Plausible Deniability Poison for knife blades

[Marmaloon]

Pretty much self explanatory, my country has strict prohibitions on using a civilized pistol for self defence, we are forced to contemplate other means, I just thought up the concept recently, I definitely did not invent the concept, there are lots of poisons that would do the job if spread on a knife blade and introduced into the target via cutting them, but most of them are detectable. I need something like poisoned saliva or something, because if questioned, I want to be able to say, 'maybe the knife was just dirty', and we all know there is no law against cutting an assailant with a dirty knife. . . ;)

[Corona]

Instead of having a death wish (how long before you cut yourself... with poison?), why don't you go find yourself a woman or something?

Find me one too.

[Marmaloon]

Sorry, I have enough trouble with the one I have. On reflection, maybe it would be best to settle for pepper spray with the knife as a back up.

[Jacks Complete]

Just get the knife blade dirty. That will put the fear into the target far more than a shiny knife, should you need to display it. You could add whatever you wanted to the dirt, of course!

[bipolar]

You could give the knife some kind of coating with something that will dry up on it and add effect to the effect if it cuts the skin, like something that stings a lot or something. like a capsium coating or something.

You could just learn to kill someone with just a knife and knife fighting skills and disarm techniques.

[Chris The Great]

Maybe tetanus toxoid? A large amount of work (growing the bacteria, then extracting the toxin, etc, all requiring a decently advanced biological laboratory) but it would be deniable. Just make the blade dirty and toss some of your bacteria on it.

You stab him, he dies of tetanus, well your knife was dirty so what else could have happened?

The problem, again, is getting tetanus bacteria, growing them, and then extracting the toxin. All the while in a sealed glovebox because the toxin has a lethal dosage in the tenths of micrograms.

[tdog49]

I may be wrong but I don't think there is a poison out there ( that is easily available and undetectable) that could kill a person faster than I can with a knife. You would be far better served by aquiring knife skills than by trying to find a short cut...(no pun intended)

[ImagineReality]

I'm with tdog49 on this one. Most arteries are very close to the surface, pick up a book on anatomy or get the medical wall chart for the circulatory system and a decent book on knife fighting. If you cut any major artery then you can pretty much guarentee that whoever you are fighting will lose interest in attacking you, and depending on the artery, 1-5 minutes later they won't be able to be interested in anything. There are other targets so get the anatomy charts for that.

[Marmaloon]

Yes, there's probably no good substitute for several years intense training in Karate or Ju-Jitsu. However, I got a copy of 'Assorted Nasties' on the way, maybe that will throw some light on the subject.

[nbk2000]

If you have access to venomous snakes, insects, etc., what you could do is take a small piece of rotten liver meat, put it on a stick, and use the stick to tease the critters into stinging/biting the meat, putting their venom into it.

Then use the jagged rusty edge of your knife to cut the meat, being sure to let plenty of the rancid juices dry on the edge. :)

[Jacks Complete]

Or you could milk a spider or whatever. If someone at the zoo can do it with a day's training, it can't be that hard.

NBK did a thread on keeping a spider on ice for prolonged periods. It turns out almost every spider is venomus, it's just that most cannot break the skin to inject it. It isn't likely that the venom could even be ID'd but if it was, as long as you used a local species, you should be fine.

However, you aren't ever going to get something with a fast knock-down, and certainly a knife used right is lethal in seconds.

A poisoned bullet, however, where you take the shot and don't go to inspect, would be far more productive, especially in this day of heavy body armour and 4-minutes-to-the-operating-theatre-even-in-a-combat-zone.

[tdog49]

ok,
so I'm gonna weigh back in on this, since the knife is one of my favorite weapons. If your interest in poisons is meant to make up for any lack of knife skill and/or you are under the impression that such skills are hard to come by or take a long time to develop....go here: www.splitsecondsurvival.com, order all three dvd's or just the title "First Cut". I have been a student in this system for almost 5 years and it completely invalidated the first 20 years of my previous martial art instruction. Fast, Brutal and Easy to Learn.

[Kamisama]

Most people kill with a knife, if not the knife, the poison on the knife.
It's something that takes less than 5 minutes.

Forensics have most of everything solved these days unless you are a biochemical/chemical engineer.

[Gollum]

Well it's been a long time since I posted here but just for kicks I'll give you a free poison method.

You need to get some raw oysters, chicken feces and horse or bull feces. Mix these together very well and add some kind of heavy vegetable oil to the mixture, olive oil is fine. That's to both help the ingredients stick together and to help the mix stick to the knife/syringe.

