Germany, 1939
In a secret bunker on the German-Polish border
Nazi agents were overseeing the production of a recently discovered chemical
they'd code-named "Substance N"
It boiled when they exposed it to air,
It exploded when it touched water, it was lethal when inhaled,
and when it decomposed it spit out deadly hydrofluoric acid.
When loaded into a flamethrower and ignited it could burn at
temperatures over 2400°C
The plan was to arm troops with "Substance N"
and use it to melt allied bunkers into hot porridge
But then after studying it for a while even the German soldiers were like
"Whoa." experiments with "Substance N" were discontinued because
the Nazis decided it was to dangerous to work with.
Should give you some kind of sense of what we're dealing with
here when we talk about the most dangerous chemicals in the world.
I'm talking about things that explode when you touch them,
things so poisonous that if even a millionth of a gram went up your nose, it would end up killing you
things that could even disable you because of their totally, debilitatingly, horrifying smell,
and yes, chemicals so severe, that even the Nazis thought they were crazy.
Let's start with what the Germans had in that secret weapons bunker
They originally planned to produce 90 tons of the stuff every month
but only made about 30 tons throughout the whole war
what they'd concocted was chlorine trifluoride,
the most vigorous fluorinating agent known to humanity
fluorinating agents rip other molecules apart to replace their hydrogen atoms with fluorine
the result is what chemists called a 'violently exothermic reaction',
in this case known as a fluorine fire
it's much more dangerous to handle than even fluorine gas,
which as anyone with a degree in chemistry could tell you
is not a sentence that you get to say very often
it's also a better oxidizer than oxygen
oxidizers are compounds that steal electrons from other chemicals in a reaction
and they are what make combustion possible.
chlorine trifluoride is so good at this, that it can burn stuff that sane people might think of as non flammable, like
bricks or asbestos or things that have already been burned
oxidizers are also used to ignite rocket fuel and in
the very short time that us rocket scientists thought about using this stuff as a propellant,
they quickly learned that this idea was bad
and the early 1950s, the first time that US scientists tried to ship chlorine trifluoride in bulk
the steel tank cracked and a full ton of it spilled out
it burned so hot that the chemical ate through an entire concrete floor
and then a meter of dirt and gravel beneath that
One eye-witness described the spill only by saying
"The concrete...was on fire!"
Chlorine trifluoride is still manufactured and is used by semi-conductor companies to clean their equipment
to within an inch of its life.
The good news is that you can store it safely in a regular steel drum
as long as it's air-tight and you're really, really careful,
because, it instantly scorches the inside lining of the container
leaving behind a nonreactive plating of metallic fluoride.
Nonreactive is not a word that we're gonna need when discussing the next chemical on our list
"Azidoazide azide", the most explosive chemical compound ever created
This twitchy little compound is a part of a class of chemicals known as
"High nitrogen energetic materials"
And it does what it does because nitrogen just wants to be left alone
A nitrogen atom bonded with another nitrogen atom is one of the most stable molecules on earth
Their electrons form an extremely strong triple bond with each other,
which, in nature can usually only be broken by a molecule being hit by lightning
The strength of that bond means that when two nitrogen atoms snap together,
they release a tremendous amount of energy.
So if you look in a molecule of AA.. We're gonna call it AA cause Azidoazide Azide is hard
You can see how it gets its bang.
It has 14 nitrogen atoms and because of the way the molecule was structured,
None of them are in a triple bond.
Instead, they're stuck in a loosely bound high-energy state
and are dying to move to a more stable lower energy state
which means releasing a lot of pent-up energy in the process.
As a result, AA is both highly reactive and heck-a explosive.
How sensitive is this stuff? Well, it's actually hard to say, because it's too sensitive
even to measure how sensitive it is.
A team of German chemists created it in 2010 with the help of the US army,
in an effort to develop more energetic compounds.
And their first report on the discovery,
they said, and I quote, "The sensitivity of C2N14 is beyond our capabilities of measurement...
...even the smallest possible loadings in shock & friction-tests led to explosive decomposition."
To give you a list of how touchy this stuff is,
here's a list of things that make Azidoazide explode:
moving it, touching it,
dispersing it in solution, leaving it undisturbed on a glass plate,
exposing it to bright light, exposing it to x-rays,
putting it in a spectrometer, turning on the spectrometer,
and my favourite: ABSOLUTELY NOTHING!!!
They had it in a shock-proof explosive case, in a dark climate controlled room...
and it blew up!
I think somebody said something mean about it somewhere, and it was like:
(Censored Bleep)
The lead scientists on the team that synthesized it called it: "A very exciting discovery."
If I worked with Azidoazide Azide, waking up every morning,
and seeing that I still had all my fingers would be a very exciting discovery.
