Anybody know how hot canisters of tear gas get?
I’m seeing guys on the news who appear to be picking up the smoking canisters and holding on to them for a while while they run around.
Just idle curiosity.
Why would they be hot? They are expelling pressurised gas. I would have expected them to be cold enough to develop frost on the outside, just like any other gas canister if it’s emptied fast.
Interesting. I assumed they were just pressurised gas canisters.
Anyone have any idea what the advantage of a hot dispersal is?
Tear gas is a solid:
You learn something new every day.
For some reason assumed tear gas was, you know, a gas.:smack:
Tear gas is a fine powder. A cloud of it in the air doesn’t necessarily all blow away – some of it settles onto the ground, where it may remain as little whitish patches here and there.
I was in Berkeley in the early 1970’s, which was after the worst of the student rioting was over, but there was still a little bit of that going on. There were patches of tear gas laying about on the ground for weeks after each riot. If you walked across campus, you would sometimes step in them and stir it up a bit.
The tear gas also kills a lot of the vegetation too. The landscaping around campus was badly damaged in a lot of spots.
Need answer fast?
I hope not. But my curiosity is still idling.
It’s not a pressurized container. It can’t go off accidently, it has to be ignited. The smoke it emits it also part of the effect, obscuring vision even at a distance. And it doesn’t disperse as easily as other gases might.
Also, I don’t know what kind of gas could do the same job, but still be filtered out by a mask without a seperate oxygen supply. I’ve been in the middle of a tear gas cloud, it’s nasty stuff.
Just FYI, nerve gas isn’t a gas either.
Supposedly, tear gas containers started the fire that got the majority of the Symbionese Liberation Army in LA back in 1974.
Forgot to address the OP before. A tear gas canister is like a little rocket engine, it burns from the core outward. According to someone who does tear gas training, the heat mainly going out with exhaust, so you can hold on to them for a while. But as the burn finishes up the canister gets very hot. Interesting point, when he used to do this for the National Guard he said they had more people wash out from latex allergies from the masks than lack of tolerance to tear gas. He wasn’t thrilled with guys falling over and needing mouth to mouth for any reason. Also, during the exposure test they used a big tear gas generator instead of canisters.