Hi. I'm working on a crime story. I'm trying to make a character open a book, inhale a drug that has been spread on one of its leaflets and be knockout for like 4hours. I don't know if there is any drug/chemical that can do this. Please what do you think?
Propofol, but that would be hard to get. I think my favorite way to do for somebody would be nitrogen, but it couldn't be administered by book. Chloroform and Ether you would smell. a SMALL dose of cyanide. Too much of any of those will get you dead though.
I've heard that, contrary to Hollywood's best efforts to convince you, chloroform actually requires quite a bit of inhaling to actually knock you out. I don't know if it could work, but I also know people commit suicide often times by inhaling the exhaust from their car, carbon monoxide. That still requires a lot of inhaling, though.
I really doubt it could be done. Anything that would come off the page that quickly would have to be volatile as hell, which means you'd need to have the book practically dripping with the stuff to ensure that there was any left by the time the victim got to it. Nitrogen makes up 78% of the atmosphere, won't kill you in the slightest. The reason people use it for suicide is that the body has no reaction to inhaling nitrogen, even when the percentage goes up from 78 to ~100%. The reason you get that suffocating feeling is the buildup of carbon dioxide in your bloodstream, not a lack of oxygen. So if you are, say, hiding from the monster in your closet by keeping the blankets over your head, you'll start to inhale your waste CO2 and trigger that panicky feeling. Keep a stream of nice, fresh nitrogen coming in, and some sort of exit valve for the CO2, and the monster will never get you, you'll just drift off. No way to incorporate that in a book though. However, in The Name of the Rose, Umberto Eco had the poisoned pages. If your character is in the habit of licking their thumbs to turn the pages, you might convince people that there was something soaked and dried into the page that would knock them out. More plausible than dripping chloroform or jets of exotic gases, IMHO.
Fentanyl - Cheap, easy to get, water soluble. Would just need to think of a novel way to administer controlled dosage and prevent OD. 4 hours could easily become 4-ever.
Some chemicals can be absorbed through the skin. There is also a solvent, DMSO (dimethyl sulfoxide) that itself can be absorbed through the skin and can carry dissolved drugs or poisons with it. The victim may notice a garlicky odor after contact; it doesn't actually smell like garlic, but once it's in the bloodstream, it causes the nervous system to react as though garlic has been tasted or smelled. In practice, knockout chemicals are problematic. With few exceptions, a dose that causes unconsciouness is not far removed from a lethal does. This is why anesthesia is often the most dangerous component of a medical procedure.
I was thinking about mentioning DMSO, but most of what I know about it comes from the Dead Kennedys song, which isn't a source I wanted to cite. Glad someone agrees on it though
I was surprised this was fentanyl but remember this controversial hostage rescue: Russia IDs Theater Gas: Fentanyl Pretty much BS that "could not cause death" claim. Some of the hostages did die. I'm with @exweedfarmer , make something up. A derivative of fentanyl is an option. Have it aerosolize when the book is opened, rapid evaporation.
Any gas with a higher atomic weight than air will do as long as it's in a smaller room. At work they are known as oxygen replaces and I have to watch out for them. Almost passed out from carbon monoxide, nitrogen, and sulfur hexafluoride numerous times. A slow leak will make you tired, so you lay down and try to nap. You wont even know it's happening. Carbon monoxide is the easiest. Simply run car exhaust in a garage or cover a house heater exhaust. You're characters can simply fall asleep. Sulfur hexafluoride is quite a bit more expensive, but it lingers right below the air, and if you bend down and breathe it will knock you out. ( a little personal experience there). Nitrogen is pretty common too, but you can feel the coolness of the air usually. All these gasses are colorless.
I think that might have been in Grimtooth's Book of Traps, an old unofficial D&D supplement. Fill a sunken room waist-high with sulfur hexaflouride, and ankle-high with gold pieces. Hilarity ensues.
If you soak book pages in fentanyl, it will be lottery. And if Usphilipo uses fentanyl in his/her story, he/she should learn about it. Fentanyl... kills. Warning: Not nice things.
I second the make-something-up suggestion. Attribute it to spy agency (CIA, Mosad, KGB), give it a cool name, and have someone describe how it works: "It's a special ink developed by the CIA," the shadowy figure said. "When exposed to light, a chemical reaction occurs that generates somnotabol gas. After that, the ink analyzes as ordinary ink. A single page can knock out an entire classroom. That's how they faked the <insert real historic event here>."
