@James You ready to build a bunch of leaders (and delegations) from each race?

Hello all!

@TheRaptorsClaw hi

Hi! I was browsing through a question about preindustrial poison gases and came across an answer that talked about some examples

@TheRaptorsClaw A good find for your uses?

I am rather new to the site and didnt want to ask a separate question if it's too similar, but I wanted to know if there's any point in asking about how certain gases affect humans/ human blood. I am looking for specific information such as enthalpy of CO reacting with haemoglobin, whether any of these reactions are exceedingly endothermic or exothermic, etc

Rather obnoxiously science based I know haha, but I've tried many places and even asked professors at my university and am coming up short

@Green Yeah, it was rather helpful to be fair, just I need more haha

@TheRaptorsClaw This sounds like a physiology/biochemistry question, not a worldbuilding question.

@TheRaptorsClaw My first guess would be that CO+hemoglobin aren't endothermic or exothermic. I've not heard of any examples where a victim of CO poisoning gets really hot or really cold (well, eventually they get cold).

Ah, I've been so absorbed with making an element of my world realistic, I forgot that this may not be the best place to ask haha. Specifically, in my world magic is sourced from endothermic reactions - something that takes in heat also gives out small amounts of energy. I wondered if such a reaction (or any other way of gassing someone to death) might provide non-negligible quantities.

Lol thats true @eventually getting cold. Afaik, all reactions tend one way or another, but I'll head over to biochemistry and see if they can help!

Thanks :)

@TheRaptorsClaw I don't think so. Hemoglobin needs to attach and detach to CO2 and O2 easily or else it wouldn't be useful as a gas carrier.

As a result there shouldn't be much energy in binding or unbinding.

@TheRaptorsClaw Good luck!

@James I seem to have been summoned! . . . A week ago. My bad on not responding. :-/

That is true, but the reason CO is deadly is that the affinity haemoglobin has for it is much higher than it does for O2, which is the reason why it kills!

@TheRaptorsClaw good point.

or is it that CO binds stronger than O2 or CO2 is able to bind and that's why it's dangerous. Not that the overall binding is really strong, just that it's stronger than the other options.

Hmm. I'm not sure, to be honest, but wouldn't something that has a high affinity to bind mean the energy it takes to do so would be lower than other options? So being stronger at binding could mean a greater energy released?

Though your point that CO poisoning victims not getting too hot or cold probably indicates that it's negligible one way or the other. I guess I'll leave that idea on the drawing board then haha

Thanks for the chat, really helped me out

Hello everyone

How's it going?

@TheRaptorsClaw of course! That's what we do here.

@JasonClyde Pretty good.

@Green Good to hear. I'm doing okay. Thought I'd try writing a side-story of my story's universe, set in a mysterious shifting pocket dimension, in order to mess around with my story's magic system concepts and abilities before moving on to the real thing. Because I think I may be getting overly caught up in accuracy to the point that it's just keeping me from doing actual writing.

@TheRaptorsClaw Not sure if this is helpful but I found a potentially relevant paper.

jbc.org/content/262/23/10994.long

@TheRaptorsClaw If you need to kill someone in a way that provides heat, you could try setting them on fire?

@AndyD273 Nuclear radiation :D

If it needs to be a poisonous gas, maybe try fluorine. It's pretty deadly

And has exothermic properties

@Hosch250 Yeah, magic glowing rocks could also be useful

Talking about nuclear radiation...

There was a natural reactor in Africa, IIRC, at one point way back.

I wonder if we could detect the output of that in rock layers or something anyway, like they can the above-ground tests in trees and bones and stuff.

In above ground tests aren't they just detecting radioactive ash and whatever thrown out by the bombs?

No, something like carbon 14, or something.

I assume a natural reactor wouldn't spread the remnants that far so maybe it would only be obvious at the local area.

@Bellerophon Yeah, it really depends how much radiation was leaked into the air stream to be carried around the world.

@AndyD273 hahaha it was more the other way round, I'd prefer an endothermic way to kill someone. (Please don't let me be on a list now for saying that lmao)

@Bellerophon omg ive only looked at the title but it looks like the most promising paper so far! thank youuu

Ive had a look at all the papers my university's library search function has access to, but havent seen this one yet! :D

@TheRaptorsClaw The problem is, endothermic needs energy continually put in.

So, basically, it needs to steal the energy your body is actively producing so you starve or get poisoned as a side-effect.

Or your heart just doesn't have enough energy to pump anymore, more likely.

As for gases - I was hoping for something that could target blood in an endothermic reaction. If it's a gas that makes it easy to do, but poison or neurotoxin or even snake venom if it does it endothermically

@Hosch250 yeah thats pretty much what im looking for!

Not sure it's what you're looking for, but that's basically what a parasite does.

yeah it's gonna be hard to find, but if it does exist itll fit perfectly for my world as its designed so far

i mean thats a good point lol, but i dont think a parasite has as much link to blood as i would like. will keep in mind though

Leeches.

welp i stand corrected haha

though i forgot that the idea was it needs to be a chemical reaction and not a leeching of energy, if you excuse the pun ;)

bellerophons paper does look reallyyy promising, im halfway through the discussion and it looks like the paper was written by someone with the same question as me

@TheRaptorsClaw Yes. Just throwing it out there as a potential idea if you can't find a direct chemical. You might also might look at viruses.

Hmm. Are there any chemicals that are endothermic above, say, 94F that react with something in the blood?

That way, it would react and quickly steal the heat from the blood until the victim died of either suffocation or hypothermia.

See if there was a substance like that that would be perfect and exactly what I'm looking for!

@Bellerophon that paper is perfect thank you so much for finding it! It gives exactly the info I needed, and on top of that the data fits with what I was hoping would be the case too!

Looks like Carbon monoxide binding to haemoglobin, while not actually completely endothermic, still does have negative kJ/mol enthalpy. Maybe I'm being dyslexic again and misinterpreting the charts, but it seems like it.

But hosch, I love the idea of looking for other chemicals that steal heat from blood, that would be potentially even better than CO! I'll keep the search going :)

Happy Thursday. . .

@TheRaptorsClaw Glad my searching for scientific papers skills finally came in useful.