Sounds furrtastic!
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well, the good news is, theyâre chasing this person/people down for a big charge.
Theyâre going to go away for a long time unless they have a good story.
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I have seen my large sample of furry drama over the past 20 years but this is still one of the worst things I have seen in the fandom.
Yeah in furry fursuiters is about 10% of the fandom though I suspect growing. The percentage of cosplayers at an anime convention is higher.
When I hear people say âOh Furry? Those guys that dress up as animals to have sexâ I respond âLike Star Trek fans are people that dress up like Klingons for bondage parties.â
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Shit, they have bondage parties? I never should have quit that Star Trek fan club.
Geek Cred: I had a scholarship from Starfleet.
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My next band: Klingon Bondage Party.
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Itâs MSNBCâs way of being fair and balanced.
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Wasnât there some speculation about the Morning Joe guy running for President?
Heâs an ex-congresscritter, isnât he?
I dunno. My parents are avid fans of the show.
I had to explain to them that, yes, I am a furry. Yes, I was at this thing where I or a large number of my friends easily could have died. And yes, their favorite morning show people were laughing at what we were wearing.
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Seriously, that must have been terrible. I canât imagine much of anything more panic inducing than poison gas. Iâm really happy that no one did die.
I think itâs the fact that no one died (coupled with peopleâs incredible inability to actually imagine themselves in someone elseâs circumstances) that letâs people take this as a joke. But not only is that an incident that could traumatize people emotionally, inhaling chlorine gas could have long lasting health effects. People laughing at this are laughing at people who may be wondering if theyâll ever be able to breath normally again.
I hope that no one was seriously hurt and that you and your friends are doing well. I also hope that the person who did this is caught quickly so that people can have some assurance that this isnât going to happen again.
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One thing thatâs getting very little mention: it was reported that the Wisconsin-Milwaukee college basketball team was at the hotel, the night before a match. That can give you a whole different angle thatâs worth checking on. Was there any betting? Iâve seen pictures from the USA of riots associated with sports matches, worse than we seem to get in the UK now.
It might not be the furries that were the target.
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The DePaul menâs team was there at one point too. They watched the fursuit parade. (Which was like, 1300 suiters this year and took over an hour âŚ)
My sympathies â Iâve breathed clorine and itâs really not an experience you want to repeat.
What the fuck is âpowered chlorineâ if it isnât fucking chlorine, one of many gases that burns lungs?
Calcium hypochlorite. One of the many folk names.
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My point can be illustrated by noting that Octal doesnât push plutonium unless its triple-bonds are given a kick. At what point is the chlorine gas is generated? In a factory or in-situ? Military warheads use gas generators and even more subtle killing methods. See mustard gas or the Teller-Ulam device.
Calcium hypochlorite is an inhalation hazard, âcorrosive to the eyes, skin and respiratory tractâ (MSDS). The reports of a strong smell of chlorine and other respiratory symptoms are consistent with airborne calcium hypochlorite. Youâre right in that no reducing or decomposition agent was used (or it wasnât reported), which would have evolved chlorine gas and other compounds.
This does not make sense.
In situ. In hypochlorites (and chlorides, chlorates, perchloratesâŚ) the chlorine is bound in a non-zero oxidation state. To liberate it as an element, you need to oxidize it (if chlorides) or reduce it (if the -ites or -ates).
Hypochlorites release some chlorine by reaction with airborne CO2 (hence the smell of the solid ones). There is also some reaction with chlorides (the commercial bleaching powder is a mix of calcium hypochlorite and calcium chloride so chloride ions are available for the reaction). This is the basis of their disinfecting and bleaching effect. In low concentrations, when just added to a pool water, the reaction is slow and gradual, as you want it to be.
They also do so at faster rate by heating, or addition of hydrochloric acid. Addition of ammonia will produce various somewhat toxic compounds, including hydrazine.
