Well, as you were (if I recall correctly) the first to bring up Africa in relation to gassing attacks, it would have been on your head to offer any evidence of it happening. If this were a discussion about conditions in much of Africa, we would have “educated” anyone misinformed on the subject.
I have been whacked on the head a couple times, and I can definitely say that stunning followed by vomiting from the concussion is pretty common. [kids screwing around with baseball bat and I turned and walked into a swing, and once getting thrown by a horse into a tree. Neither one knocked me entirely out but both stunned me, concussed me and made me hurk profusely. And I had massive headaches, coordination issues, concentration issues, short term aphasia issues and vision issues for several weeks afterwards. Trust me, getting whacked in the head is not something you can just get up and shrug off if it is hard enough to incapacitate you long enough to rob a house/vehicle.]
I think in the case of the truck drivers or solo travelers in cars someone roofied them. Perhaps even in the case of bus or train travel as well. I may be paranoid when I travel long distances alone, but I drink only bottled water that I open myself, and since McDonalds type fast food gives me digestive issues, I tend to just bring my own food for the trip. I am also very careful to avoid being totally alone in bathroom only type rest areas at night. [I have been known to just pee behind a bush somewhere in the middle of nowhere, I don’t need plumbing:)]
Because they can probably identify you to the police if you let them all live?
As often, there’s acracked article on this:
So yes, it does sound true.
I recall reading an article about John Wayne Gacey. On of his victims was an adult who eventually got away. Gacey clamped a rag soaked in chloroform over his mouth and, yes, the guy passed out. The article mentioned that from that episode, the victim several years later still had liver damage from the chloroform. Once again, it’s not a magical “knock you out and leave no trace” solution.
From Wikipedia:
I’m very happy to see you acknowledging the original tale to be nothing more than a rumor.
Ether is a liquid at room temperature, albeit with a decent vapor pressure. Ether’s use as a surgical anaesthetic may have been the basis for the original rumor, but if I did my homework correctly (see post #88), then it’s highly unlikely that any burglar has ever used the stuff as described in the OP (i.e. attempting to anaesthetize an entire household full of people). It would be too costly (burglary by this method would be unprofitable in most cases) and would present serious logistical difficulties, one of the more serious being the risk of blowing the house to bits.
I seem to be running into a wall. Can any Dopers with better Fortean files or search skills find whether there are any “Mad Gasser” type reports prior to the 1930s?
Gee, maybe these robbers should consider wearing a mask?
Sems like that would be considerably easier (& cheaper) than carrying around tanks of gas.
Your faith in your friends notwithstanding, neither law enforcement nor the medical profession is aware of a gas that is cheap enough, portable enough, effective enough and safe enough to be profitable on the scale that you’re suggesting. If I’m in error, please fight my ignorance.
5mg of oral Ambien, OTOH, would do the job nicely, as would, oh, I dunno, half a dozen others, some of which would only show up on a CSI level tox screen, if there.
My resolve is weakening, I was hoping no one would notice.
Ok, I had asked my friend to speak to her father and perhaps get more details about what happened. She didn’t return an email I can quote, instead she gave me a call tonight to speak about a few other things, and told me the story then. I will recount it as best I can. There is nothing any more conclusive than before, really, but I will recount it and people can take from it what they will.
I am going to call her father Bob, just so I dont have to keep writing, “her father”.
So the facts of the night are:
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Bob was to stop at a truck stop in France. He ran late and got there at around 10pm. For this reason, he did not get any food or drink from a cafe or vender, he just ate some lunch he had in the cab and turned in for the night.
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Before turning in, he placed chains from door to door, securing the cab from anybody getting inside.
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At around 2am, the driver in the truck next to him was awoken by some noise. He looked out and saw two men at the door of Bobs truck. He disturbed them and they ran off carrying some equipment.
I pushed my friend on this issue, what were they carrying? She could not say, for reasons you will understand in a minute. -
The driver tried to wake Bob, without any success. The other driver joined him, and they broke the door window and climbed in. Inside, they found Bob completely unconscious.
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The Police were alerted and Bob was brought, still unconscious, to hospital. He regained consciousness at around 6.30am, and maintained no knowledge whatsoever of what had occured during the night.
Misc reports:
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Subsequent checks of the truck itself showed signs of attempted entry at both the sunroof and the drivers door, though it seems nobody was able to get in.
