Tags
authors, captain america: the first avenger, cyanide poisoning, forensic science, poison, science, toxicology, writing, you know you're an author when
…you pause a movie which you love to research if the way they portray a chemical poisoning is accurate. (True story–I just did it.)
I was watching Captain America: The First Avenger and paused it to look up cyanide poisoning and how it kills. The answer: Oxygen deprivation, which literally kills you because, while you may be able to keep breathing, it keeps your cells from performing oxygen intake, or something like that. (Please forgive the grossly inaccurate medical terminology.) It basically causes brain damage and cease of discernible activity in a very short space, via oxygen deprivation, and then “true” death shortly afterward.
Basically, the way they killed off the spy in The First Avenger is inaccurate.
I think they just hammed it up and threw in some instant rigor mortis to make the audience realize what was happening. Medical realism: Under the bus.
(On a side note, I also just spent a few minutes reading about cases of cyanide poisoning. And that is infinitely morbid, but I have an excuse–I’m a science geek fascinated by forensic science and toxicology. I am not likely to kill anyone. Ever. Unless you count killing off the nasties and bad guys in my novels. -_- In which case, I reserve the right to get creative, because I’ve been hating them and by extension myself for most of the book.)
#107 on the You Know You’re An Author When list. (See what I just did there? ;-P)
Thanks for reading, and God Bless!
[EDIT: I was just looking at the toxicity for strychnine and it seems that Hydra may have been mixing it with the cyanide in their false-tooth L-pills, because those cause muscle spasms. Still looks a bit unlikely to me, though.]
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