Fans of George R.R. Martin's Fire
and Ice series and the HBO show
Game of Thrones know two things:
ONE: Don't get too attached
to any of the characters.
TWO: Weddings aren't always happy occasions.
Okay. Folks,
obligatory spoiler alert:
If you have not caught up to
the latest episode of Game of Thrones.
So at his wedding, King Joffrey dies
from a particularly nasty poison,
the strangler.
There’s no need to argue about whether
or not, the little punk deserved it,
but instead let's talk about
exactly what this poison.
Chemistry Raychelle Burks, Ph.D.
at Doane University College Nebraska
has done a little research that might
have some leads as to what this rare
and deadly poison to be made out of.
Now three plants have been featured
quite a lot in both fictional
and non-fictional murder plot.
That would be belladonna also known
as deadly nightshade, poison hemlock
and to round out our trio the usual
suspects, strychnine tree nux vomica
also known as the strychnine tree.
Now all three of these plants
share something in common,
they all make alkaloids.
In general terms, alkaloids are
naturally occurring compounds that
share the same basic chemical structure.
They've all got at least one
nitrogen atom in heterocycle ring.
Here are three deadly alkaloid suspects.
In Martin’s mythology the strangler
causes the muscles in a person's
neck to clinch together tighter
than a fist, so tight that air
can pass to the windpipe causing
the victim to asphyxiate.
So, do any the three outlets share
common characteristic with the strangler?
Well, let's take a look at the first
two members of our poisonous trio.
Belladona and hemlock.
Now these to do affect our muscles.
They cause your muscles to relax.
So that leaves us with just strychnine.
10 to 20 minutes after you've injected
a lethal dose of strychnine, you're going
to start feeling your muscles convulse.
Now twitch muscles? Ah, here's
the really interesting part.
The strychnine also affects the muscles
in the face and the neck first.
That kinda’ fits in with how Martin has
describes the straggler as causing the
muscles in a man's neck to clench up.
This makes a pretty good match but
there are some details that need to
be covered before we can be sure.
Martin writes that the strangler’s
made from the leaves of a plant on
an island in the sea of Jade,
half a world away and that poison
is extracted from these leaves using
a wash of lime and then treated
with the wash of sugar.
It's true that strychnine can be found
in the leaves of a plant, but
what about this wash of lime?
Is this a practical way of getting
the poisonous alkaloid out?
What if Martin doesn't mean
limes as in the fruit?
He mean limes as in,
a limestone product calcium oxide.
This type of lime is very alkaline,
it’s very basic, it has a high pH
and this type of line has been used
as part a multi-step extraction technique
to get alkaloids out of plants.
And again, what about this sugar,
is it really necessary?
Strychnine like a lotta alkaloids,
has a very bitter taste.
It doesn't taste good.
So we might need sugar and spices to
disguise the taste strychnine, cuz
if you're trying to poison someone
you don't want them to know that usually.
So just like everyone's favorite
alkaloid, caffeine strychnine is
definitely needed a little sweetness.
It looks like we've got a pretty good
match for Martin's deadly strangler.
It may very well be the strychnine is
a poison that took down King Joffrey.
Click here for bonus video that explains
how a single compound can be made a
medicine in one dose, but a murder weapon
in another as well as Raychelle’s thoughts
on combining pop culture with chemistry.
Thanks for tuning in folks.
If you got any ideas for Reactions episodes,
let us know in the comments, but in the
meantime we've got some good stuff
coming up this month, so stay tuned,
we'll see you again soon.