Hi, a friend of mine told me the story how he, his wife and kids were “Knocked Out” by what the Police explained “some kind of gas” during a break/sneak in at about 2am while they were sleeping in their rooms, even their dog was put to sleep and was still out cold in the morning when everybody else woke up.
What kind of gas could the burglars have been using?
Read this current threadon this very topic. The consensus is that there is no such thing as gasing people in their house, and more precisely no gas that could conceivably be used for such a burglary.
The general consensus is “fictional gas”.
There’s at least one current thread already here on the subject; I’ll post a link if I can find it. But the gist of it is that both the physical and economic logistics of this approach make it impractical, pointless, and potentially lethal.
ETA: Ninja’d! But at least I don’t have to go link hunting.
First time I manage to pull this one in ten years.
well there was a lange scandal Bolivia where Mennonites used somekind of gas made out of belladonna to knock out the occupants of houses
The same thing is being reported from another part of the world. Any mention of the name will start a flame war though.
The authorities there can’t expain the stories either.
I’m posting these links purely from academic interest, so don’t flame me!
I call bullshit. Cite that Atropine can be administered in any inhalable form. Cite that inhalable atropine can be easily manufactured by rural Mennonites and safely administered by same (ie, without computers, without calculators, without scientific equipment of any kind, and without killing anyone in 150 trials).
I would like to see evidence that Atropine can even cause unconsciousness before the patient is on the brink of death.
Atropine is an acetylcholine competitor. It causes muscle paralysis, it interferes with homeostatic mechanisms like heart rate and temperature control and it can cause mental disturbance and hallucinations. But i have never heard of atropine causing unconsciousness, exact as a secondary result of hyperthermia, heart failure, suffocation etc.
As far as I know, the only way to render someone unconscious with atropine would be to take them to the point of death. If you tried doing that by gassing a household you would kill at least 50% of the people. They aren’t going to wake up next morning symptom free.
The basic point to take away from these two threads is that the journalists writing them are not scientists and often don’t know what the hell they’re writing about.
For the record, this happened in Philippines to a expatriate in a house with fence around it and a dog outside the house but inside the fenced lot, how could they have drugged the dog?
I would love to see the evidence presented in that court to support the charges of gassing, otherwise it is just hearsay.
Neither, for that matter, are the police officers. Cops can fall for a line of BS just as easily as anyone else can. EDIT: This was in reply to SciFiSam’s comment.
In actuality, burglars have been known to use various substances to render their victims unconscious, but the preferred substance for this purpose seems to be high-velocity lead.
Throw some meat laced with a suitable drug over the fence, let the dog eat it and wait until it goes to sleep? Or maybe put the drug in some cheese. That method seems to work with the in-law’s dog.
It would seem to me, that the simplest explanation for the what happened to the family is that the burglars came prepared to knock out the dog, and then were quiet enough to not wake the sleeping people. The people woke up fine in the morning, the dog was out until the drug could be metabolized.
Agreed.
Yeah, dosing dogs with food is completely plausible, but I have the impression that the OP’s friends were claiming their dog was drugged by the same gas as them.
It would also possibly be the kind of claim someone would make if they forgot to turn the burglar alarm on and were covering their arses.
The quote from the article given just says “The court heard that the men …” It doesn’t say “The court confirmed” or “Evidence was given to the court” or anything. To me, that sounds like “When the men told the court how they did it, they told they used gas”.
The article also explains that both due to the values in that community and the language barrier, that most women didn’t want to tell, and that many presumably didn’t come forward even during the trial. To me, it sounds like a protection for both sides to claim “We raped the women, but we used gas, because otherwise, they would have resisted since they are virtous”.
The “used to anethize cows” reminds me of one X-files ep. where people burn a huge cake-tablet that’s usually used for horses to sedate people (it’s the countryside and therefore easy to get). Scully of course detects the leftover chemicals in the blood of the victims, and because it’s part of substance used on horses, the suspicion falls on the horse farmer and the vet, who both have access to it.
Maybe you should use repubtable sources which offer some facts, then?
The first reads like a blog, not a journalistic entry.
The second at least has the victims smelling something, but still:
none of the victims ever go to a doctor for a blood test, to be sure there are no side-effects (as mentioned in the other thread, chloroform or ether can leave lasting damage). So no objective proof, just the police reporting what people say.
A medicine man claiming that animal fats and parts can put people to sleep when burnt just sounds absurd, although I’m not a zoologist. Usually, when you burn fat, it stinks, instead of putting to sleep.
And the part about needing only a few tablespoons, so it lasts a long time, but the ingredients are hard to get? Sounds to me like the medicine guys are scamming the robbers with that concotion.
I see nothing “academic” or usable proof in those stories at all.
When we were in South Africa covering the anti-car jacking police, we went to some of the shops that sold various mutis. The sangomas (medicine men) showed us various mutis, among them ones purporting to make you invisible and impervious to bullets. So you can probably guess how much creedence I put in that cite.
That sounds like a test for the mythbusters! Guns and invisibility? They could certainly fool around with that!
Sheesh! 3 sentences! No offer of proof, simply that the same thing is being reported in another area!
Here they are:
**The same thing is being reported from another part of the world. Any mention of the name will start a flame war though.
The authorities there can’t expain the stories either.
I’m posting these links purely from academic interest, so don’t flame me!**
Full Moon 12 Sept
1st Quarter 20 Sept
I thought I had waited long enough. Silly me.
They can’t, really? Maybe I need to take a position of authority in one of those places, since I can explain it just fine: The people were asleep because it was nighttime and they were tired. What further explanation is necessary?
And what in the world does the moon phase have to do with anything?