Slide the knife through the mixture and you've got yourself an extremely effective poison. It does not kill immediately, however if any of this stuff gets into the bloodstream it will be nearly impossible to stop the infection without a full blood transfusion.

This is a very very old poison and works very well, but it does take some days to have an effect.

I am going to mention though, if you're really using a knife for self defence, you should be able to prove you used it in self defence. In such a case, you absolutely do not want any poison on your knife.

It is far better to know how to kill someone just with the knife rather than with poison. There are numerous easily accessable areas on the body that will result in a quick kill if stabbed / lacerated. For example there's a huge artery in the thighs, it's about the diamater of a quarter. If you stab someone there they'll die within minutes. A slash to the jugular on the neck will also kill someone quickly. Piercing someone's temple deeply will kill almost instantly, and stabbing the knife deep between the skull and spinal cord (brain stem) will kill immediately, the body will literally drop instantly.

But it's important not to use your weapon unless you really need to, otherwise the authorities will assume you were the one looking for trouble.

[hague720]

what about a knife with pepper spray built into the handle ?? attack - blind - cut walk off!!!

[nbk2000]

There's a flashlight like that called "Tigerlight".

[Dank$taVegas]

I would say a knife is more of an offensive weapon, used to inflict bodily harm not as a main defense tool.

I would say your best defense weapon would be Mace. Not the weak pepper spray sold as human & dog repellant, look for "Bear Mace" which is the strongest stuff on the market. It (usually) has the stopping power in one can to stop a charge from a grizzly bear! It can spray up to 10 feet with out the wind factor and will affect anyone in the immediate area, best used out doors since this stuff is very strong. It will effect the eyes, breathing and skin of the person/attacker and will stop him dead in his tracks. All it takes is a quick 5 second shot! But care should be taken when using on a human in self defense, since too much may kill them.

I have used this stuff once on a group of niggers (4) at a bar one night, that were attacking one of my friends in the parking lot. I aimed at the one instigator and got a good dose right in his eyes, which caused him to drop immediately to the ground screaming and grabbing his eyes and coughing pretty hard, the others also suffered form the mist it created from splashing off his face. I barley used any only a 5 second spray and it stopped the attack of the 4 people. My friend also got a little of the mist in his eyes and they swelled up like watermelons and his skin that came in contact with the mist turn bright red and was very irritated.

[nocturnalfrost]

Chris the Great and Gollum have a great idea however, they have actually mentioned the same poison. Tetanus toxoid can be simple to make and this is how:

Gather horse dung. Heat this and pour over a wire mesh to extract the fiberous material from the dung. The strained dung is then mixed with the olive oil. Spread this over your knife or dart, or any puncture or cutting weapon.

When entering the blood stream, this makes the assailant perish from Tetanus in about four days. This was a poison used in Japan by supposed ninja clans. No laboratory needed, but I hope that you use a well ventilated area. ;)

[c.Tech]

Gather horse dung. Heat this and pour over a wire mesh to extract the fiberous material from the dung. The strained dung is then mixed with the olive oil. Spread this over your knife or dart, or any puncture or cutting weapon.

When entering the blood stream, this makes the assailant perish from Tetanus in about four days.

Once when I feared I had tetanus, I read a website on various diseases, including tetanus.

From what I remember, I doubt that a small amount of horse dung would have enough toxin in it to kill a person. What could happen with this method is you would infect the person with the tetanus bacteria, this will cause death in a week or more (if you die at all). If I remember correctly, one in ten people (hospitalised) die from tetanus, this group is usually seniors or children.

Although the amount of people that you could infect with horse dung would be nearly none because of the amount of people immunized within most countries.

If you want the tetanus toxin you should grow the bacteria and extract it from that.

[nocturnalfrost]

I believe that this is why the Tetanus poison is a very old one. Immunizations in anchient Japan were non-existant at the time. At that time, making it a great poison. :D

[c.Tech]

If nicotine is as effective as it sounds, we have the perfect knife poison.

Its easily accessible (extracted from nicorette (http://www.nicorette.com.au/product_range.cfm)), kills in low a dose and would enter capillaries quickly.

Howstuffworks.com (http://health.howstuffworks.com/nicotine7.htm)The treatment for nicotine poisoning has two goals:
1. Keep the victim breathing and keep the heart pumping until nicotine is broken down by the body.
Doesn’t look like a good sign to the sufferer who doesn’t know what hit them.

