Saving Your Cyanide-Poisoned Friends With Found Items: A "Father + Bride + Betrayal" and "Fraternity of Thieves" Combo Review

I commented recently on what a gee-wiz peachy-guy character Pete Thornton was and how bellyaching I was when his reinvention as Patricia Thornton kinda burned that. Just yous know what? Having re-watched "Fraternity of Thieves" for this post, Pete's family unit did not have the aforementioned loyalties to country that he did, and if she was related to him in any way canonically, I kinda come across why they made her a mole.

Spoilers Ahead! Also this is a very chemistry-heavy post and I oasis't had a chemistry class since my freshman twelvemonth of undergrad. I did a lot of research for this and tried to make sure what I wrote was right, but if you meet annihilation that's glaringly wrong, let me know and I'll change it!

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Not what that would look like IRL^^^

Anyway, character loyalties aside, let's talk cyanide. In both episodes, a principal character is poisoned with it- In F+B+B, Riley gets injected with it, and in FoT Pete is exposed to a gas version of it (hydrogen cyanide, AKA prussic acid). In both episodes, their respective MacGyver finds or creates an antidote and uses it to relieve their life.

Way More Than You Ever Wanted to Know About Cyanide:

COMMON CYANIDE POISONING:

Mention cyanide, and most people will think of a long-used murder-mystery trope. Day-to-day, however, the most common cases of cyanide poisoning  come from fume inhalation afterward residential or industrial fires. Common solvents and plastics used in article of furniture and edifice materials, too as natural materials like wool and silk, requite off cyanide gas when burned (which is one reason you lot should be careful burning trash or unwanted furniture).

Other potentially harmful cyanide sources include amygdalin-containing foods when consumed in very big quantities (casava, stone fruit pits, apple seeds, papaya, raw nuts). Amygdalin is a natural chemical that metabolizes into cyanide in the body. Industrial chemicals cyanogen chloride and cyanogen bromide can enter the surround through chemical spills and can class cyanide when mixed with water, and a medication used for emergently loftier claret force per unit area, nitroprusside, tin besides metabolize into a clinically meaning corporeality of cyanide when used clinically.

THE Chemical science:

Chemistry-wise, hydrogen cyanide (HCN) is an organic molecule, meaning it contains carbon and other elements typically constitute in living organisms (call up that for subsequently). HCN consists of one hydrogen cantlet, which is single-bonded to 1 carbon cantlet, which is triple-bonded to one nitrogen atom. It looks something like this (white is hydrogen, black is carbon, bluish is nitrogen):

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Because these bonds make the molecule stable, it is non a threat to human being life until it breaks apart in h2o to form ions. Ions are molecules that conduct a positive or negative accuse that can attract and bond with other ions. In the case of hydrogen cyanide, the ions hydrogen (H+) and cyanide (CN-) are produced when HCN is added to h2o. It is the CN- ion that really does the damage.

Here's how: fifty-fifty removed from their H+ ions, the CN- ions still want to be stable. How to do that? Find some other available element with a like charge to hydrogen, of grade! Unfortunately for living things, CN- likes to become after fe for a rebound engagement, particularly iron in the mitochondria (the part of the cells that make usable energy out of glucose and oxygen). When CN- binds to the fe in the mitochondria, it inhibits the enzyme cytochrome c oxidase (CcOX) (think the cyanide scene from "The Unicorn and the Wasp," Whovians?), which is responsible for part of the process that turns glucose and oxygen into usable energy (the body can't use directly glucose, its too big and needs to be cleaved downwardly into smaller components). Without usable energy, the cells cannot function and begin to die.

TL;DR: when plenty cyanide is in the mix, the body tin take in and broadcast oxygen and glucose, merely can't employ them to make energy, and so cells quickly suffocate, starve, and die. If enough cells die, and then does the person.

ONSET AND SYMPTOMS:

Recollect about this as we talk about symptoms.

In F+B+B, Riley and Alonzo both appear to have no symptoms until they of a sudden get unconscious, and in Alonzo's example, dead. While this (and the fourth dimension to onset) were user-friendly for the story, cyanide has lots of crappy symptoms before expiry occurs (and probably would have occurred waaay sooner than the 80 minutes explained in the ep… unless….).

Unlike in F+B+B, it is not the size of the person that determines how fast a person dies afterward intoxication, but rather the form the cyanide takes.

Cyanide comes in four master forms. The first is hydrogen cyanide (HCN) gas, as well called prussic acid, which is what is used against Pete in FoT. HCN is also the fastest killer, with but virtually 15 seconds until onset of symptoms, and less than vi minutes until death. The second are the soluble salts, which are CN- ions paired with sodium or potassium. Sodium and potassium pause off CN- easily in the h2o in the human body, so they are the 2d fastest, and if ingested or injected, can kill within ten minutes. The third is the insoluble salts, which are CN- ions paired with larger elements like silver, gold, or copper. These have a while longer to separate from the CN-, and if I had to guess, I would say this is the kind of cyanide that killed Alonzo. Finally, nosotros take the cyanogens- the compounds that take to be metabolized in order to cause problems. These tin can take many hours to kill (the infirmary observation time for suspected cyanogen poisoning is 24 hours), and may or may not produce plenty cyanide to actually cause death.