Next up, let's talk about Dimethylcadmium
This is an organometallic compound,
which means it it has a molecule in which carbon has bonded with a metal
In this case, that metal is Cadmium,
a pretty nasty customer all on its own
So far we've talked about chemicals that explode
or cover everything in unquenchable fire
And don't get me wrong; Dimethylcadmium, it does that too
But that is not what makes it so dangerous
It is, in all likelihood, gram-for-gram the most toxic chemical in the world
It has both acute and chronic effects
Which means it will kill you now AND later
It was first prepared by a pioneer of metal organic chemistry
A fellow named Erich Krause who was from, yes, Germany
It was 1917
To give you a sense of how Krause rolled
he died in his lab at the age of 37 after accidentally inhaling a bunch of chlorine
but before that happened he managed to report his discovery of Dimethylcadmium
When you breathe it in it is absorbed instantly into your bloodstream,
where it basically serves as a kind of chemical chauffeur for toxic compounds of cadmium
to travel all around your body
Because it's so effective at exploiting your bloodstream it quickly effects your most blood-infused organs
Like lungs and your kidneys and liver, creating compounds that rip electrons off the atoms of your cells
But if you manage to survive your first few hours after Dimethylcadmium exposure,
don't get your hopes up. It's also extremely carcinogenic,
So it will take you down with cancer just to spite you
This stuff is so potent that, as an airborne vapor
just a few millionths of a gram per cubic meter of air meets the legal safety limits
But if you spill it, how are you going to clean it up?
Water?
Well, when it reacts with water it produces both lots of heat and lots of hydrogen gas
Which is flammable so, yeah, it explodes in water
Maybe you could sweep it up?
Eeuhh friction makes it ignite
Might wanna just try waiting for it to decompose?
Well, it will do that
It'll form a crust of dimethyl cadmium peroxide, which is a friction-sensitive explosive
So you're just one shoe-scuff away from "KABLAMMO"
And on top of it all
the chemical has an odor that has been described as foul, unpleasant, metallic, and disagreeable
But that's nothing compared to our next chemical:
Thioacetone
It won't explode, or start fires, or even give you cancer
Compared to other chemicals on the list it's like a cute little fluffy bunny
If that cute little fluffy bunny had the MOST UNGODLY STINK YOU CAN IMAGINE
That's right, Thioacetone takes the prize for The World's Smelliest Chemical
It's a thiol, an organic compound in which a carbon atom is bonded to a sulfur-hydrogen pair
They're all gross
A skunk's spray uses two different thiols to eye-watering effect
Most sulfur-containing compounds are released by rotting meat
which is a reason why we would want to be very good at being able to detect them
and also not think that it smells...Good
But when it comes to bad smells
Thioacetone takes the stinky, seriously unappetizing cake
You can smell one drop of this substance, almost instantly, from half a kilometer away
In the 1960s a vial of the stuff fell off a shelf in a research lab
People were chucking their cookies in buildings 200 meters away
But the greatest example of thioacetone's silent-but-deadly strength comes from the German city of Freiburg
where in 1889 chemists at a soap factory were, reportedly, working on a larger molecule
known as tri-thioacetone, which is used as a flavoring and a fragrance
But, when they broke it apart into thioacetone workers started falling ill
Spontaneous outbreaks of vomiting were reported in the surrounding neighborhoods
It led to the evacuation of the whole city
There might be a lot to learn about thioacetone and thiols in general
but, understandably, scientists are not really rushing to look into it
And finally, there's the strongest corrosive agent in the world
The most dangerous acid ever devised by humanity
Fluoroantimonic acid
Because what list of dangerous chemicals would be complete
without a super acid
What makes an acid an acid is its ability to donate a proton to another molecule nearby it
And a proton is just a hydrogen atom that's lost its electron
This process is called Protonation
And an acid's strength is determined by how willing it is to give up that proton
A weak acid, acetic acid for example
Which is just the undiluted form of vinegar
will drag its feet about protonating other molecules
Most of it will just sit there doing nothing
But a strong acid like sulfuric acid'll punch that proton in the air like a beach volleyball at spring break
And remember from Substance N how crazy fluorine is
Well, fluoroantimonic acid is ten quadrillion times stronger than sulfuric acid
This molecule is begging for an excuse to fly apart
Once it's lost its hydrogen atoms
the remaining atoms of fluorine and another element, antimony
tear through everything else around them, ripping electrons off nearby molecules
and leaving just organic goo in their wake
Especially exciting is that fluorine really likes to bond with calcium
So once the acid tears through the fatty organic tissues of your skin and muscles
the fluorine will burn through your bones
The only way to store fluoroantimonic acid is in Teflon containers
Teflon, by the way, is held together by carbon-fluorine bonds
which are the single strongest bond in organic chemistry
We don't actually know a lot about this acid because it's so hard to do experiments with it
You can't put it in a syringe or on a slide
It eats through glass like it's cotton candy
You can't put it under a fume hood - it'll eat the fume hood
All you can really do is, just like, look at it
Ideally from...
...very far away
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