From the Vault: Hollywood Acid

From the corrosive blood of the "Alien" xenomorph to the various Bond and Batman villains' use of the iconic acid vat, popular media presents us with a dramatic and largely unrealistic vision of acidic power. What are our strongest acids and superacids actually like? How do they generate those acid effects in the movies? And just what sort of blood courses through the xenomorph's veins? Robert Lamb and Joe McCormick explore in this episode of Stuff to Blow Your Mind. (Originally published May 12, 2016)

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:05):
Hey, you welcome to stuff to blow your mind. My
name is Robert Lamb, and I'm Joe McCormick, and it's Saturday,
and I would go into the vault, but my feet
are melting. It's all this green goo that you were
stepping in and now it's dissolving our feet by a
wonderful active coincidence. Today we're going to be exploring the
quest for Hollywood Acid. This is an episode that originally
aired May twelve, two thousand sixteen. It's about the idea

(00:28):
of that perfect movie acid, the acid that burns right
through everything. Uh. And this episode I think was highly
inspired by a scene in the movie Batman Forever where
a guy gets locked in a vault with a bunch
of acid. Oh that's right, that's right, it's perfect. Think
we discussed it in the episode. I will just wager
that I don't need to go ahead and explain it here, right.

(00:49):
The other major touchdown, of course, being the blood of
the Xeno morph. But what is that You were the
one I think you can up with the idea for
this episode because you were watching these movies with these
oulous acids in them and saying, well, what what would
that be? What actual, naturally occurring or even artificial acid
could eat through the whole of a ship like this

(01:09):
and have such such instant flesh melting capabilities. Right, So
we just thought we'd have a little rapid corrosion party. Yeah,
let's get into it. Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your
Mind from how Stuff Works dot com. I Hey, welcome

(01:32):
to Stuff to Blow Your Mind. My name is Robert
Lamb and don Joe McCormick. Hey, real quick at the
top of the show here. If you want to explore
more of Stuff to bow your Mind, head on over
to Stuff to Blow your Mind dot com. That is
our mothership. That is the main website where you will
find all of our episodes. You find videos, blog post
links out to our social media accounts, and if you
want to support the show, a great way to do
it is to simply rate and review us wherever you

(01:54):
get the show. Yeah, so, Robert, I've got a question
for you. All right, hit me, Joe, I'm gonna take
you to a dark place. This might be a little traumatic. Okay, okay,
do you remember nineteen nineties the Batman movies of the
nineteen nineties, Think back to Batman Forever, who that was
That was a Dark Time directed by Joel Schumacher, uh

(02:15):
starring Val Kilmer as Batman and Tommy Lee Jones in
it as the as two Face a very manic to
face if I recall, yeah, he was. He was kind
of all over the place that that one was snarling
a lot, kind of whipping his body around in a frenzy.
And that of course was he acid scarred in that
telling of the Uh, I believe he was. Yeah, they
so the story of two Face in that version is

(02:38):
that he's a Harvey Dent is the lawyer who becomes
two Face. Believe he's a district attorney and he gets
scarred on one part of his face and it drives
him insane. And uh yeah, I don't think they go
deep into the backstory in Batman Forever, But anyway, it's
Tommy Lee Jones and he's he's going wild and he's
really trying to get Batman in this one. So there's
a scene where Batman goes into a bank vault where

(03:01):
there is a I believe a vault guard of some
kind tied up, and when Batman goes in to rescue
this guard, the door slams shut and Acid starts pouring
out of all of the I believe out of the
safe deposit boxes. So a lot of people maybe we're
keeping their precious acid in this vault. Uh. And the

(03:22):
the vault guard realizes what's happening as as Two Face
taunts them that they're going to die in this bank vault,
and the guard says, oh no, it's boiling acid. There's
like a seven second YouTube clip of this that I
watch at least once a week. It's one of my favorites.
I I watched this for the first time, I think
because I don't know that I've actually seen this. Uh,