As it’s an oily liquid it could be applied to the knife blade and probably stick, however being hygroscopic and miscible with water it could absorb more water forming a solution that could drip off.

This problem could be overcome by mixing it with thick motor oil or grease, which would hold it to the blade and protect the nicotine from moisture in the air. This may effect the ability for the nicotine to quickly enter the blood.

Does anybody know any other thickening substances which would not have this tendency?

[Bugger]

If you live in Australia, you could use cone-shell toxin, from cone-shell species found on the Great Barrier Reef. They are extremely toxic, and, being polypeptides, are practically impossible to analyze for. From other evidence it is thought that this may have been what killed Drs Bogle and Chandler in an unsolved mysterious double death in a riverside park in Sydney, New South Wales, on 1 January 1963; but the motive is still unclear - either a suicide pact, or a jilted lover. Australia also has the world's most venomous snakes, along with the redback spider (which fairly recently introduced itself into New Zealand).

[nocturnalfrost]

C10H14N2 mixed with water would still be a great toxin. Although, the hydrogen would absorb water, the body would absorb these elements very freely, making this toxin work very fast!
Nicotine had been used as a desiccant as well, so it will actualy absorb so much water that it will dissolve it's self. Instead of motor oil, I would use a form of grease. This mixture will dissasociate in the body, and deliver the toxin to the system.
Boiling a can of chewing tobacco down until it gets very thick is a great way to create a nice form of this toxin. I beleive that they talk of this in the Anarchist's Cook Book.

[Chris The Great]

Since nicotine is very toxic, you wouldn't need enough of it to cause it to start dripping off. A dilute solution of it would be spread onto the knife, and then the solvent evaporates leaving a seemingly dry coating on the knife.

For tetanus, I was refering to the toxoid and not the bacteria. However, it will degrade fairly quickly so it would need to be "recoated" to maintain effectiveness, how often I am not sure. Horse shit would make it seem as though the weapon was not intentially poisoned, as in you did not mean to have a poisoned weapon, it just happened to be like that. Sure, the knife was dirty, but it was not to intentionally give someone tetanus now? ;)

[the_twitchy1]

I like Nicotine for this use, because as Chris the Great has pointed out, it doesn't take much. IIRC, 6 drops (somewhere around 5 ml) is LD50, and that's to kill.

You don't necessarily have to kill, either... It'll make anyone very, very sick at lower doses. Another solid point for it is that being a commonly found chemical, a sloppy lab tech will miss it on the forensics sheet, (They'll assume he was a smoker and not bother with the concentrations...) and being water soluble, it's easy to get off the blade. (Ditch the knife in a storm sewer, for instance...)

As well, when you extract it from chewing tobacco (as Nocturnalfrost suggested) it's a thick, goopy substance. Easy to spread, sticky, and dries out slowly to leave a nice, thin layer. I wouldn't let it dry out, though, as whenever I've had that happen, it turns crusty and crumbly. (It also takes a few weeks... It only happened to me by accident.) Better to leave it wet, so it's more likely to stick.

That's my two cents, anyway. Easy to make, easy to use, commonly found, and not necessarily lethal... the perfect poison in my books.

[c.Tech]

IIRC, 6 drops (somewhere around 5 ml) is LD50, and that's to kill.
Ill like to point out that LD50 isn’t the lethal dose.
LD50 (http://www.uoguelph.ca/GTI/urbanpst/glossf_m.htm)
LD50: The amount of a chemical that is lethal to one-half (50%) of the experimental animals exposed to it.

This can vary greatly in animals and people. You are better off using 150% of the LD50 (of humans) to be cautious.

For nicotine the approximate lethal dose is 60mg, which would probably be more in a smoker.

Someone would probably need less to die if it was put strait into their body, unless the amount of poison coming off the blade when it enters the body, for a brief second, might not be enough to kill. As it is already dried on the knife little could come off.

All these factors should be taken into consideration before using a poison.

[the_twitchy1]

Thanks for the correction... I was going to edit and post the wiki (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicotine) for nicotine which includes the tox info (including a supposed lethal dose of 40-60 mg for humans), but you beat me to it. It's useful to note, though that the amount needed to bring down someone is actually much smaller than ld50, as it is not really necessary to kill, just to 'bring down'. (Think about how you felt after taking the first deep haul from a cig... amp that up and you've got the effect of injection.)

