Heart Attack Gun

Newbeak

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Newbeak
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I ran across an article discussing conspiracy theories that turned out to be real.One item that I found interesting was that the CIA invented an assassination weapon that fired frozen pellets of shellfish toxin contaminated ice. Is such a weapon feasible? The KGB used a device to fire a spray of hydrogen cyanide into the face of assassination targets,and the result was said to resemble a fatal heart attack,so I am thinking the CIA gun might actually have been used: http://conspiracy.wikia.com/wiki/CIA_Heart_Attack_Gun
 
Newbeak said:
I ran across an article discussing conspiracy theories that turned out to be real.One item that I found interesting was that the CIA invented an assassination weapon that fired frozen pellets of shellfish toxin contaminated ice. Is such a weapon feasible? The KGB used a device to fire a spray of hydrogen cyanide into the face of assassination targets,and the result was said to resemble a fatal heart attack,so I am thinking the CIA gun might actually have been used: http://conspiracy.wikia.com/wiki/CIA_Heart_Attack_Gun
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The Mythbusters busted the ice bullet idea some time ago. As for the cyanide, it leaves traces, and the reacts don't remember a heart attack very much at all, IIRC.
 
Newbeak said:
I ran across an article discussing conspiracy theories that turned out to be real.One item that I found interesting was that the CIA invented an assassination weapon that fired frozen pellets of shellfish toxin contaminated ice. Is such a weapon feasible? The KGB used a device to fire a spray of hydrogen cyanide into the face of assassination targets,and the result was said to resemble a fatal heart attack,so I am thinking the CIA gun might actually have been used: http://conspiracy.wikia.com/wiki/CIA_Heart_Attack_Gun
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The Church Committee covered this in the 1970's:
http://www.intelligence.senate.gov/pdfs94th/94intelligence_activities_I.pdf

Link to other Church Committee materials: http://www.intelligence.senate.gov/churchcommittee.html
 
This is one of those stories that takes a few nuggets of fact and adds enough fancy to them to make it problematic for either side of a conspiracy theory claim to argue convincingly.

The CIA did stockpile shellfish toxin, and they weren't supposed to. However, shellfish toxin does not induce a heart attack nor produce symptoms undifferentiable from a heart attack, nor is it undetectable at autopsy. It would be a formidable weapon, however, in the quantities held by the CIA. That's why, as a biological/chemical warfare agent, its possession and use was forbidden by treaty and why the CIA's stockpile was unlawful.

Cyanotoxins are respiratory depressants that work rapidly. As such they can cause the enzymatic markers to appear in the heart muscle indicating oxygen starvation, but contrary to the claims they are not invisible in toxicology. The toxicological understanding of this family of poisons has been well developed since the late 1800s.

The dart gun gets into more questionable territory. The dart gun presented at the Church hearings was not an ice-dart gun. Its projectiles were likely ordinary metal darts that could be theoretically laced with any of the poisons the CIA possessed. A dart gun by itself is not especially nefarious, except that the one exhibited to Church was silent and fired a dart that could not necessarily be felt by the target. That by itself is not unawful or especially unheard of in spycraft.

While the Mythbusters dispelled the myth that a gunpowder-driven projectile could feasibly be made from water ice, that is not proof that no other method could work. However, if you talk to many firearms experts you don't find any support for a water-ice dart of any kind. However propelled, an ice projectile simply doesn't have the strength to withstand an impulse strong enough to propel it at penetrative velocities. Ice is light and not very dense. This gives it little penetrating power. It's also very brittle. There is also the problem of keeping the missile cold and sharp enough under field conditions. Hence while the Mythbusters tested only limited possibilities, it is still unlikely that a feasible penetrating missile could be made from water ice and fired from a handheld weapon.

So the package deal of a CIA Heart Attack Gun is still not real if by that is meant an untraceable poison whose effects convincingly mimic a heart attack and an ice dart that melts to avoid being discovered. However it is based on aspects of real CIA methods.
 