(03:44):
this Batman film. I was super into the first two. Yeah,
I was a kid. Yeah, the Burden Batman's were great,
and I wanted to get into the Schumacher ones and
it didn't work. And I think part of the reason
it's not worth it is that boiling acid. Uh. It
tightly somes up everything about those films well exactly. And
one of the things that I find so funny about

(04:05):
it is, well, if two Faces trying to kill them,
why couldn't it be Oh no, it's boiling water. I mean,
if it's boiling what what difference does it make? Or
if it's acid, or hey, if it's just water, if
you're flooding, if you're flooding a sealed right, I mean
it can be that it's room temperature water. We're gonna drown. Yeah,

(04:26):
And so this obviously brings in a favorite old trope
of the superhero genre, but really it's all throughout the
movies and this is movie acid. Noticed that the guard
in the vault doesn't say what the chemical compound is.
It's not like he recognizes, Oh no, it's hydrofluoric acid. No,

(04:46):
it's just acid. And this kind of acid plays a
role in all of our favorite you know, our favorite cartoons,
science fiction and superhero stuff. It's it's movie acid. It's
Hollywood acid. So you're probably familiar with this. You remember
lots of other scenes from Batman. I've bet right. It's
always in Batman, like the villain captures Batman, is the penguin,

(05:08):
or somebody's got Batman tied up on a rope dangling
over a vat of acid. Yeah, I mean, it's such
a like a vat of acid is one of those things.
It's it's a it's a perfect like human technological achievement.
And we can then utilize for menacing purposes. You know,
it's like the it's like having a whole bunch of
molten steel on hand or a hydraulic press. Right. It

(05:30):
represents all of the evils of human industry and sort
of the cold killer nature of technology. But at the
same time it's it's a great just sort of like
a vertical peril. It's always like a thing to have
below you. It's like a pit of piranhas or a
pit of crocodiles or something. In the case, it's a
pit of molecules that want to h want to play

(05:51):
nice with all of your skin. So what are the
properties of Hollywood acid or movie acid we might call it.
I want to list a few and maybe you'll have
some of your own for it. One of them is
that it causes severe and immediate burns to the skin
and soft tissues. Does that sound about right, Yeah, just
immediate scarification, multification um. And we can run through some

(06:14):
examples of that in a minute, right. So another one
is if you put organic materials such as a batman,
into a vat of acid, it will kill and then
rapidly dissolve that organism, so it has not only killing
and burning powers, but also liquefication powers. Okay, yes, you're
with me so far. Another one is that the colors
can vary, but it's never clear like water. You notice

(06:37):
that the acid in the movies it always is usually opaque,
usually a shade of green, purple, or orange. I find Yeah, green,
I think is the big one. And and I'll mention
a few examples that have instilled that that idea in me.
But like, if I was to draw a picture, uh,
you know, doodle something with acid on the side of
the piece of paper, it would be green. Yeah. A

(06:57):
good example of the green acid is in that classic
episode of The Simpsons where Millhouse becomes fallout Boy and
there's there's radioactive man. They're filming a scene from the
movie that's real ascid. I want to see goggles people, Yeah, exactly, goggles.
They do nothing. Uh, it's great. But so another thing
about the ascid is that it displays ambient bubbling, so

(07:20):
you don't have to heat it up. It just naturally
boils like a like a pot on the boil. Well
that's so you can look at it and know that
it's acid, like it's it's bubbling, it's green. It could
not be more acid. Yeah, and of course the final
the final factor is often kept in a giant vat,
though sometimes also kept in something that squirts it out.
Do you want to keep it in an open vat,
open open top with some you know, room to have

(07:43):
some sort of a chain chain system in place and
some pulleys or whatever, however you want to position your
nemesis above it? Right now, Robert, tell me your movie
Acid story? What what? What are your memories from childhood
of beloved movie Acid? Oh? I have, I have several,
but the most scarring was at a young age, like