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By all accounts the police informed the drivers that they suspected gas being used, and that this was the third such incidence of this type of attempted robbery at this truck stop in the recent past … (she didn’t know what timeframe) They also suspected it was a Russian gang* (those crazy Russians)*
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He did not recall exactly what he was told at the hospital, save that a blood test showed unusually high levels of an “Oxide”. (vague yes, but for all his charms, he is not the type to retain knowledge of medical terms)
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Apparently some form of narrow pipe was found at the scene. *(I again pushed my friend on this, it seems very convienent. The problem of course is that her father himself was unconscious at this point, so he is relying on what the other drivers have told him.) *
So thats the story of the man I know that was gassed by Russian thieves. I am under no illusions regarding it, there are very few conclusive details to convince the skeptics. I can vouch for the people involved, but it is damaging that Bob was unconscious for the majority of the event, and so details are sketchy at best.
So be it, make your own mind up.
So Bob was in France - does Bob speak French fluently, or was all this conversion further down in English? Was English the native language of the other truckers? Because otherwise I highly doubt the accuracy of claims repeated over two sources coming from non-native speakers.
No, I don’t understand that reason at all. First, the problem is that this story is still not from the source (Bob) but through another person. Bob is who you should have gotten the report from.
Second, friend claims Bob says (see the multiple levels where misunderstandings and inaccuriecies can creep in?) that the police was called. French police are not incompetent, despite the jokes some Americans make about them. Police would secure the scene. They would write a report and give a copy to Bob. Where is that report?
Was the report translated for Bob before he signed it? Or could he understand it in French?
Did he contact his consulate, as is customary when in a foreign country dealing with police, to be sure of translators and lawyer help?
So where is the report from the hospital? The written one, not what your friend says Bob told her that some person in the hospital told him.
Did Bob speak French in the hospital, or were things translated into English for him? Medical terms are very specialized and difficult to translate for layspeakers, therefore easy to misunderstand. And then there are false friends in two closely related languages like French and English.
What your friend told what Bob told her that the police told the drivers (see the levels here? Like the telephone game!) isn’t as convincing as one official statement or report or something.
Bob’s truck’s windows were smashed in and he was taken to the hospital, so he needs to report this to the insurance, right? And they want to see the police report. The hospital will also want to bill his health insurance, since he won’t be covered like an EU citizen. So there should be two official documents with official terms, instead of vague chains of what was told-re-told-garbled -misunderstood-translated-confused. Esp. in the middle of the night.
Nobody expects Bob to retain medical special terms in the middle of the night in a foreign country. But Bob can ask for aftereffects, for a written lab report, and something the hospital must have written for billing the insurance. So where’s the paperwork with proper medical names?
He shouldn’t have to rely on that, he should have the police report.
The question isn’t whether you “can vouch” for your friend or Bob himself: if you weren’t there, you don’t know what happened.
I can as easily tell you another story that fits the same facts:
Bob sleeps in a foreign country where he doesn’t speak the language. The other truckers see that he’s paranoid from the chains on his doors. They decide to break in or have some fun playing a practical joke. Forcing the lock doesn’t work, so they break the window in the middle of the night and tell him that “somebody” was gassing him and trying to break in.
The police arrives and talks to the other truckers (did Bob understand that conversation? What nationality were the other truckers also French, English-native speakers, Poles, Italians …?) Bob is taken to a hospital, nothing found. Police searches the place, finds nothing / only a pipe. Prank succeeds at the cost of scratched door locks and busted windshield.
Fits all the reported facts. We don’t know what Bob experienced; and moreover, it’s quite easy for people to misinterpret and misunderstand what happenes. Esp. in the middle of the night in a foreign country with a language barrier. Humans are pattern-seeking, we see designs and stories in random jumbles. And Bob was already worried, hence the chains, so very prone to believing random stuff or a bullshit story given to him.
If you want to establish credency, talk to Bob and get the documents from him from the Police and the hospital. Until then, nothing is credible about this story besides that a trucker called Bob here was in France one nigh.
I’m not even bothering with all your first questions. Where is the hospital report? Oh I have it, I am saving for the court case!!! Did Bob understand the police? Bob was unconscious remember!!! Did Bob speak the language? I wonder if many French people can speak English? Nah thats just crazy talk. Report on his insurance? Health insurance? HAHAHAHAHA.
For fun though, where does Bobs four hour blackout fit into the driver prank hypothetical? The power of suggestive thinking?
Seriously, I have no idea why you got a hard on to parse the story line by line. I make no claim that it is hard evidence or anything but an anecdote, and here you are asking for the police report. Well sure, I will fax it right to you. You do speak French, right?
Mods, if my telling of this story is out of line, could we move this to IMHO?