Also, I wanted to add that I have never really made sizeable quantites of nicotine from tobacco before... I've done so once, with a friend who was using it for reasons that I didn't ask about. After I showed him how (it's the same process used to make essential oils, in essence... ;) ), he did it for a while, but I didn't have to help him again.

As an aside, that same method can be used to extract the oils from most plants. That can be useful when making irritants or poisons of different varieties... Poison oak extract would probably be an irritant even in trace amounts that would persist for years and be undetectable to the human senses, for instance.

[chemdude1999]

Being oily, would nicotine make a good lubricant for the knife? With some of the newer kydex sheaths, one could "store" the knife in a bath of extracted nicotine. Satan's cosmoline?

Also, a further refinement of the lethal dose: Inhaled it takes on average 230 mg/kg of body weight to kill. Injected into the bloodstream? 0.3 mg/kg of body weight. The average cigarette contains less than 1.0 mg of nicotine.

[c.Tech]

Being oily, would nicotine make a good lubricant for the knife? With some of the newer kydex sheaths, one could "store" the knife in a bath of extracted nicotine. Satan's cosmoline?.
I think what your asking was already stated by Chris The Great in a previous post.
A dilute solution of it would be spread onto the knife, and then the solvent evaporates leaving a seemingly dry coating on the knife.


Also, a further refinement of the lethal dose: Inhaled it takes on average 230 mg/kg of body weight to kill.
Do you know if the doses are immediate or over a time of exposure?

If a person was exposed to a hit of nicotine they may need less to kill them.

[chemdude1999]

c.Tech:

I believe Chris The Great was referring to layer of nicotine unnoticeable at a glance, which is excellent for concealment of the poison. My idea was more of a massive overkill. Store the blade in the sheath loaded with oily poison and use it knowing full well the consequences. Also, the blade would leave very obvious residue for forensics.

This brings me to your question of lethality: immediate or lengthy. Most of the data involving nicotine effects are for inhalation of chewing. However, we can deduce some things. Feel free to correct me if I'm wrong. Nicotine is largely detoxified by the liver with the remaining being excreted unchanged by the kidneys. The nicotine generally would be broken down within a few hours of exposure. Keeping this in mind, I would suspect that the lethal dose would have to be applied quickly enough (i.e., injection, knife cut, etc.) to the bloodstream to overload the metabolism process, thus causing a relatively quick and painful death. Otherwise, the person could recover if the metabolism was to keep up with the nicotine supply.

Nicotine is very similar to acetylcholine. When released, this compound binds with cholinergic receptors, causing a massive overstimulation of the synapses leading to vomiting, convulsing and other nasties. Nicotine also binds with these receptors yielding the same result. Due to these dynamic effects, you are probably right that it would take less to kill someone with a strong first hit.

[anonymous411]

Surely you don't mean to say you'd actually dose up a knife you have on you day to day? Any carrying device that keeps you sufficiently away from the toxin is likely to make it impractical and inconvenient to access it when you need it most. Who needs the risk... I'd hate to be stuck fumbling around in an emergency with something just as likely to kill me as it is my target.

I'm sure you all know there are far more efficient ways of administering a lethal dose of toxin than the edge of a blade. (Why not casually swipe them with a Q-tip?) Likewise, if you're dicking around in a knife fight worrying whether or not you're about to kill yourself with a stray cut, you aren't going to be using it as effectively as if you were concentrating 100 percent on putting it on target. In my opinion, anyone who is so unsure of his skill at using a knife to the point that he feels he needs outside help in making it lethal has no business bringing to a fight to begin with.

[chemdude1999]

anonymous411:

You bring up some excellent points. Although a kydex sheath would contain and "lock" a knife well, presenting it does cause problems. It certainly is not an everyday weapon. I think a good quality boot knife is the way to go, sans the toxin. Learn to use it and practice.

The ideas presented I believe would be more useful in a stealth attack. However, the knife wound would be the obvious entry of any poison, known or unknown. So the attacker must not have any hesitations about concealment from forensics. This certainly narrows the application.

[nbk2000]

Poisoning the edge is silly, as a slashing cut will bleed profusely, washing out the poison.

Far better to poison the tip, which is stabbed into the target, putting the poison deep inside where it'll have time to be absorbed. :)

Even better is to follow the example of nature, where the stinger leaves a poisoned barb lodged deep in the prey. :)

Then you can really get creative with your bladework, because you're highly unlikely to stab yourself deep enough to engage the stinger.