(08:03):
too young of an age? I saw RoboCop. Who lets
you watch RoboCop? At a young age? I think it
was like um, like an uncle's house and it was on.
But then again, RoboCop is so violent it's hard to
determine exactly what age during a childhood is appropriate to
watch RoboCop. A RoboCop an R rated ultra violent picture

(08:25):
for which there were toys, and I think still our
toys produced. Another thing I mean to say about RoboCop
is that the level of violence and it isn't incidental.
It's deliberately hyper violent, I would say. In the satirical uh,
for satirical reasons. Yeah, I mean it's a great film. Um,
but who I think back about to my seeing it
as a as a young person, and I'm a little

(08:46):
palled at times. But yeah, there's a scene where, and
I'm sure anyone who has seen this has this ed
burned into their mind as well, one of the villains
Hinchman's gets gets just coated in acid. I believe his
name is Emial. Is that it is that his name?
So in me gets coated in acid. I don't even
remember how it happened, Like did RoboCop shoot a vada
acid that was behind him? And setting Well, there are

(09:07):
a lot of there's a lot of sort of ambient
industry in the movie. It takes place in a dystopian
future Detroit, and they're like old factories with what we
would presume are just vats of toxic waste and acid
hanging around. Yeah, and somehow this guy gets it splashed
all over him during a car chase scene. Yeah, and
then he comes just zombie like walking out shambling, totally meltified,

(09:29):
and and then a car runs over Like there's a
second there where you just horrified, like, oh, this poor guy,
look at the state he's in and then like Robocopper,
one of the villain, I think it's the main villain
gets him with the car and he just like splatters
like a like a water balloon full of blood. And yeah,
it's the dad from that seventies show who gets in
with the car. And I never trusted that seventies show

(09:51):
because of RoboCop. I knew what he was capable of.
Clarence Bodker, he's a great villain. But yeah, so he
hits him with the car and he just turns to liquid.
He's like a bag of soup and h and I
remember the villain he turns on the windshield wiper. Yeah
it's gross, but it's also there's tons of acid in
video games, right. Video games love this, I guess because
acids probably fun to animate. Yeah, and if you and

(10:13):
a lot of games, if you're doing a platform game, right,
it's a it's a wonderful thing to have to fall
into and sort of bounce out off. But my favorite
example is from Mortal Kombat two, which was like a
major major game for me when I was younger, and
in that you have two wonderful uses of acid. You
have a stage called I think the Deadpool where you're

(10:34):
fighting on a platform and there's just just green acid.
Uh it fills the room or ambiently bubbling, I can't
remember it's bubbling or not. But you if you upper
cut your opponent into the acid at the end of
the match for the fatality, then they just splash, they scream,
they disappear under the acid, and then when they float
up to the top, they're just a completely clean skeleton.

(10:57):
Oh how long does that take? One second to seconds? Okay? Yeah,
And then of course that game also introduced the character Reptile,
who is a reptile, a lizard man ninja um, which
I just you know, you just take that for granted now,
but he also spits acids. So he takes his a
little mask off and goes and this, uh, this green

(11:17):
glob comes flying across the screen and burns you. One
of the most horrible acid scenes I remember from a
kid was from the movie The Fly. We shouldn't dwell
on this kind of great movie, but yeah, the fly
has digestive enzymes. I suppose that he sort of like
spits out on people too homogenized their flesh. Yeah. I

(11:39):
think there's an early scene where Brundle fly the of course,
you know, if you haven't seen it, first of all,
go see it. But mad scientist and a fly their
DNA is spliced via teleportation accident, and there's a scene
where he's recording himself feeding on something like just a
bunch of sugary junk food, right, and you don't actually

(11:59):
see it, happy just hear it, and it's horrific. And
then of course later he weaponizes this biological effect. And
speaking of weaponized acid biology, we would have to mention
I guess this will be our final example of the
xenomorph from the films. Uh So, when Ridley Scott's Alien,
you might remember this the old classic alien. We first
see the xenomorphous acid blood during the scene where, if