Actually, last time I was in France, probably 25% of the generic people I ran across spoke a bit of English. Many more in proportion that Americans I run across here speaking French. As to unconscious, obviously he woke up at some point, or we would be discussing a murder happening. And yes, he would have a police report and a hospital release form stating what he was in for, and billing, and all sorts of interesting stuff. He would have been given them so he could file a claim with his insurance carrier to ge the window replacement paid for and possibly even the hospitalization.
Let me see, Bob was driving, it was late at night, he was tired. He ate some leftovers and took a nap. 4 hours is not an untoward time of napping. Being tired, you can sleep through a lot of random noises. Drivers have [at least in the US] a requirement of a certain number of hours of nondriving time in their day. I can see a couple bored drivers noticing the guy sleeping and deciding to play a prank.
Oddly enough, I do. But then for an American I am weird.No fax machine, but you can scan it in and pop the document up in photobucket. I don’t mind anecdotes.
I doubt very much somebody having a nap sleeps through being lifted from his cab to another vehicle and driven to hospital for medical attention.
Maybe it was just a really sweet dream about French nurses..
This is still pretty much at the level of rumor. si_blakely is right about this:
The whole story about robbers gassing people is still extremely hard to believe.
Even if we take the second- or third-hand account of Bob’s adventure at face value, and believe that he, indeed, was unconscious for several hours…
He’s sleeping overnight in a truck…alongside other trucks. Many truck drivers who sleep in their trucks leave the engines idling overnight. Could the “oxide” in question be carbon monoxide? If he was suffering from carbon monoxide poisoning (likely completely unrelated to the putative goons who were trying to break into his truck), would that explain his unconsciousness?
I think this might be the most likely answer…although, for some reason, I’m under the impression that diesel fuel doesn’t create CO when it burns…can someone with more engine knowledge confirm/deny?
But the fact is, there are NO, absolutely NO, gasses that have these magic properties gassing-proponents seem to describe. It’s been said before, but it bears repeating: if there was some gas that was cheap enough for thieves to use, easy to obtain, and safe enough that someone without medical training or complex equipment could administer it just willy nilly and it would only put the victims to sleep and have no chance of either not being effective, or killing them, it would be used IN EVERY SINGLE OPERATING ROOM IN THE GOD DAMN WORLD!!
Did that last point get through? It bears repeating…it would be used ALL THE FUCKING TIME ANY TIME SOMEONE HAD ANY SURGERY!
There are essentially four anesthetic gasses in common use today: isoflurane, sevoflurane, desflurane, and nitrous oxide. A few places, most likely in rural/third-world areas, might use halothane and/or enflurane. Seeing as all of these *-thane agents are halogenated ethers, they have similar properties; none of which can be in any terms described as safe, easy to use, or cheap and easy to obtain.
The safest, cheapest, and easiest to obtain of these would be nitrous, N[sub]2[/sub]O, but even that doesn’t have these magical properties the gassers use. It’s a very mild anesthetic on its own. Even if it’s used as the ‘sole’ anesthetic agent, it’s almost always coupled with injected medications, like propofol, morphine, lidocaine, etc…
But even if an anesthesiologist is only using nitrous, they are delivering it through a calibrated anesthesia machine. It is giving a known amount, at a known rate, and the anesthesia machine and associated equipment are monitoring the patient, giving crucial information like blood gas levels, heart rate, blood pressure, etc…
Basically, what I’m saying is, if anyone says they are gasses, they are full of shit. Maybe they don’t know they are full of shit, they might legitimately think it happened to them, but it didn’t.
Just reread, didn’t see anything saying that he was out while being lifted out of the truck.
And oxides in the blood … he could have gassed himself if the motor was still running and there was a small exhaust gas leak. People kill themselves that way and it would leave some sort of residue in the blood. Comprendez-vous ‘carbon monoxide’?
Something like that sounds more likely.
But Bob wouldn’t necessarily have police reports or hospital reports. I’ve never had a police report given to me for any crime that’s happened to me, and France has universal healthcare; sometimes they do bill the insurance companies of foreign nationals, but the individual wouldn’t really see any of that.
While carbon monoxide poisoning does seem more plausible than some magic gas, please consider that this man will, in effect, live out of that cab for days/weeks at a time. If there were some trouble with the night heater emitting a gas it would surely be a reoccurring problem, no?
Just to clarify, the engine will not be running all night. A piece of equipment called a night heater provides heat for the drivers comfort. I am trying to find specs on it, and what it runs on, though I believe it is electrical powered and runs of the batteries.