I was wondering, where do spies get those little cyanide pills we see in the movies or people use to commit suicide ala Francis Gary Powers (who declined, apparently) Goering, et al. What company makes them, are they expensive, are they legal for “civilians” etc etc… ?? I’m quite happy with living, thank you, but I was just wondering.
From what I recall from his autobiography, Francis Gary Powers didn’t have cyanide capsules, he had a little pin with curare on it. Stab it in your leg, and your muscles are paralyzed and your breathing ceases.
Cyanide is a generic chemical. Any chemist could make cyanide capsules.
Well, okay. That sounds right, but is there a commercial version? Where does one obtain Cyanide, the local Walgreens? (I’m jesting, of course)
What is it used for besides offing oneself?
Cyanide is useful in the extraction of precious metals from ore. Specifically, potassium cyanide combines with gold to form an ion which can be recovered later through electrolysis. Potassium cyanide salts are also useful in gas chamber executions. Don’t try this at home, kids.
As far as where to pick up a batch, I am sure that the substance is tightly controled and that Federal (EPA) regulations must require manufacturing plants to posess certain licenses in order to receive shipments for the work they perform. However, this site says:
Scary.
First you ask this, then you ask if there are weapons on the Space Shuttle…Just what the hell are you planning? 
Cyanide is easy to get. I have a huge jar of one of the most toxic cyanide compounds, I use it to make cyanotype photographic prints. I’ve had the same jar for many years, I bought it when I was about 16, and I had no trouble getting it. But I’m not going to tell you how or where to get any.
There’s really nothing special about cyanide - it’s a chemical just like any other. Potassium cyanide KCN, for example, forms white crystals that look rather like salt or sugar. You can pick up 500 grams for $69.60, although sale is restricted.
I believe what Chas.E uses to make cyanotype prints is potassium ferricyanide K[sub]3[/sub]Fe(CN)[sub]6[/sub], which forms orange to red crystals. It’s not quite as toxic in and of itself as KCN, but contact with acid will liberate hydrogen cyanide gas. A kilogram of the stuff goes for $118.89 and, yes, sale is restricted.
In the future, when discussing lethal substances, you should take more care to avoid the specifics. When I say “a cyanide compound,” that is perfectly sufficient for purposes of discussion, it is not necessary to tell people the exact chemical compounds or how to turn it into deadly gas. Shame on you.
In any case, you are incorrect. I could have a 5 pound container of the this chemical delivered to my doorstep by UPS, total cost $47, just by giving a credit card, with no restrictions and no questions asked. I am not going to say how, it is not the purpose of SDMB to deliver recipes for chemical weapons, nor where to get the ingredients.
ChasE. – it’s not potassium ferricyanide? hmmm… you have me intrigued. I’ve never heard of anything else being used for cyanotyping? sodium ferricyanide?
anyhow, i understand your concern about terminus’ post, but, really, this stuff ain’t secret. i was handed a bottle of potassium ferricyanide by my chemistry teacher in high school. Potassium ferricyanide itself is almost completely harmless and I personally don’t remember sale of it being restricted.
Sodium cyanide(NaCN) is also used much in the same way as Potassium cyanide - extraction of silver and gold from ore, electroplating, heat treatment of metals, etc. This is stuff that’s extremely hazardous on its own. Not ferricyanide.
As far as the acid and ferricyanide bit goes, I’m glad to know it. I’ve never heard anyone warn me about mixing the two, and god knows what would happen if i spilled stop bath (acetic acid) into a pool of ferricyanide solution. My guess is not much. Maybe cough and gag, but I doubt it’d kill me in an instant. Even with a stronger acid, I somehow doubt it would have that toxic of an effect. But you’re more the chemist than I, so you’d know better.
(p.s. I’m still intrigued by the cyanotyping. Got a web page with pix? E-mail them to me.)
K[sub]3[/sub]Fe(CN)[sub]6[/sub], potassium hexacyanoferrate (III)…lets hope it’s more than almost completely harmless as I’m pretty sure that it’s used as an anti-caking agent in common salt for food use.
No, it is potassium ferricyanide, I meant he’s incorrect about it being a controlled substance and hard to get. I use a whole panoply of heavily toxic chemicals in some of the antique photo processes I work with, including other cyanides, chromiums, etc. and excuse me if I don’t get too specific, for reasons I have already stated. Cyanide compounds make great bleaches and fixers for certain processes, if you know how to handle them safely. I spend a lot of work trying to neutralize these chems before disposal, and I always try to work with the minimum amounts of chemicals necessary. One of the neutralizers I use is so toxic, it can’t be handled safely without a completely sealed environment, like a glove box! I don’t use that process very much, it is too much of a pain in the ass.