Edge to wound, tip to kill. Just like Dune. :D

And in Dune, mastery of the blade was a highly developed skill, much like Italian Renaissance swordsmanship.

http://www.thearma.org/essays.htm

Further perusal of the site reveals some interesting news articles about the use of edged weapons (specifically swords):


Auckland, NZ. December 2005. Three men were given jail sentences over an attack that left a 25-year old man outside his home dead with a sword wound through the eye. The man took a sword with him when he went to stop a noisy fracas in October last year but was overpowered and violently attacked with his own weapon by three young men. (source: www.stuff.co.nz)


One of numerous examples of people depending on a weapon for courage, but not having the will to use it. If you don't have the will to use it, don't take it with you, because it will be used against you.


Suffolk, UK. December, 2005. A Suffolk village post office worker with a ceremonial sword confronted two armed robbers before being hit on the head with the butt of a sawed-off shotgun. While the men were taking money from the post office a male of the staff, in his 60s, entered and confronted the robbers with the sword. After a struggle ensued with the two robbers the man was hit with the butt of the gun and suffered a cut to his head. He was later treated at the scene by a doctor. (source: www.eveningstar.co.uk)


Such false courage is found in the thugs bringing a shotgun with them and reverting to using it as a club. If you're not going to shot someone when you have a gun, bring a club instead. Much safer for everyone involved. ;)

[c.Tech]

Such false courage is found in the thugs bringing a shotgun with them and reverting to using it as a club. If you're not going to shot someone when you have a gun, bring a club instead. Much safer for everyone involved. ;)

I think it was used to be more intimidating, making the person fearing for their life and hand over the money. Would you use a club for an armed robbery?

Most people who do a robbery with a gun probably never intend to kill but just to get in, get the money with no worries and get out.

I wouldn’t want to kill anybody either, imagine being on trial for murder, plus the amount of investigation the police would put in to catch a murder, armed robbery is bad enough.

Another idea I just had about a poisoned knife is to have a little tube, a bit larger than a pinhole so it isn’t easily seen, and a groove in the grip, which can have a primer bulb like thing connecting, when pushed it would inject the poison through the tube.

The primer I’m talking about is hard to explain, it’s used to “prime the engine” (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Primer)with petrol in lawnmowers. Rather then have a bulb sticking out of the knife you would just make a part of the rubber grip (a groove that isnt used to hold the knife) on a knife soft so it can act in the same way.

An example of a primer bulb can be seen here (http://www.marinesurplusinc.com/catalog/39_1_b_1038_1.JPG).

If there is a better word I should be using for this please tell me.

[nbk2000]

If you're not willing to kill someone, then you shouldn't try robbing them. In a lot of places, you'll do the same time for armed robbery as murder, so why risk it if you're not willing to kill to succeed or escape?

Twice, I've had idiots try to rob me at gunpoint. Twice, I got the gun from them.

I wouldn't try this if I knew they weren't punks with false courage stemming from holding a gun.

Better to have a club you'll use than a gun you'd have taken from you.

I could have killed them both with their own gun, but they weren't worth it, and that's the only thing that saved them from their own stupidity.

Hence the RTPB of "Don't have a weapon if you're not going to use it".

[BlackFalcoN]

Instead of coating the tip of the blade with a deadly poison (which will very likely kill your adversary -- which is not always prefered), why not coat it with a ultra-short acting anesthetic ?

Thiopental (Sodium Pentothal) for example would be ideal, since it is reported to work within 10 to 30 seconds. (even shorter in lethal dosages )

It will temporarily neutralize your adversary for a few minutes (depending on the dosage), without killing him.

Since you control the situation at that moment, you can do as you wish by either fleeing, getting help or performing various goulish acts (such as instant castration) on the body in front of you (without any struggle :D ).

You could easily replace the knife by a hypodermic needle, reducing the chance of piercing/tearing any vital organs to zero, resulting in a very bloodless attack.

An average safe dosage could be calculated ahead (mg/ estimated bodyweight of average adversary ) + safety margin, so the anestethic will work for most encounters.

Keep in mind that thiopental is a barbiturate. It's effects are greatly increased when administered to people under the influence of alcohol, possibly turning a normal 'safe' dosage into an overdose.

[nbk2000]

Don't forget than a struggle involving weapons is very stressful.

Heart rate, respiration, blood-pressure, hormones, etc. are all highly elevated.

Throw in drugs and/or alcohol, or even none, and that 'safe' dose of anesthetic becomes lethal.

