Cyanide poisoning
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
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Cyanide poisoning occurs when a living organism is exposed to cyanide. The cyanide ion, if used as poison, is generally delivered in the form of gaseous hydrogen cyanide or in the form of potassium cyanide or sodium cyanide.
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Historical cases
Gas chambers
Hydrogen cyanide gas was the agent used during the Nazi regime in Germany for mass murder in some gas chambers during the Holocaust. It was released from Zyklon B pellets, which were a commercial biocide. It was also used in US execution chambers, where it was generated by reaction between potassium cyanide dropped into a compartment containing sulfuric acid directly below the chair in the chamber.
War
Cyanides were stockpiled in both the Soviet and the United States chemical weapons arsenals in the 1950s and 1960s. During the Cold War, the Soviet Union was thought to be planning to use hydrogen cyanide as a "blitzkrieg" weapon to clear a path through the opposing front line, knowing that the hydrogen cyanide would dissipate and allow unprotected access to the captured zone.Template:Fact However, as a military agent, hydrogen cyanide was not considered very effective, since it is lighter than air and needs a significant dose to incapacitate or kill.
Although there have been no verified instances of its use as a weapon, hydrogen cyanide may have been employed by Iraq in the war against Iran and against the Kurds in northern Iraq during the 1980s.
Suicide
Cyanide salts are sometimes used as fast-acting suicide devices. Cyanide is reputed to work faster on an empty stomach, possibly because the anion is protonated by stomach acids to give HCN. Famous cyanide salt suicides include:
- Paul Lafargue and his wife Laura Marx
- Leonard Lake
- Adolf Hitler and his wife Eva Braun. Hitler also shot himself immediately afterwards (see Death of Adolf Hitler for details)
- Hermann Göring
- Heinrich Himmler
- Erwin Rommel (forced to commit suicide)
- Wallace Carothers
- Alan Turing
- Odilo Globocnik
- A North Korean agent identified as Kim Sung Il, who along with a female accomplice in police custody in Bahrain in 1987 bit into cyanide tablets hidden in cigarettes after having left a bomb onboard Korean Air Flight 858, which subsequently exploded over the Indian Ocean on November 29, 1987. The woman's suicide attempt was thwarted by a quick-thinking police officer who knocked the cigarette away at the last second.
- Ramón Sampedro
- Gavrilo Princip, catalyst of the First World War, who attempted suicide, but failed, together with his co-conspirator Nedeljko Čabrinović
- Behzad Nabavi (attempted)
- Horacio Quiroga
Members of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam which operate in north-eastern Sri Lanka are probably the most reported to use capsules made out of cyanide compound/compounds, where each member of the militia wears a capsule round their neck, which is used to commit suicide when they are about to be captured by the security forces of Sri Lanka.
Jonestown, Guyana was the site of a large mass suicide/murder, where 913 members of the Peoples Temple drank potassium cyanide-laced Flavor Aid in 1978.
Murder
See:
Terrorism
In 2003, Al Qaeda reportedly planned to release cyanide gas into the New York City Subway system. The attack was reportedly aborted because there would not be enough casualties.
In 1995 a device was discovered in a restroom in the Kayabacho Tokyo subway station consisting of bags of sodium cyanide and sulfuric acid with a remote controlled motor to rupture them in what was believed to be an attempt to produce toxic amounts of hydrogen cyanide gas by the Aum Shinrikyo cult.
