From:	abortion_engine abortion_engine@*******.com
Subject:	Tech on TV Shows
Date:	Sun, 5 Sep 1999 22:06:28 -0400

> I also really liked the show on "Spies" that was being done by the History
> Channel with all those little gadgets and neat things used by the various
> intelligence/counter-intelligence agencies world over. That poison
> introduced by way of simple injection that needed a sugar coated ball to
> retain in the body was AWESOME. I think the poison was Ricine or
something
> similar. More than 100X the strength of Cyanide.
>
> -K
>
Ricin. Made from the castor bean. Injected or absorbed by something like
DMSO [yes, it does really exist today], it takes a week to kill. Injested it
takes about two. You start with the symptoms of a cold, move on to the flu,
and then just die of systemic shock. And it doesn't show up in a
post-mortem, because the only remaining by-product naturally occurs in
humans anyway.

Unfortunately, ricin has become popular enough that someone who "just dies"
of systemic shock after the above symptoms is going to be regarded as a lot
more suspicious today than five years ago. And there are certain post-mortem
techniques now that look [with mixed results] for elevated levels of the
by-product.

By the same token, there are ricin derivitives that work much faster, leave
less traces, etc. It's a long-running arms race. But ricin is still by far
the best poison, in my opinion, for its mixture of
time-for-you-to-find-an-alibi, lethality [virtually guaranteed, and even if
someone guesses that they've been exposed, there is no cure], and
undetectablity.