If you're going to have it, use it, and if you're going to use it, it'd better be the most lethal thing you can get.

[GibbsFreeEnergy]

I don't think it's been mentioned yet, but as far as truly punishing a criminal for commiting some crime against one goes it might be advisable to dope the knife blade with some harsh base like sodium hydroxide (powder).

I doubt this would be lethal, but I cringe imagining the pain it would inflict upon the organism stabbed.

It may work best to roughen the blade's surface by either some crude process with a file or using a hand knurler. If that wouldn't hold the powder, maybe one could add a light oil to the mixture. Simple, but I hypothesize it'd be quite effective.

*NO self-signing of your posts*

[Diabolique]

Extracting capsicum from red pepper with hot alcohol, and putting that on your blade would cause a simple cut to burn like fire. It could give you that slight edge in a fight, and nothing for the cops to nail you on - it's a food stuff.

There are several poisons that have been used in the past. The Soviet Army sometimes coated the base of bullets with aconitine from monkshood (aka: wolfbane). According to my Merck Manual, it is a fast acting poison with no antidote, and require very little to kill. The first symptom is numness, followed by nervous system shut-down, just like a nerve agent.

A modification, aconitine nitrate, is listed by Merck as being "an EXTREMELY violent poison" (emphasis is theirs), so you can imagine how quickly it would work.

I do not know if monkshood/wolfbane seeds can still be purchased at garden shops, but it is a wildflower.

[c.Tech]

and nothing for the cops to nail you on - it's a food stuff.

It is a foodstuff but if you prepare it and use it in the form to damage someone’s body it would be seen as a chemical agent.

[atlas#11]

"dope the knife blade with some harsh base like sodium hydroxide (powder).",
"maybe one could add a light oil to the mixture."

Wouldn't you end up with soap?

The point of this thread was to provide self defense in a robery or something. I assume it's not a premeditated assassination, and therefore we want something that is as quick as a handgun at neutralizing the enemy. The only poisons that come to mind capable of being even remotley effective at this would be neuro toxins. At the same time, we want plausable denyability, elminating any form of oil coating which would preserve evidence of poisoning, or any form of rare neurotoxin.

Mace sounds like a good idea to me, but if you are really bent on doing someone in, try using an air gun. If you have a CO2 pellet pistol, you can easily give them the idea that your using a real gun, or you can give them a good pop to the eye. On a new tank, my pistol will shoot through a watermelon, roughly proportional to well over the balistics of a human eyeball. I think your self defense claim will hold up in court if your a kid who shot some mugger in the eye with his beeby gun.

I'm sure this has been covered before on this forum.

Also, lets not forget, guns aren't impossible to procure any where. Save up some money, and have a look around the local underground. I bought my first gun when I was 14, payed a hundred bucks for it, still shoots great. Guns are perfectly legal here, so their easy to come buy, but not for minors. It's all about the cash.

[Diabolique]

C.Tech, you do have plausable deniability - "But officer, I use my knife to cut up peppercorns for my Texas style chilli!"

Aconitine nitrate has similar, but not as strong, deniability, you were cutting weeds in your garden with your knife. Aconitine is a neurotoxin.

You want to keep some opening to give the court to have a bit of doubt as to your having crossed the line.

If you want to increase the speed of a toxin, disolve it in DMSO. It will be carried more quickly through the tissues to do its damage. Black mamba venom in DMSO should work in a few seconds. Just don't touch the blade, or it will "bite" you.

[c.Tech]

C.Tech, you do have plausable deniability - "But officer, I use my knife to cut up peppercorns for my Texas style chilli!"
Oh I see what you meant now ;) I thought you were saying it was legal.

Good idea, but you shouldn't use the oil, cutting your pepper corns doesn’t leave a red oil on your blade does it?

You would have to extract near pure capsicum, because your red oil would be a dead giveaway.

[Alexires]

I think that a big problem here is the time taken.

How many people here have heard of a knife fight, or a mugging (with a knife where someone has been stabbed) going on for 5 minutes?

If you don't intend to kill with the knife, don't use it. Your poison is not going to work in 5 seconds, and that is easily enough time for someone to take the knife from you and use it on you....permanently.

Seriously, you would be better off using something like nicotine in a spray and just dosing them in the face. Use of acetone as a solvent may disorientate them enough for the nicotine to have time to take effect, but using a knife is not a good idea for a poison carrier.