(12:22):
you'll remember, John Hurt's character gets a gets an alien
parasite attached to his face called a face hugger. Yea
like burns through his helmet attached. Yeah, yeah, it comes
through his face mask and then it's attached to his
face and and they're trying to decide if they should
cut it off of him on the spaceship and Ian
Holme eventually decides to cut one of its fingers off

(12:43):
to see if they can remove it, and it squirts blood,
and this blood hits the floor and it sizzles when
it splashes on the floor, and then continues to eat
right through the material of the spacecraft's floor and then
drops down through like two more floors, I think, through
the levels until it eventually stop reacting a few levels down,
finally neutralizes and it goes through the entire hole. And

(13:05):
then Tom Skirt's character Captain Dallas, he says he's never
seen anything like that before except quote molecular acid, which
is funny that that term doesn't really make any sense
since all acids are composed of molecules. Uh. And in
the sequels they correct this by saying the aliens have
concentrated acid for blood, which does make more sense in
the sense that they're suggesting it's not like vinegar or

(13:27):
some of their friendly acid that's highly deluded to a
safe concentration. It's a highly concentrated, strong acid. But later
in this episode, we should explore exactly what might be
going on in terms of the aliens blood, how it
could be that acidic, if there were something truly like
that in nature. Yes, we will circle back around to
the xenomorphs at the end. But anyway, so, why why

(13:50):
this obsession with acid? We we love this stuff. I mean,
it keeps showing up in our media all the time,
even though we're not really we can't be bothered to
learn all the chemistry of exactly what chemicals are are
out there that could do real harm to our body.
So it's always just acid. You know, there's some acids.
It's just basically like a magical corrosive substance. Yeah, exactly.

(14:11):
So we we wanted to talk today about the real
science of strong acids, and I don't know to what
extent you can find chemicals in the real world that
match up to these the movie Acid and how close
you can get. Yes, okay, So to give you the
basics before we get into the strongest acids out there

(14:31):
the movie Acid, we we should do a real simple
overview of acids, bases, and pH I'm not going to
turn this into a chemistry class, but we do need
to sort of explain how they work. So, first of all,
picture your periodic table and then go directly to square one. Hydrogen.
It's the most basic atom in the universe. It's got
one proton and one electron, and most of the hydrogen

(14:54):
in the universe has no neutrons, but if you want
to add one or two, you can get deuterium or tritium.
But we're not really concerned with that right now. So
your hydrogen atom one proton, one electron, and it's electrically
neutral because it's balanced like that. The electron has a
negative charge, the proton has a positive charge. If hydrogen
loses its electron, it becomes a hydrogen ion, which is

(15:17):
just a proton. It's one single, lonely proton with an
unbalanced positive charge, and of course nature hates that unbalanced
positive charge. It wants to get back together, so that
lonely proton is going to be looking for a way
to join up with something that has a negative charge
and again become electrically neutral. So water is made of

(15:38):
the electrically neutral molecule H two. Oh. That's one oxygen
atom bonded with two hydrogen atoms. And if one of
the two hydrogen atoms in the water molecule breaks free,
it just runs off, says I'm gonna do my own
thing free of a water molecule, and leaves its electron
with that water molecule you're left with a hydrogen ion

(16:00):
on which is just that positively charged free proton proton,
and then a hydroxide molecule which is O H minus.
It's a molecule with a negative charge with one oxygen
atom one hydrogen atom. Now, this can happen naturally in water.
Sometimes this is called the the ionization of water autoionization
of water. You can just have water sitting there in

(16:20):
a glass and some subset of the molecules within it
are going to undergo this reaction where a hydrogen proton
leaves one of the molecules, joins to another one, and
that creates this hydroxide molecule OH negative, negatively charged. And
then also and I H a molecule called hydronium, which
is H three Oh. It's a positively charged water molecule

