Timeline for Is it possible to create a practical sword that's naturally toxic?
Current License: CC BY-SA 4.0
36 events
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| S Feb 24, 2021 at 3:18 | history | suggested | CommunityBot | CC BY-SA 4.0 |
Hi... I'm an "element collector". I added to the end of the Osmium paragraph. It just seemed worthwhile to mention that there is literally only a handful of near-pure osmium produced yearly and only one lab that has experience crafting Osmium. [Edit encased in square parentheses.]
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| Feb 24, 2021 at 2:01 | review | Suggested edits | |||
| S Feb 24, 2021 at 3:18 | |||||
| May 10, 2019 at 22:28 | comment | added | MackTuesday | I know I'm late to the party, but I can't help commenting that thallium and its salts were unknown before 1860 or so. I don't see how the people of ancient Rome could have had access to them. | |
| Jul 17, 2018 at 19:26 | comment | added | Austin Hemmelgarn | @Tangurena It's not toxic mostly because beryllium by itself isn't, and the copper helps reduce the oxidation of the beryllium. Somewhat ironically, it would probably make a rather good material for a sword (really durable, and should be just flexible enough if you get the balance right). | |
| Jul 17, 2018 at 18:22 | comment | added | Tangurena | Beryllium copper would be a great substance when you are looking for tools that are non-magnetic and non-sparking. Firefighters use non-sparking tools to avoid igniting gases/liquids (or if your steampunk airship uses hydrogen for lift). Poisonous it is not. It is also a very good metal for percussion instruments like tambourines and glockenspiels. | |
| Jul 17, 2018 at 13:55 | comment | added | Agent_L | @AustinHemmelgarn Well, in a medieval setting any amount of polonium-210 is simply not possible to achieve at all: "The largest batch of the element ever extracted, contained only 9 mg of polonium-210 and was obtained by processing 37 tonnes of residues from radium production". Heck, making a sword with polonium is hardly possible as of 2018 - we're making 100 grams per year. So I'm just continuing what you've started : ) | |
| Jul 17, 2018 at 12:21 | comment | added | Austin Hemmelgarn | @Agent_L The 'right precautions' would be very difficult to achieve in a medeival setting though (just like for osmium, and to a lesser extent cadmium). | |
| Jul 17, 2018 at 12:12 | comment | added | Agent_L | @AustinHemmelgarn we're talking about using poisons to kill enemy soldiers, so I assumed the right precautions as given : ) | |
| Jul 17, 2018 at 10:41 | comment | added | Austin Hemmelgarn | @Agent_L In terms of radiation, it's not a threat externally. It is however something you want to be insanely careful with, given that getting even an amount so small you can't see it in your body can be lethal. In other words, saying it's safe to handle is like saying concentrated hydrochloric acid is safe to handle. If you take the right precautions, it is safe, it's just that the right precautions are nontrivial (moreso in the case of polonium). | |
| Jul 17, 2018 at 9:00 | comment | added | Agent_L | Polonium is safe to handle because it's alpha radiation do not penetrate the outer skin. Only after it's ingested, it gets close enough to wreak havoc on living tissue. | |
| Jul 17, 2018 at 8:40 | comment | added | Chris H | @WaterMolecule also because mercury amalgam fillings are an issue when bodies are cremated | |
| Jul 16, 2018 at 20:59 | comment | added | Austin Hemmelgarn | @BillK While that probably not work well for aluminium (the body just doesn't absorb pure aluminum very well), it would probably work very well for an osmium blade. | |
| Jul 16, 2018 at 20:40 | comment | added | Bill K | I wonder if you could find an anti-oxidant jell and coat the aluminum sword with it so that when it interacted with skin the coating came off and the aluminum came into direct contact... This would fulfill the letter of the request (sword blade by nature is poisonous). This actually seems practical, is it possible? | |
| Jul 16, 2018 at 18:21 | comment | added | Solomon Slow | Re, "...the swordsmith would most likely receive a lethal dose well before he finished..." Perhaps some early experimenters with poisoned blades would perish, but that might only convince others that the blades would be valuable, and that they could make a decent living for themselves by developing and keeping secret, the necessary technology to make the weapons without poisoning themselves. (or at least, without seriously poisoning themselves) I'm picturing a guild, whose members could be recognized a combination of relative wealth, and the marks of some characteristic affliction... | |
| Jul 16, 2018 at 17:54 | comment | added | Austin Hemmelgarn | @KRyan Yeah, it was never covered in any chemistry class I was in either, but I too have had it come up in D&D berore. One of my regular player's favorite solutions when they need something heavy is to summon a solid block of osmium-iridium alloy (the iridium satbilizes it so you don't get toxic fumes). | |
| Jul 16, 2018 at 15:24 | comment | added | KRyan | Heh, about “most people won't have heard of [osmium] much outside of chemistry class,” I don’t remember it in chemistry—but it does come up sometimes in a certain flavor of Dungeons & Dragons discussions, say when a spell can create matter from thin air, limited by volume, and you want to get as much mass out of it as possible. I remember a number of discussions about the damage values you could achieve annihilating several cubic feet of anti-osmium... | |
| Jul 16, 2018 at 15:07 | comment | added | WaterMolecule | Dental amalgam is still widely used to fill cavities in the US and around the world ( ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26329138 ), although it has been phased out in some Scandinavian countries. The reason that it is being phased out it is mostly because dangers to dental professionals, who have to work with mercury to form the amalgam. It is relatively safe to have cured amalgam in your teeth. | |
| Jul 16, 2018 at 14:03 | comment | added | Skyler | @forest True, but then the bearer has to walk around with sword outstretched constantly - if your arm gets tired and drops, suddenly that sword point is right next to you. | |
| Jul 16, 2018 at 4:59 | comment | added | Brian McCutchon | @WhatRoughBeast xkcd.com/1114 | |
| Jul 15, 2018 at 17:54 | comment | added | Nick T | You need to heavily emphasize how to actually expose people to the giant list of heavy metals you list. It was mentioned a few times, but you need soluble salts or fat soluble organic compounds (e.g. dimethylmercury). This or that element isn't anywhere near as important as it being elemental vs. a nitrate vs. an organometallic. | |
| Jul 15, 2018 at 17:42 | vote | accept | F1Krazy | ||
| Jul 15, 2018 at 14:57 | comment | added | WhatRoughBeast | You missed a point about polonium. It's so radioactive that a sword cannot be made from it - the self-heating in a mass that size will cause it to melt. It would, however, have the canonical blue glow. Take that, orcs! | |
| Jul 15, 2018 at 14:45 | history | edited | Austin Hemmelgarn | CC BY-SA 4.0 |
Added a few metals I forgot about initially, and corrected the grouping of selenium and arsenic (meant to group antimony and arsenic).