[Ropik]

Why bother with a nicotine procuring and not use formaldehyde in the first place? If he is not able to have an eye-rinse immediatelly(and he won't be able because he will be rolling around in pain), he will be blind. Blind people are not very good muggers. If it's for self-defence, that's enough. No need to kill.

[c.Tech]

Blind people are not very good muggers. If it's for self-defense, that's enough. No need to kill.

Not good muggers but can sue for a fortune. Also they are more evidence lying around to send you to jail. Knives are better because you have more of a reason to be using reasonable force in self-defense.

I don’t think intent to blinding a muggers would be called reasonable in front of a judge.

[Diabolique]

Where I live, anything more than a 5 cm blade will get you into almost as much trouble as a firearm. If it is not in plane sight, it also gets you a charge of carrying a concealed weapon. People have been known to be arrested for defending themselves against a mugger, and charged with more serious crimes than the mugger. The mugger walked, and the victim did the time.

Something else to consider when using deadly force to defend yourself. We've been "civilized" into a nation of sheep.

[nbk2000]

5_Seven:

Iron Oxide (Rust) has never given a person tetanus. It's a micro-organism that is often found in the ground, Clostridium Tetani, that causes tetanus poisoning.

Fresh horse and cow dung, mixed in with moist acidic soil, with the bare blade allowed to rust within it, is assured to carry many nasty diseases within it. :)

[c.Tech]

I think this has been mentioned earlier, even if tetanus Clostridium Tetani was used it probably wouldn’t infect an immunized person.

And unless you live in a 3rd world country most of the population would be immunized.

[nbk2000]

That's what beginners think...that 'immunization' confers perfect immunity.

It doesn't.

It provides a varying level of resistance to infection, depending on the state of health of the individual at the time of infection, how long ago they were immunized, their immune response to the vaccination, the amount of infectious agent they are exposed to, etc.

If you keep your blade in the shit box every day, taking it out when you go out to patrol the DMZ (or get milk in the ghetto! :D), anyone you stab or cut with it is going to be in a world of shit if they mess with you, because it's not just tetanus (in massive dosage), but gas gangrene, molds, fungus, anerobics, parasites, and every other nasty thing that lives in shit and dirt, being embedded deep into the warm and wet environs of their flesh.

So even if they are immunized against tetanus, that's not going to stop any of a dozen other things from eating them from within. :)

[c.Tech]

I did know that it didn’t perfectly protect somebody from the disease but was just going from what my doctor told me.

He said that if I hadn’t got my tetanus booster yet, my resistance to contact would be only slightly decreased, from 95% protected to 90%, I’m assuming it would be the same with most if not all vaccinated viruses and diseases.

Chris the great mentioned this before. It's a long shot thought but maybe if somebody grew the bacteria and extracted the toxin from it that causes contraction and spasms of muscles it could be used to cause an instant effect.

Because the dose is so little it would be hard to detect.

Does anybody know the stability on the toxin?

BTW - If someone is infected with the Clostridium Tetani it only causes death 10% of the time. This mostly happens in elderly people and children.

[Diabolique]

During the Southeastern Fun and Games, the VC would use punji stakes coated with animal and human feces. Enough of this substance remained on the punji stakes even after being out in the weather for a month to cause very nasty infections. Massive doses of antibiotics were needed to save life, if not limb.

Are we talking of a rapid acting substance that will give us an edge in winning a knife fight, or something that will insure that our attacker will not attack anyone again, regardless of the immediate outcome? Each has own requirements that do not always overlap.

Some glucocides, like that of Lilly-of-the-Valley, can cause what appears to be a heart attack, and do not require a lot of material. Absorbed through a cut, with the adrenaline pumping in the individual cut with it, would likely be dead of a coronary in under a minute.

If you want to make sure the attacker does not survive to attack again, and want a punishing death, use ricine. No antidote, and the symptoms often confused for an illness.

[nbk2000]

The 10% death rate is likely from scratches or stepping on nails, not massively filthy blades shoved into organs, with attendant weakening through multiple co-infections.

As for the stability of the toxin, it was (from memory, now) heat stable to a high degree, as well as chemically resistant. You could even crystallize it into large crystals if you wanted. :) Or was that typhoid?

[Syke]

Even though the nicotene plan has pretty much been scrapped i would just like to tell any k3w15 who try concentrating it that it is a skin absorbable toxin. I dont think I would ever want to carry it on me simply because a drop of the concentrate is strong enough to kill you if it drips on your skin. My suggestion would be to coat a blade with a hallucinogen (LSD?) since you might be able to explain why it was already in the assailants system and it might incapacitate an attacker whike solidifying your plea of being victimized.

