Kill Without Sense
Mar. 22nd, 2006 10:59 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
lederhosenEvery so often, somebody pops up on ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-community.gif)
little_details to ask "how does a hitman work?" And inevitably, somebody else pops up and plugs a book called 'Kill Without Joy', although it hasn't happened so much lately; I like to think that this has something with my efforts to discourage this via severe beatingslucid counterargument.
KWoJ, written by John Minnery, was published by Paladin Press in 1973. (For those who've never heard the name, they're a small press who publish how-tos on a wide range of topics, including some concerned with illegal activities. 'Informational/self-defence purposes only' and all that.) There's a large chunk of it, if not the whole thing, available online here.
The content falls into two parts. The first is concerned with mundane methods of murder - guns, knives, what-have-you. I'm no expert on such topics, but AFAICT, this section is moderately reasonable. Not terribly well written, and somewhat padded with philosophy, but you could certainly kill somebody with this stuff.
The second is concerned with more exotic techniques, and this is where the crack-smoking commences. I'm not sure whether this was the author's fault, or whether the publisher told him to sex it up a bit, but either way it's frickin' hilarious. Excerpts below the cut, spelling as I found it:
Cynogen [I think this is supposed to be cyanogen] can be liberated from aerosols, squeeze bottles, or specially designed projectors. In most cases the assassin must take an antidote before and after firing the gas at the subject's face so that he himself does not fall victim to the effects of the gas. The antidote is either sodium thiosulphate or sodium mitrate tablets before and amyl nitrate or a urinated handkerchief inhalant after.
I guess you could kill somebody this way (although the book has no instructions on how one might make or obtain such a weapon). And these countermeasures *might* stop you from killing yourself along with the intended victim...
Strychnine is a very effective poison that attacks the nervous system and causes the body to bend like a bow in death. To counteract this effect and so to disguise the poisoning, a portion of cyanide is also given. The symptoms of both poisons are, in effect, opposite but mutually effective in causing death resulting in no outward symptoms of poisoning.
I don't know a whole lot about toxicology, but I'm going to call bullshit on this; when you read on, you'll understand why I'm willing to trust my gut instinct over this guy's 'research' here.
Arsenic and thallium sulphate are common rat poisons and can be used in assassinations as well as the mercury from thermometers and barometers.
While mercury *compounds* can be very toxic, metallic mercury - as you'd find in a thermometer - is a lousy way of killing somebody. Unless you can get them to inhale the stuff, it's likely to go straight through their system without reacting much on the way.
If the subject is prone to use mouthwash, eye or ear drops, sulfuric or muriatic acids can be added into the bottles and the patent medicine taken out.
Acid eye drops? Very likely to blind somebody, extremely unlikely to kill them.
Everybody knows about a Mickey Finn which is basically barbiturated booze, but the ice cubes can also be sabotaged by adding powdered glass to them before putting them in the fridge. It's impossible to spot the slivers suspended in the ice cubes and when the subject drains his glass he gets a mouthful of same. This creates havoc in the intestinal tract and death can result from internal hemorrhage.
Myth.
Used properly, poisons can be one of the most effective weapons in an assassin's armory. They're to be used in situations requiring quiet, rapid death.
Actually, most of the poisons recommended in this book are more likely to cause slow, messy, noisy death, if they actually succeed in killing their victim. But we're just getting into the really wacky stuff:
Poisonous snakes can be sent to the subject in a parcel and will bite him when he opens the package. The evidence slithers away.
...
Essentially the weapon is an electrified grid in the urinal basin. This can take the form of a screen cover for the drain or metal grill. If the urinal is porcelain completely the screen must be added by the assassin. The drain cover is connected to the electrical system of the wash room by means of an insulated cord that is hidden behind the plumbing.
What happens when the subject uses the urinal should be obvious now. The subject's urine which is a salty liquid and a perfect conductor of electricity, makes contact with the charged grid and the shock will kill him.
This system can be selective by rigging the circuit with a switch that you can control. The wiring need not be elaborate and can be carried in your pocket and be hooked up within a few minutes. Normal 110 volt current is sufficient because it is the amperage that kills. The only thing necessary to look out for is that the circuit is not grounded - except by the subject.
This method lends itself to be used in government or large public buildings.
As long as you're standing in the toilets watching everybody who comes in, so you can keep the circuit off until your victim shows up. That wouldn't attract attention in the least. (And let's not even get into the electrical aspects of this...)
Another method silencing the report is in the situation where the subject is under the control of accomplices or rendered unconscious, is to jam the muzzle up his rectal orifice and fire the weapon. Apart from being virtually silent the cause of death is not immediately apparent to the examiner of the corpse, and indeed if a plastic or fiber-glass bullet were used it wouldn't show up on X-ray.
