Ok, this post isn't truly spiritual, but it's also not scientific. But if I had to choose between the two, I would place the multi-verse in the spiritual category, as the implications are god-like to say the least. Imagine that there are an infinite number of infinities which apply to entire universes strung side-by-side, top and bottom. If this were the reality of things, then for everything we can imagine there is a representative reality for it. This is a guarantee if the cosmos are larger than conception, the math and stats make it so. I won't lay that out, the numbers will numb all our minds until profound schizophrenia is achieved - we don't want this. In this spirit, I propose a thought experiment for you all. This is meant as a bit of humor, so please, bear with me won't you?
Quote:
Wiccan_Seeker -
Many of the war gases of world war one are currently in use as common reagents in chemical industry.
Phosgene is an excellent chlorinating agent thats highly cost effective.
You can make LSD with phosgene very conveniently:
R-COOH + O=CCl2 ---> R-CO-Cl + HCl + CO2
R-CO-Cl + 2 HNR2 ---> R-CO-NR2 + HNR2.HCl
Its really a shame phosgene is so damn toxic, its an excellent reagent.
Most WW I war gases were in fact used because they are reagents - chemically reactive with human tissues instead of true poisons with receptor affinities. Alkylating people. Halogenating them to death.
If a laboratory of 100 cubic meters has a release of an ounce of phosgene, and people breathe the air unknowingly, in 10 minutes enough of it is inhaled so that later on one in 2 will die. For most of the few dozen WW I poison gases (the common lab reagents) toxicity is in that ballpark: 1/2-2 ounces to 100 cubic meters to ten minutes exposure will be lethal to half of the labworkers. This is the kind of stuff in your school/work/home lab!
Typical lab chemicals in that league are thionyl chloride, dimethyl sulfate, benzyl bromide, chloroacetone, methyl chloroformate, bromine, hydrogen sulfide and so forth. Many of these substances are violent irritants and lacrimators (causing tearing of the eyes, like peeling onions but more severe) which will warn you you are being exposed. Some do not, like dimethyl sulfate or phosgene. Sometimes the spill is so great that even an irritant chemical cant be gotten away from in time, the Bhopal disaster with Methyl isocyanate comes to mind.
Later developed were nerve gases, which are in a different league of toxicity. Nerve agents arent reagents, they work through pharmacological action, not chemical reaction. They are extremely toxic, but its rare to encounter substances of that degree of toxicity in significant quantities in lab air.
In the same lab from hell, a spill of 0.25-1.5 grams of nerve agent over ten minutes would be lethal to half the lab workers. Note the higher toxicity.
Drug labs working with very fine powders have risks of their own. If a dust of just 50 miligrams of LSD hangs in the air of said lab, after 10 minutes you would trip out as if you ate a blotter.
In a Fentanyl lab, if just 1/3 of a milligram of Lofentanil is dispersed throughout the room, everyone would be comfortably numb in 10 minutes. If a few miligrams found their way into the 100 cubic meters of air, lab workers would drop to the floor unconscious and breathe their way up to a lethal dose, like what happened in that Moscow theater siege a few years back. Ultrapotent Fentanyl analogs are extremely dangerous to work with, needless to say, you literally need chem suits and bleach showers.
Top of the list of toxicological nasties are things like radioisotopes and stuff like botulinum toxin (known as Botox in cosmetic surgery) With the latter, 3.3 miligrams of the stuff released in the hypothetical lab from hell (they hate me there by now ^_^) will be lethal for half of the lab workers.
Can it be worse? Hell yes. Satellites and spacecrafts often use isotope batteries. Such space launches often have ounces to multiple pounds of Plutonium 240 on board. If you inhale a particle of 240Pu of just one nanogram (one billionth of a gram) that gets lodged in your lungs, you are likely to develop lung cancer a decade or more down the road. So when you see a big launch to lets say Mars, remember that theres up to a trillion doses of cancer strapped to those tons of explosive fuel
HAZMATs.. serious business!
lol. "Lab from hell" lol!
-------------------- (\___/) (= ‘.’=) (”)__(”) Thousands of candles can be lit from a single candle, and the life of the candle will not be shortened. Happiness never decreases by being shared. - Prince Gautama Siddharta, the founder of Buddhism, 563-483 B.C.
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