Anyway, I’ve gotten a lot of lab equipment and chems through various sources, and while some of them gave me a few dirty looks and probably thought I was a drug dealer, nobody ever refused to sell anything to me, even chems that I could easily have used for evil purposes. Not even when I was a little kid. Not even when I bought syringes with needles to measure miniscule amounts of chems. Hey, does anyone besides me remember Agfa Rodinal, which could only be dispensed with a syringe?
Alas, I don’t have any images online, one of my pet theories about my art is that my images use special effects that must be seen firsthand, the best effects are not visible in reproduction. I work with lots of metallic effects and there is just no way to reproduce these.
Anyway, as you said, this stuff isn’t exactly a secret, but it is sort of a trade secret. Anyone who has a legitimate need to work with these chems will have no problems getting ahold of them through sources in the industry. But IMHO it isn’t a good idea to give out detailed information about purchasing toxic chemicals through a mass medium like SDMB.
Cyanide compounds aren’t invariably extremely dangerous. Every chemistry kit I had as a kid include sodium ferrocyanide – you use it to make Prussian Blue (mix a solution of it with a solution of Ferric Ammonium Sulfate) among other things.
One of my grad school advisors used to have vast quantities of crystals containing cyanide (heck, my doctoral thesis was on spectroscopy of cyanide ions in alkali halides). One day a visitor asked how dangerous it was. My advisor licked the crystal.
Oh, BTW, I remember being handed a bottle of a certain cyanide compound by my high school chem teacher. Except this bottle was marked “Substance X” and we were supposed to figure out what it was through chemical testing. Some idiot (not me!) tried to determine its max saturation point in water, which was a REALLY stupid idea, we had to evacuate the lab once the teacher caught the scent of almonds. That lesson was cancelled.
if you go here You can pull down a material safety sheet on potassium ferricyanide. It seems much safer than many other things lying around the house, like lye and clorox. But, you’re right, you do have to be careful not to inhale it. It doesn’t say how much of the stuff you have to inhale (I imagine a lot,) but coma and death are listed as a “health effect.” I’ve only used it once or twice (to bleach a severely overexposed neg) and managed to get a solution of it all over my hands with not much more than a little itching.
I never really thought of potassium ferricyanide as much of a trade secret even, but I understand your point. Most books on darkroom basics or printing will mention it, and not even in the context of cyanotyping, but simply as a bleach.
Chas.E, I understand your point about not discussing lethal substances in too much detail and I admit I could have been a bit more circumspect. But anyone with half a brain (like me) can type in “cyanotype” into a search engine and get full details on the process, including chemicals to use and precautions to take. As pulykamell pointed out, potassium ferricyanide isn’t particularly dangerous, even when compared to certain other common household substances. LD50 for rats is 2970 mg/kg, compared to potassium cyanide which is 5mg/kg.
As to the price, I was looking at a catalog that offered reagent-grade chemicals. The markup for purification and analysis is incredible. Really pure potassium ferricyanide goes for $174.15/500g. Heck, this is a place that will sell you 500g of ultra-pure, analyzed-up-the-wazoo sucrose for $323.10. And sale on that appears to be restricted as well.
I used to work for a small family-owned chain of jewelry stores and happened to spend most of my time in the store that had onsite jewellers.
They had a jar of the stuff for electroplating, though I never saw them use it.
Chas, once you smell the bitter almonds, wouldn’t you need to get some sort of medical treatment? :eek:
And Cal, is there anything you DON’T DO? Sheesh.
Apparently not. There wasn’t much gas, but the teacher yelled for everyone to RUN and evacuate, while he stayed behind and opened up all the windows. The biggest injury seemed to be the bruised ego of a militant jewish kid in our class who started making a squawk about “gassing the jews again.”
Well, that itching should tell you something. I tend to take more precautions than necessary, and tend to disbelieve in any alleged safety. When you work with multiple chems, I don’t believe in any safe level of exposure. When I was first studying alternative photo processes, in the days before MSDS, the teacher showed us one process that he claimed was so safe you could mix it on your kitchen dishes. So that’s exactly what I did. It was only after doing this for 15 years that I discovered an MSDS that declared one of the ingredients was highly toxic, and I had probably been gradually poisoning myself for years. Now I take extreme precautions when I handle EVERYTHING.
For all my suicide-by-cyanide needs, I use Betty Crocker brand Cyanide, available at your finer grocery stores next to the blueberry muffin mix.
Plenty of things, Sue. Poetry, for one. I’ve read my poetry. It’s not pretty.