Except for the BLEEDIN' OBVIOUS SCORCH MARKS caused by escaping muzzle gases and possible exit wound... if you've got them that helpless, why exactly would you need to use a gun? (I won't even start on the inconvenience of making plastic/fiberglass bullets.)
In some cases the assassin's weapons should be sanitized or else home-made because the possibility of tracing the weapon is nil. These special weapons should be smooth-bore to thwart rifling tracing and also to encourage the bullets to keyhole through the target.
I'm pretty sure a home-made weapon makes the ballistics tech's life *easier* than a run-of-the-mill Glock stolen a week before the killing and thrown away immediately afterwards. But what would I know?
Without getting too deeply into the realm of the bizarre, a specially loaded bullet made from a human tooth (bicuspid) could be fired under the jaw or through the mouth into the head.
...
Specialist techniques of auto bombing, bazooka attacks, mini bus gunships, boom torpedos and claymores strapped to the attack vehicle are incidental to this study but are deferred at this time.
...
The standard comic ploy of a whipped cream pie in the face can be perverted to the technique of filling the paper pie plate with a quick acting epoxy type glue or a rubberized cement which is thrust into the face of the subject. The glue will stick his eyes shut, blinding him, and also block his nasal and oral passages so smothering him. This type of stunt would bring laughs from passers by with everyone joining in the general hilarity as the subject expires - exit laughing.
The portable X-ray machine is a different story, and most technical assistance departments have them on requisition. They come packaged like a foot locker. In this technique, the subject's room is irridated from both sides (necessitating two devices) for several hours. It is not necessary to enter the subject's apartment, only the adjoining or upper-lower rooms.
This method is a specialist technique and involves the use of dry ice cakes (frozen carbon dioxide). The ice, which is easily transported while wrapped in papers is placed in the sleeping quarters of the subject preferably under his bed. As he sleeps, the carbon dioxide level rises to a lethal degree while the evidence literally evaporates. The gas is odorless, and the cause of death might appear to be natural.
CO2 is also heavier than air, especially while chilled...
Gases like hydrogen or oxyen can be liquified and transported in themous-type bottles. Dumping the contents of such a bottle on the subject in a walk-by would be chilling to say the least - his head could be frozen solid, and in that brittle state, be struck, causing decapitation.
I have no words for how stupid this is.
little_details to ask "how does a hitman work?" And inevitably, somebody else pops up and plugs a book called 'Kill Without Joy', although it hasn't happened so much lately; I like to think that this has something with my efforts to discourage this via KWoJ, written by John Minnery, was published by Paladin Press in 1973. (For those who've never heard the name, they're a small press who publish how-tos on a wide range of topics, including some concerned with illegal activities. 'Informational/self-defence purposes only' and all that.) There's a large chunk of it, if not the whole thing, available online here.
The content falls into two parts. The first is concerned with mundane methods of murder - guns, knives, what-have-you. I'm no expert on such topics, but AFAICT, this section is moderately reasonable. Not terribly well written, and somewhat padded with philosophy, but you could certainly kill somebody with this stuff.
The second is concerned with more exotic techniques, and this is where the crack-smoking commences. I'm not sure whether this was the author's fault, or whether the publisher told him to sex it up a bit, but either way it's frickin' hilarious. Excerpts below the cut, spelling as I found it:
Cynogen [I think this is supposed to be cyanogen] can be liberated from aerosols, squeeze bottles, or specially designed projectors. In most cases the assassin must take an antidote before and after firing the gas at the subject's face so that he himself does not fall victim to the effects of the gas. The antidote is either sodium thiosulphate or sodium mitrate tablets before and amyl nitrate or a urinated handkerchief inhalant after.
I guess you could kill somebody this way (although the book has no instructions on how one might make or obtain such a weapon). And these countermeasures *might* stop you from killing yourself along with the intended victim...
Strychnine is a very effective poison that attacks the nervous system and causes the body to bend like a bow in death. To counteract this effect and so to disguise the poisoning, a portion of cyanide is also given. The symptoms of both poisons are, in effect, opposite but mutually effective in causing death resulting in no outward symptoms of poisoning.
I don't know a whole lot about toxicology, but I'm going to call bullshit on this; when you read on, you'll understand why I'm willing to trust my gut instinct over this guy's 'research' here.
Arsenic and thallium sulphate are common rat poisons and can be used in assassinations as well as the mercury from thermometers and barometers.
While mercury *compounds* can be very toxic, metallic mercury - as you'd find in a thermometer - is a lousy way of killing somebody. Unless you can get them to inhale the stuff, it's likely to go straight through their system without reacting much on the way.
