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Comment by cannonpr | Hacker News Reader

I find a lot of these casual drug use articles to be a bit naive on safety. “It does not cause metabolites or react” well it obviously modifies several biochemical processes in order to have an effect, who knows what long term effects it has on your brains computation. Our understanding of the biochemical interactions of various systems is still exceedingly immature. It’s best to say that from a safety perspective it probably won’t kill you straight away… and it might not screw up your personality straight away.

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- "It’s best to say that from a safety perspective it probably won’t kill you straight away"

It *will* kill you straight away–it's an asphyxiant gas, any mistake involving oxygen supply will kill you in a few minutes, or leave you incapacitated and brain-damaged for the rest of your life. It's somewhat more hazardous than most, because it's (substantially) heaver than air, and accumulates in lungs.

(And you can be certain there will be mistakes, because a large subgroup of the users will be binge-drinking escapism addicts experimenting alone, drunk, self-administering this anesthetic out of a party balloon. The substack's rose-tinted focus on "luxury clinics" whitewashes the nature of hard drug use).

Your comment reminded me of college when they taught us: you don't ride in an elevator with a nitrogen tank because it can displace the oxygen in seconds.

We broke major safety rules doing the opposite. Carrying various steel tanks up stairs that were way too heavy for two, under-gymed, college students, one step at a time, resting the tank on every step while half of it cantilevered over the edge, as we hand-stabilized it...

I wanted to avoid thinking about that failure mode where you accidentally cleave some part of the gas regulator by damaging it, and that turns the tank into a cold-gas rocket motor. We were shown pictures of the aftermath of those lab accidents—I think there was one were a tank embedded itself into a ceiling?

edit: Now I remember the follow-up—after a professor witnessed us, they showed us the correct method. It was simply to send the tank up in the elevator unattended—one undergrad pushing the "up" button and stepping out, the other waiting for it on the destination floor. Stupidly simple.

Do you also put a sign on the tank saying "danger - do not enter elevator - risk of death" or something!?

There’s a recent video game called “The Finals” where you can throw these steel tanks and the physics works basically as you describe.

The Finals is nuts and sports one of the most advanced game engines out there right now. Fine-grained, server side destruction physics that's synced perfectly to everyone's client so everybody sees the building crumble in exactly the same way.

I can't wait for the deep dive on how the finals works on a technical level, it's extremely impressive

Also the regulator is supposed to be off before it is moved.

Isn't that why you screw on the protective caps before moving tanks around?

> they showed us the correct method. It was simply to send the tank up in the elevator unattended—one undergrad pushing the "up" button and stepping out, the other waiting for it on the destination floor. Stupidly simple.

That works great until somebody in an intermediate floor enters the elevator oblivious to the risk and suffocates.

It’s possible this was between adjacent floors, in which case this risk would not exist.

That's what service keys are for - with the key turned, the lift will go directly to the selected floor without stopping.

Is because an elevator is a small confined space or is it because of some other unique property of an elevator?

It is a small confined space that you have little control over your ability to escape or open up.

A stairwell you can run up, or out a door. An elevator can get stuck - or just take awhile - and there is nothing you can do about it.

Also an issue with liquid nitrogen, but that usually takes a little longer to sublimate.

Dry ice is one of the few grocery store substances (in many areas) with a similar issue, but at least co2 causes a suffocation reflex we can feel. So less dangerous.

That's exactly what I was going to bring up with this. As a doctor I just chuckled when it got to here

> Xenon is considered “the perfect anesthetic” for 5 reasons:

> It’s extremely fast-acting — xenon gas kicks into full effect within seconds

> It wears off quickly — once the gas is removed, normal consciousness comes back within a minute or two

> It doesn’t interact with other drugs

> It leaves no lasting side effects or toxicity

> The anesthetic state xenon induces is extraordinarily powerful

The vast majority of drug incompatibilities are not a result of the physical interactions between the molecules. It's the undesirable effects that they exert in tandem on physiology. A vasodilator and a negative inotrope don't have to chemically react with each other to give a patient a very bad time.

I will acknowledge that xenon does appear to have interesting effects, but nobody should be base their health and safety on what the author has written. Their analysis on its safety is far far far too superficial to be worth anything.

"other uses of xenon" feels like this is just AI-generated spam.

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