Today as I went to the pharmacy and bought some dimethyl ether/ propane as a wart remover I had an idea as I was freezing off a common planters wart on the bottom of my foot. Why not use pressurized gas as a weapon to freeze to death ones enemies in a matter of seconds. As an example of the idea I would site propane. If any of you have tryed releasing as little as a pound of propane from it's container all at once you would surely feel the biting frost of frostbite on your fingers this is because propane comes out extremely cold as do many other compressed gases and substances. Now I mean to propose such a weapon as the most effective killer of it's kind say a tanker of propane or ammonia released into a crowded area would cause some severe causulties, by the freezing effect than would the toxicity of the given substance. You would effectively freeze your enemies in just a few seconds, if you were to do such a thing as to release the given substance all at once. Unlike Hollywood if you were to set off a high explosive to destroy a pressurised tank of propane it would not result in a fire ball, but rather in a cloud of freezing gas. What do you think, a rich source of possibilities or a fool's errand?

Possibly a fools errand. I heard of a guy who nearly killed himself drinking liquid Nitrogen once, and that is a hell of a lot colder than Propane or anything stored at room temperature. You would asphixiate (sp?) a lot of people, though, and certainly everyone would think it was some kind of chemical attack -> mass panic.

It takes quite a lot of something to actually freeze something the size of a human to death, since the body can cope with cold liquids, etc. With a massive amount of fluid (the sea) there is a rule I recall which says that 50% of strong swimmers will survive a 50 meter swim in water at 50 degrees F. However, if they stay still and don't swim, they are more likely to survive a while, as they reduce the heat loss by reducing the forced fluid movement over the skin.

I have washed glass fibre resin from my hands with Acetone, and that is damned cold as it sucks the heat from our hands. Certainly it would panic the target, as they wouldn't know what the hell was going on, but it wouldn't kill. (Unless you helped him warm himself on the fire!)

Anyone want to work out the latent heats, etc.?

I would have thought the freezing effect of pressurized gas would soon disapate as the gas returns to a lower pressure. it would only be dangerous to people very near the weapon if it was to be dangerous. With acetone, is it not the quick evaporation that cools it rather than the liquid being cold?

Exactly, it is the heat of vapourisation that chills your hands so fast, because your hands are hotter than the surroundings, and the boiling point of acetone is lower than the temp of your hands, but higher than that outside. It takes the heat from your hands and evaporates. Moving your hands makes it unbearably cold as it moves fresh air in to replace the vapour filled air from next to the liquid layer. Hold them still, and it takes a lot longer to evaporate, and isn't nearly as cold.

Soaking someone's clothes in acetone or liquid propane whilst they are wearing them might work, but I don't know. Also, as they target gets colder, less evaporation can take place, due to the reduced temperature of the target being less able to provide heat. Unless the temp drops a long way, and fast, the body will just adapt as it does to a cold day.

Then the use of acetone would be almost completely impractical as a weapon. "excuse me, will you please stand in front of a fan while i soak your clothes in acetone?" without an outside source of warmth such as a fan or something similar, all that you would succed in doing is making someone uncomforatble and very afraid of open flame

Lets say you used you "frezzing weapon" on a room of people, and that you used liquid propane/other gas, If you soaked every one in the room with propane, the liquid/gas would still be trapped in there clothes. If you added an ignition source acouple of seconds later, as they are fleeing from the "mass coldnessness" that you caused they would be leaving a trail of gas behind them as the liquid evaporated. So the flames would "chase" them(the flame trail ignited it would be more or less instantanious) but it would cause more carnage (physical/mental) as the people see random people fleeing and then bursting into flame.

STUPID! STUPID! STUPID!

:mad: