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Comment by ninkendo | Hacker News Reader

Painless, compact, reliable? Doesn’t need to be that fast.

> Painless, compact, reliable? Doesn’t need to be that fast.

I thought the point was to remove you from enemy torture and questioning. If you're dying slowly, then the enemy is just going to torture and question you while the poison acts slowly, or possibly even find a way to ‘cure’ you well enough that the torture can go on for a long time … which defeats the point, doesn't it?

Assuming:

1) There is no antidote 2) It induces quick unconsciousness so you can't be tortured while it's working.

Painless, reliable: that'll be barbiturates like Nembutal. But it takes about half an hour, and you need about 10g. So not compact or fast.

Maybe ricin?

Carfentanil, maybe?

Opiate overdoses are easily reversible with naloxone. I suppose it’s possible that carfentanyl is strong enough that it would take an unreasonable amount of naloxone to reverse.

Why not both carfentanyl plus insert fast but awful poison and hope nobody gives your spy naloxone in time.

Cyanide?

AFAIK cyanide is unpleasant; you die struggling to breathe because your muscles don't work - not because you became unconscious.

Thanks. I never knew that. I always assumed from movies that it was a quick and easy (hence painless) way to go.

Doesn't ricin take days to kill, during which the agent can still be interrogated and rewarded with quick execution?

Ah, yes: "anywhere from hours to days", says Wikipedia.

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