According to urban legend, while garlic oil is harmless when consumed, it is lethal if it gets into your bloodstream. Supposedly, this is why the mafia used to(?) coat their bullets in garlic oil, so if the shot was off-center and hit your shoulder or something it would kill you anyways. I was wondering if anyone could explain the truths (or lack thereof) based on your existing knowledge or devise all sort of scientific/pseudoscientific experiments so that myself and others like me can rest easier at night.
I’m sure that pretty much any oil would be harmful if it was introduced into your bloodstream in quantity, however, this one sound false because:
-How much oil could you deliver that way? If it was just a case of dipping the bullets in oil, most of it is going to be lost before it hits the target.
-How effective is this in delivering a substance to the bloodstream? A bullet wound disrupts blood vessels, so the tendency would be that the substance was flushed away from the bloodstream, rather than into it.
-Garlic oil?! Why? If the purpose of this was to render non-fatal bullet wounds more dangerous, surely there are better substances and techniques that could be used.
Botulism itself isn’t dangerous as a live pathogen, it’s the toxins it produces when it reproduces (which requires anaerobic conditions). Again, I would have thought a bullet would be an entirely unsuitable delivery method for botulism toxin.
I did a quick bit of googling and I can’t find anything definitive; it may be that people actually did dip their bullets in garlic juice, however, it seems doubtful that this would be effective; even the claim that garlic juice is a fatal poison in the blood seems dubious; otherwise we’d have chefs dropping dead on a regular basis when they cut themselves preparing the stuff.
Recently saw an episode of ‘Mythbusters’ where they dis-proved the civil war story of the woman who got pregant by being shot in the stomach by a bullet that had passed through a soldier’s testicle. Seemed the heat produced by firing the bullet destroyed all organic matter on it. Wouldn’t this be true of garlic oil, or for that matter any organic poison?
That’s interesting! If I recall correctly, the LD50 of nicotine isn’t far off that of potassium cyanide.
There’s plenty of lethal toxins that could be used in this manner - nicotine, cyanide salts, aconite, curare, thallium. I’d bet on any of them before garlic oil. It’s also highly debatable as to how good a coated bullet is as a poison delivery system.
That said, criminals are notoriously stupid, and as likely to believe an urban legend as anyone else. If they can think lemon juice renders you invisible to security cameras, they could well believe that garlic oil is an effective bullet toxin.
That’s not the conclusion I drew from that demonstration. They shot through a “bag of genetic material” suspended halfway between the gun and target. I think they only demonstrated that this is not a very effective method of depositing such material on the bullet.
I had a friend that was allegedly in some special Army unit (I doubt it personally, but one hesitates to be dogmatic) that did ‘special’ missions, and he said that the combination lead and garlic would yield “septic poisoning.”
FWIW
This claim frequently comes up as one of the “sooper sekret ninja death training” things that people who claim to have been in Vietnam, in the Navy Seals, in “Special Ops”, in the Order of Shao-Lin Assassins, and numerous other secret societies will tout. Generally, hearing it is my first clue that the person is possibly a fake, and as it happens the first time I heard this was from a “Vietnam sniper” who of course never entered the service. Preliminary research I did on this to assist with a potential future report showed no evidence or mechanism that was believable for garlic oil to be effectively introduced to a person via gunshot, or to make any difference in the wound upon impact. Remember, we’re talking about at best a microscopic film remaining on the bullet after the stress of firing and barrel travel, the flight through the air, and impact - and the effect of blood flow washing out over the wound and cleansing it somewhat. Perhaps micrograms of garlic may enter the body and remain in at best.
It is very likely that it’s like an “evil eye” or “lottery ticket” phenomena, where people only remember positive (to them) outcomes, ignoring negative ones and any other extenuating circumstances leading to the positive outcome.
The KGB experimented with poison bullets. From what I remember reading, they started with what was essentially a more-or-less convential hollow point bullet and then filled the cavity with various toxic substances. I remember cyanide being mentioned specifically, but nothing about garlic. Importantly, note that their bullets were filled with poison, not coated with it.
My understanding is that garlic is a very effective antibiotic and general disinfectant therefore any botulism-based plot connected to it seems like a royally bad idea. There are plenty of other organic substances I’d go with before garlic.
Unless your target is naked, the bullet is more likely than not to go through clothing before hitting the subject. Clothing ought to wipe off anything coating the bullet. Some poisons, like cyanide, are dangerous even on clothing because they can be absorbed through the skin; but garlic oil obviously doesn’t kill this way, or Italian cooks would have the life expectancy of fruit flies.
Speaking of cooks, if garlic oil is that lethal, what would happen to people who cut themselves while chopping garlic?
**Scumpup ** is right about the KGB experimenting with poison-filled projectiles, but the only one they ever actually used, to my knowledge at least, was a miniscule titanium pellet filled with ricin and fired from a modified umbrella into the leg of exiled dissident Georgi Markov. It worked.
On an episode of Good Eats, Alton Brown said that you shouldn’t try to make your own garlic oil because of the danger of botulism. Basil oil: okay. Rosemary oil: no problem. Garlic oil: DANGER! I don’t know if there’s any connection to the mafia thing, though.
You didn’t, LD50 of Nicotine is about 50mg total (.5-1mg/kg) about 10mg for children.
, interesting fact - there’s about this much nicotine in a couple of cigarettes or a cigar, I have a BIG jar of the stuff at work and use this much about once a week.
I don’t know much about garlic so WAG’ing ahead, I’m pretty sure that it can destroy blood cells, and that people with some forms of anaemia are supposed to avoid it. I can also vaguely remember hearing something about it being dangerous for kids and pets.
To be honest it wouldn’t suprise if garlic oil had a suprisingly low LD50 when applied IV, the key with many of these substances is that they aren’t very toxic orally and it’s actually pretty hard to inject yourself accidentally with even quite small amounts. I’d of thought the bullet thing was bullshit though and if garlic oil was TOO toxic I’d have thought there would be a lot of problems with skin absorbtion.
If we’re talking about the same thing, it’s Alton Brown that has the problem. If making garlic oil was dangerous some way, half of Thailand woul’d be dead by now.
Seriously, my wife makes this stuff all the time. She’s burned herself occasionally as the oil has to be quite hot. Aside from that though, nothing.