You can prepare chlorine yourself. You can even make a liquid one, it looks pretty. There are youtube videos of people who did it and lived to tell the tale; it may be an unpleasant chemical but it is by far not that dangerous - if you are at least half-competent elemental summoner.
And an example of a real-life summoning, using hydrochloric acid, calcium hypochlorite, and dry ice for the liquefaction step:
Only the binary ones, where less hazardous precursors are stored separately and mixed only after the care package is sent to its way.
The dispersion of the chemical warfare agents is actually a pretty difficult part of the whole scheme. The weaponization of the agents is highly nontrivial. An amount that can kill a thousand on paper is lucky to get one casualty if it sits in one thickened blob, or if it disperses in the air too quickly to nonlethal concentration. There are examples of successful deployment (some from WW1, some from Saddamâs Iraq), which also illustrate the hurdles, and way more examples of unsuccessful deployment (see the Aum Shinrikyo sarin incident for illustration of amateurish delivery, or more from WW1).
Industrial quantities of the agents, properly deployed, are needed to escalate from nuisance to lethality. (See industrial accidents for examples here. Bhopal, I am looking at you.)
That said, low doses are useful in highly targeted attacks. See the successful deployment of ricin in the Georgi Markov case.
Mustard gas is more an area-denial thing, and pretty lousy as it goes. Quite easy to make, however. But you need a lot of it for even a small area to be efficient. (On the other hand, if your goal is not to kill/maim en masse but to just get your adversary wearing those heavy, hot rubber suits, itâs good enough.)
Teller-Ulam is not a chemical warfare system. But it is a pretty good insta-sun. Just add a fission primary.
Technically this would be true. However, commercially available materials are too coarse powders to stay airborne in significant amount for significant time; the particles will settle out quickly. If you ever worked with ultrafine aluminium paint-grade powder, the kind that stays hovering in air for minutes and opening the can is enough to get observable amount airborne, it will be evident why such fine powders are used only when necessary, and somewhat more coarse ones are favored.
The dwell time of the airborne contamination is consistent with gaseous chlorine. It had to be released, and the agents are so easily available that the assumption that somebody just threw up a bunch of powder into the air would not hold much water. The reports mention fragments of glass, so there was likely a container in which the precursors were mixed. The reports also mentioned pegging the chlorine detectors of the responders, which a particulate aerosol would not do that much, without being observed as a particulate aerosol. I expect hydrochloric acid or maybe ammonia, but more likely the acid, to be the unreported compound.
Same here. In lower concentrations, meh, just smells and evokes a memory of near-drowning in a pool. (BLEH!) In higher concentrations, it is rather unpleasant. But the concentration needed to kill, without preexisting conditions like asthma or so, is fairly high - 400+ ppm at half-hour exposition, or 1000+ppm for a few minutes. (I can look up more accurate numbers on demand.)
My sympathiesâŚ
Itâs not a bad thing. They will hopefully understand (or even just accept) over time.
There are way weirder things people do, some of which even I cannot understand. E.g. watching those endless reruns of that one primal soccer match they keep rebroadcasting. Or listening to political commentators that are rich on outrage and poor on insight.
Not that easily, actually; a much bigger amount of the gas precursor would be needed for a significant lethality risk. Highly unpleasant, without doubt, though.
I did some calculations (below), as I didnât trust my first guess, and the ballpark values show fairly low lethality potential in an open stairwell. In an enclosed room of a ânormalâ size, it would be much much worse.
Try to find some solace in you being way more interesting than all the show people combined, with their minds and creativity choked by the cultural mainstream and its silly demands. If they laugh at how you look, you can laugh at what they are.
And keep doing fun stuff.