If the subject is prone to use mouthwash, eye or ear drops, sulfuric or muriatic acids can be added into the bottles and the patent medicine taken out.
Acid eye drops? Very likely to blind somebody, extremely unlikely to kill them.
Everybody knows about a Mickey Finn which is basically barbiturated booze, but the ice cubes can also be sabotaged by adding powdered glass to them before putting them in the fridge. It's impossible to spot the slivers suspended in the ice cubes and when the subject drains his glass he gets a mouthful of same. This creates havoc in the intestinal tract and death can result from internal hemorrhage.
Myth.
Used properly, poisons can be one of the most effective weapons in an assassin's armory. They're to be used in situations requiring quiet, rapid death.
Actually, most of the poisons recommended in this book are more likely to cause slow, messy, noisy death, if they actually succeed in killing their victim. But we're just getting into the really wacky stuff:
Poisonous snakes can be sent to the subject in a parcel and will bite him when he opens the package. The evidence slithers away.
...
Essentially the weapon is an electrified grid in the urinal basin. This can take the form of a screen cover for the drain or metal grill. If the urinal is porcelain completely the screen must be added by the assassin. The drain cover is connected to the electrical system of the wash room by means of an insulated cord that is hidden behind the plumbing.
What happens when the subject uses the urinal should be obvious now. The subject's urine which is a salty liquid and a perfect conductor of electricity, makes contact with the charged grid and the shock will kill him.
This system can be selective by rigging the circuit with a switch that you can control. The wiring need not be elaborate and can be carried in your pocket and be hooked up within a few minutes. Normal 110 volt current is sufficient because it is the amperage that kills. The only thing necessary to look out for is that the circuit is not grounded - except by the subject.
This method lends itself to be used in government or large public buildings.
As long as you're standing in the toilets watching everybody who comes in, so you can keep the circuit off until your victim shows up. That wouldn't attract attention in the least. (And let's not even get into the electrical aspects of this...)
Another method silencing the report is in the situation where the subject is under the control of accomplices or rendered unconscious, is to jam the muzzle up his rectal orifice and fire the weapon. Apart from being virtually silent the cause of death is not immediately apparent to the examiner of the corpse, and indeed if a plastic or fiber-glass bullet were used it wouldn't show up on X-ray.
Except for the BLEEDIN' OBVIOUS SCORCH MARKS caused by escaping muzzle gases and possible exit wound... if you've got them that helpless, why exactly would you need to use a gun? (I won't even start on the inconvenience of making plastic/fiberglass bullets.)
In some cases the assassin's weapons should be sanitized or else home-made because the possibility of tracing the weapon is nil. These special weapons should be smooth-bore to thwart rifling tracing and also to encourage the bullets to keyhole through the target.
I'm pretty sure a home-made weapon makes the ballistics tech's life *easier* than a run-of-the-mill Glock stolen a week before the killing and thrown away immediately afterwards. But what would I know?
Without getting too deeply into the realm of the bizarre, a specially loaded bullet made from a human tooth (bicuspid) could be fired under the jaw or through the mouth into the head.
...
Specialist techniques of auto bombing, bazooka attacks, mini bus gunships, boom torpedos and claymores strapped to the attack vehicle are incidental to this study but are deferred at this time.
...
The standard comic ploy of a whipped cream pie in the face can be perverted to the technique of filling the paper pie plate with a quick acting epoxy type glue or a rubberized cement which is thrust into the face of the subject. The glue will stick his eyes shut, blinding him, and also block his nasal and oral passages so smothering him. This type of stunt would bring laughs from passers by with everyone joining in the general hilarity as the subject expires - exit laughing.
The portable X-ray machine is a different story, and most technical assistance departments have them on requisition. They come packaged like a foot locker. In this technique, the subject's room is irridated from both sides (necessitating two devices) for several hours. It is not necessary to enter the subject's apartment, only the adjoining or upper-lower rooms.
This method is a specialist technique and involves the use of dry ice cakes (frozen carbon dioxide). The ice, which is easily transported while wrapped in papers is placed in the sleeping quarters of the subject preferably under his bed. As he sleeps, the carbon dioxide level rises to a lethal degree while the evidence literally evaporates. The gas is odorless, and the cause of death might appear to be natural.
CO2 is also heavier than air, especially while chilled...
Gases like hydrogen or oxyen can be liquified and transported in themous-type bottles. Dumping the contents of such a bottle on the subject in a walk-by would be chilling to say the least - his head could be frozen solid, and in that brittle state, be struck, causing decapitation.
I have no words for how stupid this is.
