technical 25% made it worthwhile and the writing was very nice.
- amelius 4y agoIs this the stuff they use in legal pepperspray alternatives (in places where pepperspray is not legal)?
- jandrese 4y agoMore likely to be methyl mercaptan as that is frequently used as an odorant and is available from chemical suppliers.
- nibbleshifter 4y agoNot that I'm aware of. It would be classed the same as pepper spray in the UK (a "noxious chemical"). The skunk lock and similar products that use a malodorous chemical are illegal in the UK for this reason. There are "self defense sprays" sold in the UK and some other countries that just contain a dye, no irritant or malodorous substance, but even those are legally questionable at best - just there's been no case law yet that I'm aware of.
- galangalalgol 4y agoThat all seems a bit excessive doesn't it? Does that mean you can't carry a pocket knife either? I would be lost without my Leatherman or at least a swiss army knife.
- RF_Savage 4y agoMost likely not.
- nibbleshifter 4y agoYes, it is excessive. The UK is highly restrictive, in so many ways. As for knives in the UK: so long as the blades under 3 inches long, and it is a non locking folding knife, it is legal to carry in public (with some exceptions). Any knife longer than 3 inches, or any knife with a locking blade, cannot be carried unless you have a good reason (eg: going to/from work, etc). You likely will have to argue this reason in court if the police officer is a cunt, and most of them are cunts when it comes to having common sense around blades. Fixed blade knifes of any length require a "good reason" to carry. A lot of coppers in the UK are ignorant as fuck too, and will confiscate your folding, non locking, sub-3 inch Swiss army knife requiring you to jump through burning hoops, wade through an ocean of piss, and sacrifice a virgin goat at midsummar to get it back.
- AlbertCory 4y agoFor a not-all-that-fun time, go to eBay and search on that. there was one answer, and it was for a prank device to detect that. Plus I got a box inviting me to select the vehicle type this was for. I took one, and got a lot of miscellaneous stuff having nothing to do with thioacetone.