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Comment by RajT88 | Hacker News Reader

It could well be a similar phenomenon to how silencers on firearms absolutely do not make a gun sound like it sounds in the movies, but because it's become an established (and convenient) film trope, it persists in film.

Similarly - films depicting kidnapping people using chloroform as an instant knockout drug.

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I remember reading (can’t find the source anymore) that ether would work as knock-out drug, and that indeed it was used as a plot device in crime books as chloroform is used in movies today. The problem is that ether can be highly toxic at relatively low dosage, and then it was replaced by chloroform in fiction to avoid giving dangerous ideas to people.

Is there any truth behind this theory?

Just some anecdotal evidence to support what you're saying.

When I was in college and a freshman, I was told the urban legend about the "ether bunny". The story about a freshman who finds out his roommate has been drugging and having sex with him using ether.

I wasn't very knowledgeable about these stories or urban legends in general so when I was home for Christmas vacation, I told my Dad about it, and he started laughing and said it was an old college urban legend but when he was told it (in the 1960's) as a freshman they used chloroform instead of ether. He mentioned some other details about the story that were changed due to the times, but that was one point that was clearly changed over time, possibly for the same reason.

However, drink 'spiking' for the same purpose is a thing, and people have been jailed for it.

Ether and chloroform both have relatively narrow therapeutic windows - the toxic dose is very close to the minimum active dose. But they were one of the few true anaesthetics at the time (late 1800s). Alcohol was also used for surgery but it's slower and inhibits clotting. In fact often it'd be a combination of all three, known as ACE [1]. This worked okay-ish, as the GABA-ergic synergy was able to suppress consciousness and memory without poisoning the patient's heart or liver (as) severely.

The other big issue was flammability.

Ether still takes enough time to reduce consciousness that you have a good minute or two (minimum) of struggle. It's not "towel over face, muffled screaming, then sleepytime". But an attacker with advantage of surprise and a decent grapple could usually get the target dosed before they could break free.

[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/ACE_mixture

I've heard that grayanotoxin was uses for surgery around that time frame as well.

Weirdly enough, ether can be drank. Erowid has a great many self-reported case studies of the effects of ether drinking

https://erowid.org/experiences/subs/exp_Ether.shtml

I've never consumed or inhaled it myself. However from someone who I know drank it, said the high is rapid and intense. Basically, it's enough to get you arrested for a public intox, and by the time you're at the police station, you're completely sober, save for your breath smelling like gasoline.

Another source about consumption of ether in 19th c Ireland : https://www.newscientist.com/letter/mg19125630-800-bring-bac...

https://www.mayoclinicproceedings.org/article/S0025-6196(11)...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ether_addiction

As a final edit: It's probably a really bad idea to inhale or drink ether.. but it is definitely drinkable.

“The only thing that really worried me was the ether. There is nothing in the world more helpless and irresponsible and depraved than a man in the depths of an ether binge. And I knew we'd get into that rotten stuff pretty soon. Probably at the next gas station.” ― Hunter S. Thompson

It's not just silencers - movies and video games are generally bad at gunshots. For good reasons - if you make them as loud as they ought to be, even to the limits of the recording equipment (since you'd need to go well into the hearing-unsafe territory), they'll drown out everything else.

There are exceptions. The famous shootout scene from "Heat" does a surprisingly good job at conveying just how deafening gunfire really is close up, for a movie. Although even that is much milder than it would be IRL, due to use of blanks and the aforementioned equipment limitations.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZL9fnVtz_lc (shooting starts around 4:20)

That scene was pretty interesting but can’t help notice that all the automatic guns just fired endlessly. There were a few reloads but it’s astonishing how fast you go through 30 rounds and they were firing way longer uninterrupted. On another note that final shot was amazing cinematography.

Would be fun for a show like law and order to do an episode where someone is framed with chloroform and part of solving the crime is excluding the framed person because the chloroform TV trope isnt based in science.

A suppressed .300 blackout subsonic round sounds like the movies. It’s unreal. The slide and mechanics of the gun are louder than the round. A rather large round, at that.

Suppressed subsonic 300 blackout is pretty darn close to the movies: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1AUDVoGOCxw

It's quiet enough that those guys are not completely crazy for not having ear protection — but of course the microphone is not picking up the full volume of the shots either, any more than it does for unsuppressed, supersonic rounds.

Microphones generally are very bad at picking real volume of gunshots, silenced or not, subsonic or not, small, large and massive calibers alike

Not when you're standing right next to it with no ear protection. The peak is still going to be on the order of 115-125 dB at the muzzle even with the best can. This is well within hearing-safe territory (<140 dB per OHSA). But that is still louder than an auto horn!

As others have noted, recording equipment doesn't register these levels reliably, so watching a recording does not reflect the actual experience.

Uh… the highest limit osha has on sound levels is 115db. 140 is a jet engine. A chainsaw is 110

That's for continuous noise like engines. OTOH "exposure to impulsive or impact noise should not exceed 140 dB peak sound pressure level".

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