[festergrump]

LSD wouldn't be feasible because it's destroyed by heat and it takes too long to start to take take effect (about an hour). You cannot OD on it, just trip profusely.

It'd be too expensive to coat your knife daily with, too, and the average dosage back in the sixties was 250mcg. Coating an entire knife blade would be very costly. Besides that, If I could get my hands on some good, clean acid I'll be damned if I'm gonna waste it on an attacker!

(Don't make me come over to your house and lick all your knives, now, just on the chance...). ;)

[Syke]

Im talking baaad acid. The kind that you make from contaminated LSA. Also whats the time for actual injection. It should be near instantaneous since it doesent have to go through the digestive tract. Also I was talking about any hallucinogen (maybe a blood grove with mescaline evaporated into it). The LSD was just an example.

[GibbsFreeEnergy]

I think it's a bad idea. As someone already stated, LSD is a very fragile molecule and would likely be largely destroyed on being in a knife sheath or on a knife exposed to light. LSD is so sensitive that light does indeed break it down. Not only this, the synthesis of LSD is fairly complex and requires many chemicals that are extremely hard to obtain. You don't make LSD from LSA, this synthesis has been tried many times and has failed. I have read some novel synthesis approaches using this route that report having worked, but have not had enough peer confirmation to accept it. Not only all of that, but the time it would take for LSD to actually affect the person would not be a matter of seconds but probably at least a minute or two or longer. You have to remember that blood, and therefore LSD, are going to be pouring out of the wound therefore expelling a lot of it from even entering the blood stream. Big difference between a stab wound and an injection.

[c.Tech]

(maybe a blood grove with mescaline evaporated into it)..

Mescaline dose is over a gram, no recreational drug is stronger than LSD.

The closest thing you could get to LSD would be ergotamine (http://www.erowid.org/plants/ergot/ergot.shtml). Ergot is a fungus that infects cereal grains, replacing kernels of the fruit with small black masses of mycelium. It produces ergotamine, a potent vasoconstrictor and precursor to LSD. Ergot poisoning (St Anthony's Fire) causes hallucinations, gangrenous loss of limbs, and death. Outbreaks plagued medieval Europe and were associated with witchcraft and the Inquisition.
I read somewhere that the minimal lethal dose for ergotamine is between 15-20 mg.

[Cobalt.45]

DOM is a real MF'er of a hallucinogen, but takes too long to get off.

As for acid, taken IV it still takes around a half hour to feel much effect. Forget that bullshit you might have heard about "instantaneous peak" and the like. It just flat isn't true.

It does give the user a queasy, uneasy feeling until the normal routine of getting off takes over. And, this with orange barrel which was considered VG acid.

The deniability of shit borne infection seems to be best of the long term-type agents. Fast acting- that's a tough one...

[5_seven]

If we're talking drugs, why not an amphetamine? You could just say some unruley tweaker acosted you. Who're the cops going to believe? The guy that defended himself, or the guy with meth in his system?

[Syke]

If we're talking drugs, why not an amphetamine? You could just say some unruley tweaker acosted you. Who're the cops going to believe? The guy that defended himself, or the guy with meth in his system?

You dont want to put a stong stimulant into someone whos trying to kill you. An incapacitating dose of a strong sedative or hallucinogen would be better than making the assailant pain esistant and stronger.

[nbk2000]

Now that's a good idea! :)

If the 'attacker' has a shitload of illegal drugs in his system, who'll believe that he was actually a victim of YOUR aggression?

After all, you're just a law-abiding citizen going about your business when this scummy poly-drug abuser (speedball, anyone? :p) tried to rob you. You naturally defended yourself, and lost the knife during the struggle, after which you fled.

The scummy thug must have thrown the knife away to hide evidence, right? ;)

[Arisaka]

There's a flashlight like that called "Tigerlight".

They sell batons in germany with pepperspray in it.
But i don't know if it's really practical :rolleyes:

[Bando]

Just a suggestion, I didn't see it posted here, but many plants have poisonous properties. If one could figure out how to extract the poison from a plant in their respective region, a defense could be that you were cutting up the plant with your knife for whatever purpose, unintentionally poisoning the knife. I don't know how well this would fly, but heres a website with poisonous plants by region: http://mic-ro.com/plants/