Neither of the main characters in my story are human. They're both superhuman monsters who don't have lungs or a circulatory system. I had the idea that one of them would irresponsibly mix cleaning chemicals out of a desire to purge an extremely dangerous magical substance, and neither of them would notice the resulting toxic chloramine gas because they don't have lungs. Am I missing something else about it that they would notice?
Well, if you're going more scientific about this, I don't think it would affect them in some ways. The gas could still burn their skin or cause irritation to eyes. But since they don't have blood or breath, those symptoms wouldn't occur.
Thanks! I have a followup question: is it the sort of gas that would make a human lose consciousness? I just had the idea of the punchline of the scene being that one of the human bad guys holds them at gunpoint, complaining about the atrocious smell all the while, and the two are saved when he passes out from the fumes.
Well, what time era is this? Because several things could, but the more modern the story is, more safeguards are in place.
Is it wintertime? And do these characters have a car? What I would go for is Carbon monoxide. One of the characters starts the car in the garage, then gets stalled by bad guy. Bad guy gets knocked out when reasonable convenient.
Hilariously enough they have a car but not a garage or even a house. They travel around in an RV that in this scene they literally just got back. The mixing of ammonia and bleach was due to one of them wanting to go absolutely scorched-earth on an extremely addictive magical drug that the drug dealer thieves had stocked their fridge with.
Okay, since it's magical, then maybe it can harm the bad guys. Or, option 2, their blackwater tank is leaking and causes a fire? But the main characters survive?
The reaction produces some heat, and if there is too much ammonia, it also produces chlorine gas, which is greenish-yellow.
That shit is no joke. Restaurant workers die from it all the time. Two of them in an Applebee's not far from me a few years ago. We don't keep anything with ammonia around for that reason.
So from what I'm gathering from this, it would probably be unpleasant, but not dangerous to my heroes, whereas the human who's going to try to sneak up on them wouldn't gradually pass out so much as immediately be reduced to a hacking, sputtering mess with burning eyes. Is that correct?
There's one thing that no-one has yet mentioned: is there a wind of any kind blowing? As Naomasa mentioned, too much ammonia creates chlorine gas, which is greenish-yellow, and which was used as a terror weapon in World War 1 (along with mustard gas, bromine and phosgene). Gas masks were not always effective (it depended how quickly you put them on), but they were the most effective measure against chlorine gas. If gas masks were not available, infantry did -- and I'm not making this up -- pee on their handkerchiefs (or even socks!) and hold them to their mouths and noses. I've no idea why this worked, though. Here is why wind is so important (from the wiki-article "Chemical weapons in World War I"): Lastly, if you want a description of what happens when a human is gassed, then Wilfred Owen's poem "Dulce et Decorum Est" (link here) is instructive, tragic, realistic, and horrifying, all at once. (The title, which Owen quotes, comes from the Latin saying from the 1st-century poet Horace -- Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori, i.e. "it is sweet and fitting to die for one's country" -- which Owen argues is a horrible lie). Read it and weep for the waste of it all.
I once mixed granulated pool chlorine with a liquid algaecide (chemical composition unknown to me) in a plastic bottle in order to make quick work of a task my father ask me to do. I didn't read the algaecide bottle label closely ( it said: do not mix with chlorine) and it resulted in a slow chemical reaction which evolved into a fire spewing explosion which incidentally caught our garage on fire. So there's a possibility.
Mixing ammonia and bleach creates dangerous chloramine gas, which can harm anyone nearby, even if they don’t breathe. They might notice irritation in their skin or eyes, or irritation in the environment.
