Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Entertainment/2020 February 9

= February 9 =

Jackal (1997)
In the movie Jackal (1997), Bruce Willis kills a hijacker by applying a sprayed substance onto the trunk hinge which is then touched by the criminal in question. Is that device based on reality because it looks a lot like Vulcan unconscioussness-ing to me? I like that movie a lot, but Richard Gere outsmarting Bruce Willis in a criminal setting, c'mon... Splićanin (talk) 02:06, 9 February 2020 (UTC)
 * What was the movie's explanation? ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 02:54, 9 February 2020 (UTC)
 * The criminal touches it, immediately produces a pained grimace, clenches his neck with both hands, drops to the ground and presumably dies in agony. Splićanin (talk) 04:04, 9 February 2020 (UTC)
 * (EC) I don't know the scene in question, but there are a variety of poisons which can kill after Absorption (skin) through the skin. Most will take minutes to hours or even longer to kill, depending also on the amount. Not the seconds often depicted in such shows. Note that a long time period doesn't mean you have a good chance of reversing the poisoning, Karen Wetterhahn died 10 months after she spilled a few drops of Dimethylmercury onto her latex gloves. While treatment did only start 5 months after exposure, and her condition rapidly deteriorated after, my understand is there is a good chance immediate treatment would not have saved her either. (Hydrofluoric acid burn although also nasty, is far less deadly.) Her case highlights another point, without sufficient protective equipment, spraying the substance onto something seems a good way to risk killing yourself. Many such shows depict some sort of super antidote which you take beforehand making you completely immune to harmful affects but the reality is often not so simple and you're far better off ensuring you are not exposed. VX (nerve agent) is one example of such a poison, and was used in a somewhat similar way to kill Masami Tsuchiya (according to the earlier article or Aum Shinrikyo it was sprinkled directly on the neck) and believed to have also been used for the Assassination of Kim Jong-nam (applied to his face, possibly in the form of a Binary chemical weapon). There are plenty of others e.g. the Novichok agent one of which was used in the non-fatal Poisoning of Sergei and Yulia Skripal and later caused a fatality in the 2018 Amesbury poisonings from being sprayed directly on to her wrists.  As the Skirpal poisoning article mentions, it's easily possible there have been others killed in a similar way, simply never detected or were detected but not publicly. And the fact VX was used to kill Tsuchiya only came to be known from a confession although it was suspected he was poisoned with some Organophosphate pesticide. (Of course you don't generally expect random unknown people to be killed by VX.)  Smearing seems likely to be significantly safer than spraying although still not without risks. But I'm also sure we only barely know what the various intelligence agencies etc get up to, and many of them are often (but not always, Poisoning of Alexander Litvinenko) interested in preventing detection and minimising collateral (not least because it draws more attention) and succeeding. And they generally have plenty of resources and often have long times for planning. So randomly spraying stuff onto a hinge and hoping the right person touches it enough to kill them but preferably no one else, is probably not often going to be a good plan.  Nil Einne (talk) 04:54, 9 February 2020 (UTC)
 * , wow, lots of good information contained in there. I wonder if I would trust you to prepare my meals. Do you read a large number of crime novels? My mother did, and my father was a scientist who cleaned up lab spills, so if ever there is a husband-wife duo with prospects of being Master Poisoners, except for their strong Christian ethos of caring for the weak... and look how I turned out. Elizium23 (talk) 05:00, 9 February 2020 (UTC)
 * Probably should emphasise that in cases of known intelligence agency style poisonings, there is still generally a lot of public uncertainties over precisely what happened. In the Skirpal case, the general suggestion is Novichok came from the door handle of their home since that's where the highest concentration is said to have been found. But in both their case and Kim Jong-nam, there's a lot about the official public stories that leave some questioning the claims. See e.g. [//www.independent.co.uk/voices/skripal-poisoning-salisbury-attack-yulia-russia-novichok-putin-a8807191.html]. I'm not suggesting some wacky conspiracy theory involving a false flag operation, but there may very well be details of the official public story that aren't correct. (In terms of doubt over the door handle theory, those doubts generally come in the form of the time taken for effects, how quickly both seem to have been affected once their did start to show effects, and the fact that they don't seem to have widely spread it outside the house AFAWK. I don't think anyone who knows about nerve agents actually doubts you someone could easily receive a lethal or sublethal dose of a deadly never agent from touching a door handle.) Nil Einne (talk) 05:20, 9 February 2020 (UTC)
 * One final point since I realised my antidote comment when combined my comment on Karen Wetterhahn may be misinterpreted. My understanding is that with many nerve agents, prompt and effective treatment means you often have a good chance of surviving [//www.sciencemag.org/news/2018/01/how-defeat-nerve-agent]. Prompt may mean within a minute or two though and it will help a great deal if someone else is treating you. And there are substances which can be taken beforehand which may reduce the risks from exposure e.g. Pyridostigmine is used for soman. Still, with sufficient exposure you may have lingering effects, and even the acute effects are likely to mean days of treatment. I'm not saying it's impossible to develop a substance which is a quick and deadly contact poison, but you could taken something beforehand (or just after) which would make you immune to any effects, but I'm not aware of anything like that which is public knowledge. Simplistically if you're not worried about other's knowing how to reverse your poison, maybe you could try developing an opiod transdermal poison or something. Nil Einne (talk) 05:53, 9 February 2020 (UTC)


 * A couple of internet forums have addressed this problem: movies.stackexchange (which includes some screen caps of the episode) suggests dimethylmercury, as linked above, while a Quora respondent goes for aconitum. However, www.ar15.com wisely says "it's a movie thing" and helpfully points out that the can used is actually Afro Sheen hair spray. Alansplodge (talk) 21:26, 9 February 2020 (UTC)

You've all been immensely helpful, some even too much so :) I can only agree with Alansplodge regarding "movie things", since the same van to which the agent had been applied is seen in the very next scene. Thought such a material would take slightly longer to have its effect diminished. All in all, thank you all. Jackal is one of my all-time favourites, alongside Snatch, Lock/Stock, Ace Ventura and Scarface. Best, Splićanin (talk) 00:00, 10 February 2020 (UTC)


 * This is discussed by the director in the DVD commentary. He said that the script called for a very different and complex scene. They didn't have time or money to shoot the scene. So, they grabbed a can of hair spray from the makeup trailer and turned it into a weird "spy poison" scene that was very cheap. In fact, that isn't Bruce's hand when it is being sprayed. They used a cheap stand-in. 135.84.167.41 (talk) 19:55, 10 February 2020 (UTC)