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The physical manifestations of cyanide poisoning are, fundamentally, the symptoms of cells starving to death progressing from few cells to all of them-

  • General weakness, malaise, and collapse
  • Neurologic symptoms- Headache, vertigo, dizziness, giddiness, inebriation, defoliation, generalized seizures, coma
  • Gastrointestinal symptoms - Intestinal pain, nausea, airsickness
  • Cardiopulmonary symptoms - Shortness of breath, chest pain, apnea

ANTIDOTES (AND EPISODE Discussion):

So you've slogged through all that science, time to talk about even more science! … I hateful, what happened in the episodes. Let'due south talk FoT first. In the episode, Mac runs to a conveniently nearby photo impress shop, fills a newspaper cup with a mixture of photo fixer and (possibly, its hard to tell exactly) water, and has Pete, who until this point has been lying mostly unconscious on the floor, drink it.

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Now, this isn't wholly as absurd equally it looks on paper. Sodium thiosulfate is (was?) used in photography to "fix" an prototype in a newly developed photograph by removing the remaining silverish halide from a photographic print. Another thing sodium thiosulfate is really good at is reacting with CN- to form a compound called thiocyanate. Thiocyanate is significantly less toxic than directly-up CN-, so information technology can laissez passer out of the body more harmlessly.

So the idea is, Mac gave Pete sodium thiosulfate photograph logroller, which bound up the cyanide in his torso and saved him. As much as I would love to believe it was this easy, information technology wasn't. Sodium thiosulfate really is used as a cyanide antidote, but is usually given IV, and drinking photograph fixer wouldn't have worked fast enough (if at all) to save him (remember hydrogen cyanide would have but taken 6 minutes to kill Pete, and he'd take been too unconscious to beverage after nigh 30 seconds). Too, thiosulfate antidotes are some of the slower-working ones overall, and even when given IV, they're administered with faster antidotes that do the piece of work of saving the person, while sodium thiosulfate comes in and kind of cleans up whatever remaining cyanide.

Ironically (and tumblr biochemistry and photography people check me on this) dicobalt-EDTA can be one of these faster-working antidotes, and a similar chemical, ferrous-EDTA, is besides used in photography. It even so wouldn't have worked because the route was oral (likewise slow) and there would have been fiddling or no way to measure out the verbal quantities of these chemicals (possibly making it ineffective or too toxic), merely it's worth noting. This also could take been what Mac mixed with the sodium thiosulfate in the episode (I assumed information technology was water, merely you can't really see). Also, kudos to these writers who figured this out without internet. Bravo.

Now onto F+B+B. What I think Mac is trying to do in the episode is create a drug called sulfanegen . Currently this is in the animal trials phase of testing (where does Mac get the time to read all these periodical manufactures?? Or does he just really like hanging out with the pharmacology/biochem peeps at the Phoenix Foundation? Nerd.). Sulfanegen is a prodrug to a chemical called iii-Mercaptopyruvate, part of an enzyme called 3-mercaptopyruvate sulfertransferase, which really does, equally stated in the episode, deed every bit a style to intermission down cyanide in homo tissue. The idea is, you lot make the body make a lot of 3-MP and promise the body makes a lot of the 3-MPST enzyme from it, which turns the cyanide into thiocyanate, which can and so be more safely excreted.

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I don't know the chemistry behind how he fabricated it, and I don't know why the blood was necessary. If you do, please reblog and let me know. What he did in the episode looked kinda stupidly dangerous, but once again, I'm no chemist.

And, as usual, he didn't need to make an experimental drug out of cleaning supplies in a kitchen. Mac theoretically had a room full of people at his disposal. And since 2-4 percent of the population in western countries has diagnosed stable angina, it wouldn't exist a stretch to assume someone in that room was conveying amyl nitrite.

Amyl nitrite is an emergency drug for people who experience stable angina- chest hurting that is not a center attack. When breathed, it widens blood vessels, assuasive more claret to get to the centre muscle, which relieves chest pain. It also changes some of the body's hemoglobin (usually a little less than 10%) into methemoglobin, which is something cyanide likes to demark to more it likes to demark to CcOX. While boosted treatment is usually needed, this tin keep the CN- ions decorated until the person can get to medical care and can get other antidotes, like IV hydroxycobalamin or sodium thiosulfate.

I would similar to point out that the idea of spraying the last mixture (if it had actually been a thing) upward her nose with a spray bottle *might* have been a decent idea. In that location would take been no existent safe fashion to give an IV med without preparation (especially ane you just made on a stove in a non-sterile container), and considering rectal isn't a particularly TV-friendly road of administration, nasal was probably his best bet hither. I'm pretty certain they got this idea from the opioid antitoxin naloxone, which is widely available every bit a nasal spray.

Okay, that was a lot of chemical science, so thanks for sticking around to the end! Hope you enjoyed!

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