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| Jul 15, 2018 at 14:13 | comment | added | Austin Hemmelgarn | @leftaroundabout Most of the issue with beryllium is either finely divided powders (which are an inhalation hazzard), oxide the oxide and water soluble salts (which are really nastily toxic and get absorbed well by the body). In pure form as a solid object, if worked such that it doesn't oxidize (in beryllium copper for example, which might be decent for a sword except for how light it is), it's actually rather safe. Also, light swrods are only good if their primary purpose is stabbing, you really do want some weight behind the swing if you're slashing with it. | |
| Jul 15, 2018 at 11:14 | comment | added | leftaroundabout | Nice comprehensive answer, but I think you're wrong about beryllium. This stuff is pretty toxic indeed, and in particular diffuses easily into cells due to the low atomic mass. Also it's strong and light, which is actually good for a sword (at least in a composite with other metals). The brittleness could be an advantage for the purpose of the question, if the edge is designed to chip in a controlled fashion. | |
| Jul 15, 2018 at 3:21 | comment | added | The Square-Cube Law | This answer is worthy of a bounty. | |
| Jul 15, 2018 at 1:26 | comment | added | Austin Hemmelgarn | @forest For alpha and beta radiation, it probably wouldn't. It's the gamma and neutron radiation that's the issue, and it would be the long term exposure that would be the problem, not short term. The only caveat is that you would want a solid basket style guard to keep your hand and forearm shielded, and a solid lead scabbard (preferrably with an inner beryllium layer to handle neutron emissions). | |
| Jul 15, 2018 at 1:19 | comment | added | Austin Hemmelgarn | @F1Krazy On the note of osmium, I forgot to mention that most of the poisoning symptoms, even for cases of accute poisining, take at least an hour or two to appear (though by that point, it's too late to properly do anything but pallative treatment). | |
| Jul 15, 2018 at 1:18 | comment | added | forest | I actually have to wonder about the radioactivity harming the user. Because of the inverse square law, you can easily have an amount of radiation that causes severe burns when extremely close (millimeters) but has negligible effect on the person wielding the weapon. The same could apply to alpha or beta radiation where the skin can protect from it to a large extent, but a weapon penetrating the skin would cause extreme internal burns. | |
| Jul 15, 2018 at 1:17 | comment | added | Austin Hemmelgarn | @forest Yeah, the human body is remarkably good at not absorbing metals in their pure form. The same kind of thing happens with lead too. | |
| Jul 15, 2018 at 1:14 | comment | added | Austin Hemmelgarn | @ConorO'Brien I can't think of anything that would work well back then for it. The problem is that it's even absorbed readily through the skin and causes chemical burns. In fact, even in modern times, it takes rather advanced PPE to handle it safely because it will diffuse through most plastics. | |
| Jul 15, 2018 at 1:12 | comment | added | forest | An interesting fact wrt mercury, people used to swallow huge globs of mercury in quicksilver form to treat gastrointestinal blockages (and it worked, since the blob of mushy metal would help push anything out), and the worst that would happen is mild to moderate brain damage many years down the line, not instant death! | |
| Jul 15, 2018 at 0:45 | comment | added | Conor O'Brien | I wonder—would any medieval technology act as a sort of gas mask and make an osmium blade more viable? (I don't know much about what was and wasn't feasible in those times, nor the extent of how lethal the fumes are) | |
| Jul 15, 2018 at 0:32 | comment | added | F1Krazy | Wow. This is as comprehensive an answer as I could have hoped to receive. I've heard of osmium but I didn't know it was that dangerous. I think you're right, that's probably as close as I'm going to get. | |
| Jul 15, 2018 at 0:00 | history | edited | Gryphon | CC BY-SA 4.0 |
corrected grammar
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| Jul 14, 2018 at 21:20 | history | answered | Austin Hemmelgarn | CC BY-SA 4.0 |