Talk:Suicide pill

There is another, very similar Wikipedia page called "Poison Pill". The degree of overlap in subject matter is obvious. We should merge both items together into one.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poison_pill

Nabokov 07:45, 27 October 2006 (UTC)

Dunno. The poison pill article seems to be almost entirely devoted to business and economics, where a suicide pill is an extreme version of the poison pill (i.e., they are not one and the same thing). I am not seeing enough overlap to justify a merge, although I wouldn't oppose excizing the (minimal) espionage-related material from the poison pill article. 20:22, 8 March 2007 (UTC)

Donde se puede comprar Aaronel (talk) 14:45, 29 April 2021 (UTC)

Aleksei Leonov

"Aleksei Leonov, the first person to walk in space, recently (October 2006) admitted that during his journey into space he took along with him a suicide pill in the event of an irreconcilable emergency."

If anyone can find a source for this then it can be reinserted, but for now, no one (including me) has been able to find one. Robogymnast 05:35, 9 January 2007 (UTC)

Examples

"Field Marshal Erwin Rommel committed suicide with a cyanide pill following his implication in the July 20 plot against Hitler.[3] Additionally, Eva Braun, Adolf Hitler, and a number of convicted Nazi war criminals, such as Heinrich Himmler and Hermann Göring are known to have committed suicide using lethal pills containing a solution of cyanide salts."

Adolf Hitler shot himself to death, not through the use of a cyanide pill. 83.83.235.201 (talk) 02:54, 8 May 2011 (UTC)

I thought it was both a pill and a shot. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 69.255.170.233 (talk) 20:26, 11 January 2013 (UTC)

Question

Could someone please expand the article, to explain how the potassium cyanide enters the bloodstream, once the glass has been broken? -- is it via the digestive tract (i.e. by swallowing the fluid)? Or does the broken glass cut the mouth and cause the cyanide to enter directly into the bloodstream? 159.83.252.233 (talk) 19:49, 25 May 2011 (UTC)

I think the whole idea that death follows very quickly needs some investigation. This was the best discussion of it that I could find and is not very scholarly: https://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=309407 — Preceding unsigned comment added by Tosh.brice (talk • contribs) 11:51, 10 May 2020 (UTC)

Nasa controversy lacking sufficient citations

The section on Nasa controversy does not seem very reputable. The only citation is a reference to an audio commentary for a science fiction film. There does not seem to be any evidence that astronauts carry cyanide pills. Perhaps this section should be removed unless more citations can be provided. Particle25 (talk) 18:40, 11 March 2012 (UTC)particle25

It doesn't seem to make sense, either -- how would venting your atmosphere result in a painless death? It seems like that would result in at best suffocation, at worst death by exposure to vacuum -- neither of which is particularly quick or painless, AFAIK. Wingman4l7 (talk) 02:04, 13 September 2012 (UTC)

I was going to add something much like the above - venting air from your spacecraft or suits might be "easy", but it would also be incredibly horrible, suffocation being one of, if not the worst, forms of death. - 124.191.144.209 (talk) 09:52, 9 October 2012 (UTC)

Jim Lovell's book Lost Moon mentions the rumors in the prologue and dismisses them, but he also disputes what the above user says about it being slow and painful:

The command module did have a crank for the cabin vent, after all. One turn of the handle and the 5 pounds per square inch of cozy capsule pressure would instantly be exposed to zero pounds per square inch of nasty space pressure. As the atmosphere inside rushed out and the vacuum outside rushed in, whatever air was left in your lungs would explode out in an angry rush, your blood would instantly - and literally - boil, your brain and body tissues would scream for oxygen, and your traumatized system would simply shut up shop. The whole thing would be over in just a few seconds. It was no slower, really, than some ridiculous poison pill. Jonpin (talk) 05:38, 27 November 2012 (UTC)

I believe one of the 1960's era Mercury Program books (I'm thinking We Seven),also mentions that there were no pills, that all you had to do was open the hatch, but I don't own the book so I can't check.--Varkman (talk) 16:45, 31 July 2021 (UTC)

Examples: Erwin Rommel

I noticed that in the Examples section, Erwin Rommel is the only one without a cited article to back it up. Although his fate is somewhat commonly known, I feel the article could be more watertight with a proper source that says what is currently stated in the article. At first glance, it seems like it was awkwardly worded in a weirdly sympathetic tone. This source seems reliable and would probably work. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 76.29.247.238 (talk) 20:24, 20 May 2013 (UTC)

I'm looking for a good reference now. I found his son's eyewitness account, but it does not mention a pill. Another source states the pill, but then goes on to contradict some facts the son mentioned. Work in progress, more to follow. --Dmol (talk) 04:08, 21 May 2013 (UTC)

colloquial "poison pill"

Because the disambiguation of poison pill points here, and because variations of it are contained in the body, I included a paragraph in the lead section. Might need expanding. See also Wikipedia:Manual of Style (lead section)
--69.110.90.19 (talk) 18:29, 22 May 2013 (UTC)Doug Bashford

Dissolved in what?

This is likely a useless question. The article states: "It was...filled with a concentrated solution of potassium cyanide." Now, I don't know the precise technical details concerning this BUT (i) What was the Potassium Cyanide dissolved in? Potassium Cyanide has a habit of hydrolying in aqueous solution - does this pose a problem? ASavantDude (talk) 13:59, 15 May 2018 (UTC)