JayUtah said:
So the package deal of a CIA Heart Attack Gun is still not real if by that is meant an untraceable poison whose effects convincingly mimic a heart attack and an ice dart that melts to avoid being discovered. However it is based on aspects of real CIA methods.
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I think the problem here is people conflating "fake a heart attack" with "never be able to figure out it's not a real heart attack".


From an assassination point of view, a weapon that makes a death look like a heart attack, even for a few minutes, is valuable. If you just walk up and shoot/stab/explode someone, it draws immediate negative attention. If you can surreptitiously dose them with a poison that makes it look like they're having a heart attack, you have a window of opportunity to escape before being noticed. That's also a window of time in which any attendants might provide the incorrect treatment, increasing the likelihood of success.

So even if such methods would be detected later, they'd still be valuable, even if they don't produce the effects the conspiracy fantasies imagine they'd have.
 
That'd still leave a trail of high profile assassination targets who all died from what immediately was thought to be a heart attack but later proved otherwise. Which would invariably lead to an investigation.
 
Travis said:
That'd still leave a trail of high profile assassination targets who all died from what immediately was thought to be a heart attack but later proved otherwise. Which would invariably lead to an investigation.
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Well, yes, that was part of my point. I could see them developing and using such a weapon, but it's clear that it hasn't been used all that often, if at all.

Even the Russian's poison umbrella trick was only used once or twice.
 
From the basic ballistic pov, there's simply no way to use frozen liquid as a viable projectile. You can eject a frozen projectile using gunpowder or compressed air, but the projectile itself will shed velocity so quickly due to the light weight that even at arms length, a reasonably sized projo fired from a small arm may not have enough sectional density to penetrate even average clothing, let alone a human.

I imagine it would be possible to have something along the lines of a "bang-stick" type weapon in small scale that when pressed directly to the bare skin of the target might work, but it would definitely leave evidence of the weapons use on the target.
 
Is there any substance that would melt in the human body but would provide sufficient structural stability when frozen to be a projectile?

I'm not sure what the point of it would be but let's just attack this as a mental exercise.
 
How about Pycrete?
I know it would leave a residue, but could it have sufficient density & melt resistance [?] to penetrate human tissue?
 
Travis said:
Is there any substance that would melt in the human body but would provide sufficient structural stability when frozen to be a projectile?

I'm not sure what the point of it would be but let's just attack this as a mental exercise.
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Perhaps Mercury which freezes at -38 degrees Fahrenheit/-40 C it might have enough mass to penetrate and perhaps survive being fired - it melts but tends to stay around!
 
A fantasist that used to post on the JREF forum allegedly survived an attack from a heart attack gun. I'm on my phone, so can't find the link right now.
 
carlitos said:
A fantasist that used to post on the JREF forum allegedly survived an attack from a heart attack gun. I'm on my phone, so can't find the link right now.
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I think that was a member by the name of Neveos, who ended up being killed by police after he stabbed someone at the University of Florida, then took off, crashed the vehicle he was driving, then came at the police with a hatchet.

ETA: Link

Link 2
 
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Horatius said:
I think the problem here is people conflating "fake a heart attack" with "never be able to figure out it's not a real heart attack".


From an assassination point of view, a weapon that makes a death look like a heart attack, even for a few minutes, is valuable. If you just walk up and shoot/stab/explode someone, it draws immediate negative attention. If you can surreptitiously dose them with a poison that makes it look like they're having a heart attack, you have a window of opportunity to escape before being noticed. That's also a window of time in which any attendants might provide the incorrect treatment, increasing the likelihood of success.

So even if such methods would be detected later, they'd still be valuable, even if they don't produce the effects the conspiracy fantasies imagine they'd have.
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Couldn't they just get Ox Baker to give the guy a Heart Punch?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ox_Baker
 
LashL said:
I think that was a member by the name of Neveos, who ended up being killed by police after he stabbed someone at the University of Florida, then took off, crashed the vehicle he was driving, then came at the police with a hatchet.

ETA: Link

Link 2
Click to expand...

Thanks. That thread really brought home for me the danger of CT thinking. These are real people, and some of them really believe that their fellow man is out to get them. The results can be tragic.
 
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