permanently poisonous blade?

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Shann said:
Well, you could put poop on it and it would bacteria ridden for a while.
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This is much closer to the truth than you think. I know the Vikings actually did this, and probably various other cultures as well.
 
Poisonous blades are indeed real. You can buy them from the weapons merchant in the bandit town of Pickham.
 
mycroftt said:
Sort of. The umbrella wasn't really poisoned - it was probably just a spring-loaded device that delievered the ricin-infused pellet or dart that killed Georgi Markov.
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The end of the umbrella was pointed and the pellet was a spherical ball with two indentations carrying the ricin which came out of the side of the point. Ricin is made from Cheese Plant I seem to remember.
 
Whoa, dudes! I wouldn't know so much about writting this off as some kind of folk myth, but I am willing to believe that there are methods to tip poisons on to porous blades. You might do well to stay clear of any rusted ones for that matter! Check out this other thread I came across.
(http://www.talkaboutcollecting.com/group/rec.knives/messages/137660.html)
 
The time to tip a sword or knife with poison would be in a HAMLET type scenario where there is a chance that you may die, so you poison your blade to make sure that your enemy will also fall even after your gone. In that scenario I would deem it likley you would tip or coat your knife/sword with poison. If they can do it to arrow tips than they can do it to knives and swords. But fencing would be a serious application where you may get several cuts in and still die from your own wounds but your enemy would parish too.
 
Walking Man said:
This is much closer to the truth than you think. I know the Vikings actually did this, and probably various other cultures as well.
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Walking Man, can you remember where you found that? Not doubting you, just interested in Viking swordplay and such and I'd like to see where your source leads me.
 
Okay, I've got a serious idea. Everyone know what sintered bronze is? Granules of bronze, pressed together. They use it to make fuel filters and bushings, because it's porous. So, gas can go through it (filter), or oil can be held inside it (bushing).

Maybe this ancient blade was made similarly, so that poison could be rubbed into the blade, and held inside the pores.

If this blade was used in the "Bronze Age", maybe I'm right! So, if I solved the 5,000 year old puzzle, what do I win? :)

????????
 
Ricin is derived from castor beans. The soviet weapon was an air-gun disguised as an umbrella. The assasian jabbed the victim in the leg with the umbrella while firing the air-gun. This took place in a crowded area on a city street, so the act would not be unusual or seem strange. He got bumped by someones umbrella in the hustle and bustle of a crowd. The pellet went just under the victims skin where it was then able to release the ricin into the victims blood. The symptoms of ricin poisoning are very similar that od the flu.

This was on the Discovery channel a while back.
 
The Markov pellet was made of iridium IIRC. Ricin has been much in the news here in the UK, because some guys were accused (and, I think, subsequently acquitted) of trying to make it for use in a "terrorist outrage". I remember thinking at the time that it would be difficult to poison many people with ricin due to its mode of action. Ricin, by the way, is indeed made from the castor bean (so don't buy any unless you want a "visit").

The original story seems not to be very likely (or even possible) from the standpoint of science, for reasons stated above by others. The idea that it derives from the practice of "bigging up" your own rep (as you say in the US apparently) seems highly likely . . .

Prions can survive very high temperatures without being denatured (rendered biologically and otherwise inactive) but they were probably rarer then than they are now (and they're not common now, despite what the USDA thinks about British beef). Also, statistically, few animals who ingest prions develop vCJD, CJD or scrapie or gid or staggers or that encephalopathy thing that cannibals get, so it wouldn't be very effective (also, weren't leaves and stuff cited as the contaminant? prions exist mostly (possibly exclusively) in animal neural tissue (so don't eat other people's brains!).

Interesting thread though. What about that Feyd-Rautha in Dune? Frank Herbert obviously based the Dune milieu on arabic stuff and poison blades feature prominently . . .
 
I have no experience with forging steel and such, but I wonder if things like mercury or other types of toxic materials (uranium/plutonium) could have been mixed with brass or iron or whatever they were using to create a poison blade.
 
Hi
The closest real thing I know of regarding poisoned blades is the kris, specifically the Indonesian kris. The Indo warriors rubbed their krises with lime before storing them in the scabbard. The objective was to create surface rust on the kris.

They also rub them with sandlewood paste and sandlewood oil, although I think that is more for storing and protecting unused blades rather than to make them poisonous (I'm not sure).

HL
 
ocelot777 said:
the practice of "bigging up" your own rep (as you say in the US apparently)
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No, we don't say "bigging up". We say "increasing the rate of embiggening" all the time though. :thumbup:
 
Did this guy mention about how fast it worked or what happened when poisoned by this blade? If it is true, then these are things that would definitely help in finding out what it was.

[EDIT]
Tetanus in a rusty blade is quite possible, if a little slow acting. In my mind, if you were going to have a poisoned blade then you'd want the quickest acting poison possible otherwise they'd still have time to come back at you, hence I mentioned inorganic cyanides earlier. Perhaps a potent tranquiliser like carfentanyl might be more appropriate with todays technology?
 
Silverbak said:
I have no experience with forging steel and such, but I wonder if things like mercury or other types of toxic materials (uranium/plutonium) could have been mixed with brass or iron or whatever they were using to create a poison blade.
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Two problems there: First, part of the purpose of the forging process is to purify the steel; some impuraties are simply forged out. Second, even if you could get mercury or lead or any other poisonous metal into the steel alloy, you won't get enough of it to dissolve into the blood in the course of a stab or slash. There are people who live with lead bullets in their bodies for decades and don't have dangerous levels of lead in their blood.

If you cut yourself, do you worry about how much of the blade's steel might have dissoved into your blood? No. The amount is all but zero, practically undetectible. Metals just don't dissolve well in blood.
 
wouldn't a radioactive blade be permanatly poisionous??Just toss that summbitch into a reactor pull it out and go to war.Your enemy and everyone within 45-50 feet all dead.give the knife to the most unpopular soldier cause he's not comming back either.There you have it poisionus blade.
 
A bit late but so what, I remember seeing something from the Phillipines on discovery about adding poisionous spiders in the final stage of the forging. And the maker stated that it would be poisionous fore ever....
 
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