The promised chemical calculations section here:
Assume one kilogram of pure calcium hypochlorite is used, with excess of hydrochloric acid (a fiarly generous assumption). That equals 14 moles of chlorine gas, or 318 liters of undiluted gas (brrrrr!). Diluted to 400 ppm, the lethal-at-half-hour concentration (aka âbug out NOW and you will liveâ), gives 795 cubic meters. Assuming a stairwell size of 4x5 meters per floor, with 3 meters height (60 m3, again a very rough guess), it gives 13 floors of space, but it is the stairwell only. The equivalent volume is also about a third of an Olympic swimming pool. For 1000 ppm, it reduces by factor 0.4 to 5 floors. (This is a very gross oversimplification. In real situation, the gas will disperse to fairly higher volume, given the existing air currents and the stairwell not being a fully enclosed space. The concentration distribution will also be far from equilibrium, with highly dangerous at the point of production and much less so at even a couple meters distance.)
And thatâs for a generous assumption at the beginning, with pure anhydrous compound at the start. If we assume 50% concentration by weight, as thereâs the calcium chloride and unreacted lime present in the technical product, yield and contaminated volume goes down by half. More, maybe, as the tech stuff is usually a hydrate, less hazardous to work with.
We also did not count the amount of acid needed. For one mole of hypochlorite, we need 4 of hydrogen chloride. Which is about 1:1 by weight. With 38% HCl, it equals 2.6 kg, or 2.2 liters (1.2 kg/liter at this concentration), of the acid. Half so if we assume 50%-pure hypochlorite.
One kilogram of hypochlorite equals about 425 cm3, assuming pure. With the added volume of acid, it gives total of 2.6 liters. If the total volume of the bottle is one liter, and it is full, there will be only 0.4 kilograms of the hypochlorite fitting in. Which translates to only 5 stairwell floors at 400 ppm concentration. Even if we assume totally full bottle (bad idea, low headspace means fast pressure rise and short time to explosion if it is an enclosed container, or it will foam out and spill, possibly lowering yield).
Lots of assumptions and back-of-the-envelope calculations here. But you may take some ballpark values from this.
Long post is long.
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Iâm not trying to fight with you. If you donât catch the references or the fact that Iâm referring to actual things, I suggest you skip it.
It was a rhetorical question to illustrate that it doesnât matter where the chlorine was generated. The fact that there was no simple gas cylinder involved in the attack has no bearing on the potential severity of the attack. As Rube-Goldberg as this device might have been, plenty of military weapons have simple effects from complicated mechanisms. Usually because it makes the resulting widget smaller or lighter. In this case, the mechanism made it possible to smuggle the thing under a coat or in a bag to where it could do harm.
Edit: I realize now that âpowered chlorineâ was a misspelling of âpowdered chlorineâ. I do know what bleach is.
I am not picking a fight. I am brushing fingers through my beard and looking puzzled. Would appreciate a more detailed reference; assuming it is some more or less obscure cultural one?
I did some calculations. A typical lecture bottle, the smallest commonly obtainable container of such gas, typically comes with 1 lb of chlorine, or 6.4 moles of the gas, at 85 psig pressure (at 70âF, the thing is liquefied in the bottle so the pressure is very temp-dependent). It will deliver its content more reliably, and can be easier to conceal than glass jars. But it is also WAY WAY more expensive (355 GBP for this example).
The cost of half-kilogram of pure calcium hypochlorite and a bottle and half of muriatic acid will be much lower.
The lethality of either in a large and only semi-enclosed structure, with first-responders on call, is rather low. The irritability, in turn, rather high.
In-situ reaction apparatus can be about as complex as a Mason jar of powder to which a bottle of acid is emptied. Then you run away a-gigglinâ and let it sit there a-bubblinâ.
Militaries also tend to (rightfully!) frown upon complexity, as complex systems generally tend to be less reliable than simple ones.
The size of either the lecture bottle or the jar of powder and bottle of liquid make it pretty easy to transport. There are smaller things with more punch.
And if you want to do real harm, the plain old fire is always on hand; the combustible materials are usually already there in copious amounts, waiting for a gentle nudge to start a hot party, and the smoke from even a fairly small fire can be a potent asphyxiant.
