Garlic oil and the Mafia?

Factual Questions
21

I doubt it. Garlic extract has been tested many times and has pretty low toxicity even injected
LD50=60 mg/kg ivn mus SHT; 120 mg/kg scu mus
http://www.21stcenturyradio.com/articles/1018042.html

  • e.g. a human would need grammes of it. You would need to fill the bullet, not just coat it
22

I imagine that if you used a high enough dose, say 10 or 12 bullets covered with it, it would be fatal.

Could one make a Garlic Grenade? A scampi bayonet? How effective would it be in hand-to-clove combat?

23

Of course if you get shot 10-12 times with bullets covered in, say, distilled water it’s also likely to be fatal…

24

Found this on bullet temperatures… seems like not many organic coatings will survive that.
http://www.indigosystems.com/PDF/articles/R&D_article.pdf
Botulism is killed at 250F so that’s out the window.
Garlic coated dynamite is nearly always fatal however.

25

That’s what I was going to say - it only works with holy water & undead, or garlic and vampires - creatures that are hurt by even a little.

(Anaamika, who is knee-deep in a paranormal RPG on the weekends.)

26

Roast garlic oil is fine, it’s only raw garlic oil that is a problem. As mentioned above, botulism is killed by heat.

27

Nonsense, it’s the only way for the ordinary public to come anywhere close to the true gourmet experience of garlic thermonuclear devices; they’re so tasty, you won’t know you’re dead.

28

Just because it doesn’t work does not mean that people think it doesn’t work.

29

I once met a Vietnam Vet when I was very young (probably around 13) and he was regaling me with cool war stories one night. Anyways, he mentioned that they would break old thermometers and make cross-notches in the tips of their bullets with their bayonets and dip them in the mercury from the thermometer. He claimed they were lethal if they even grazed the enemy.

Any veracity to this claim?

30

:smack:

Thanks

Testy

31

Garlic does not equal botulism. Spores of clostridium botulinum are quite common in soil and they’re small enough to blow around and become airborne. I wouldn’t be surprised if they are very commonly found in pretty much any cold-pressed vegetable oil.

32

The claim about him being a Vet and tham actually doing this? I don’t know but I’m skeptical.

The claim about this being lethal? No veracity. First of all, as pointed out in the thread, bullets are a little more violent than a careful needle injection, so they generally result in quantities of blood leaving the circulatory system, not in material being inserted into the circulatory system.
I presume even if the bullet somehow did deliver it, injected mercury would act similarly to inhaled or ingested mercury, which is a long-term poison and won’t make you drop dead instantly (it will make you stupid/crazy/full of nervous tics long before you ever die).
Bottom line: doing this to your bullets won’t hurt the enemy much but it will increase your chances of brain damage significantly from all the mercury you inhale while dipping, handling bullets, etc.

33

Y’know LEAD is poisonous, but people don’t drop dead just because a lead bullet grazes them. Mercury is poisonous too. But mercury isn’t a deadly poison. Back in the days before antibiotics people used to rub mercury into syphlis lesions, they used to drink the stuff, it was in all kinds of snake oil patent medicines. I’m sure a lot of people got sick and had their lives shortened from mercury exposure. But you don’t drop dead from contact with mercury.

That said, just because it doesn’t work doesn’t mean people didn’t do it.

34

RE: Mercury in bullets.
This is one of the urban legends of gun lore that won’t go away. It’s even been used in a couple of movies, the first version of The Day of the Jackal for one. The idea is that one fills a hollow point bullet with mercury and then seals it with molten lead or wax. Upon impact, the mercury is supposed to cause violent expansion of the slug and then droplets of mercury are supposed to behave like zillions of tiny secondary projectiles. There are two problems:

  1. Mercury very readily forms an amalgam with lead. IOW, the mercury immediately begins dissolving the bullet you put it in. Short term, this means incredibly poor accuracy. A bit longer term, it means your ammo self-destructs.
  2. Mercury, in even tiny amounts, is very quickly destructive to aluminum. Aluminum is used extensively in a great many modern firearms. Thus, your ammo, if not perfectly sealed will destroy your gun. Perfect seals are unlikely, given #1.

Anyhow, a buddy of mine tried this with some .22lr hollowpoint ammo when we were in high school. He was inspired by the 1st television showing of The Day of the Jackal. He used mercury “borrowed” from the high school chem lab. The results disappointed him. The mercury-laden bullets were no more destructive on various varmints than the conventional hollowpoints and the decreased accuracy made hits more difficult.