(16:44):
that has three hydrogens on it. And so here's where
we get into acids and basins bases. There are several
different chemical definitions, but we're gonna go with the Bronze
stead Lowry definition because you know which other definition would
you go with? This is obviously the best. It's named
after the Danish chemist Johannus Nicolaus Brounze said and the

(17:04):
English chemist Thomas Martin Lowry. And so the way it
goes is this, an acid is a hydrogen ion donor,
in other words, a proton donor. It's a chemical that
when you put it into water, it wants to send
free hydrogen ions, these protons out into the solution, and

(17:27):
in turn that increases the concentration of hydronium or H
three oh, that positively charged molecule. Is talking about the
opposite of this is a base. A base is a
hydrogen ion recipient or a proton recipient. When you put
it into water, it wants to increase the hydroxide concentration.

(17:47):
It makes more molecules of O H minus the negatively
charged variant of water. So what would be an example
of this, Okay, So one would be, for example, hydrochloric acid.
So you put hydrochloric acid in the water, and it
wants to break apart and donate that positively charged hydrogen
ion to the water, creating some negatively charged chloride and

(18:09):
positively charged hydronium. And here hc L is the acid
and water is the base by the Bronze Dead Lowry definition.
But all this stuff about acids and bases is generally
going to be concerning aqueous solutions, in other words, putting
stuff in water. Uh. And so this has a really
awesome name, by the way, and it's known as protonation.

(18:30):
So when you add a strong acid to a water,
because you're giving away those positively charged uh hydrogen ions,
you're proton ating the water. Uh and on. Of course,
on the other hand, you can use a base to
d protonate a solution. One more piece of terminology. You've
probably heard of the strength of acids and bases expressed
in terms of pH. They say, you know, an acid

(18:52):
as a pH of three or pH of six. What
does that mean? pH is just the concentration of those
high hydrogen ions in a solution. So normal water that's neutral,
and the neutral pH is usually said to be seven,
So that would be one times ten to the negative
seven moles per leader of hydrogen ions. And we're not

(19:14):
going to stay on this math for a long time,
but just to be clear, a mole is just a
measure of how many molecules you got in something, and
moles per leader would be the concentration of how many
molecules you've got per leader of water. Specifically, a mole
is six point o two and then some more numbers,
but basically six point o two times ten to the
twenty three. There's a lot of molecules out there. Uh.

(19:36):
And so this is this is expressed by saying it
has a pH of seven. So if you have a
compound with a lower pH, that's gonna get more acidic.
They donate protons harder, they say, take these protons, take them.
I can put that in um in perspective, what lemon
juice is it too? I believe, yeah, that's about right.
In fact, we can read a few a few examples

(19:57):
of phs and and then also on the other end
of the scale, uh, compounds with higher pH values are
stronger bases, they're more alkaline, they steal protons harder their
recipients of protons. Uh. And so just to give a
few examples on the pH scale, I just found an
illustration online that gives some basic general ideas. Like we said,

(20:19):
distilled water is going to be a seven. It's neutral.
That seawater is going to be a little more of
a base, it's more like an eight. And then you
get baking soda solution, it's a little more it's like
eight points something bleach is gonna be like thirteen. That's
a strong base. But then going lower on the scale,
acids are going to be things like vinegar is going

(20:40):
to be around a three or four. Orange juice is
going to be around a three or a four. Uh.
It's interesting that vinegar is between orange juice and carbonated beverages,
with carbonated beverages being higher acidic level than vinegar. Oh yeah,
they usually say Coca cola is pretty urn acid, and

(21:02):
I think that was their original slogan. Taste the acid.
And then once you get really low, closer to zero
on the scale, you've got something like battery acid. Just
really intense, strong acid. Take all the protons, take them all, right.
And that's that is often where we see the at
least the idea of Hollywood acids in that area, The

(21:24):
idea like this is battery acid, this is industrial acid.
This is highly corrosive stuff that will pick your skeleton dry. Yeah,
but I should point out that we're gonna be talking
about how strongly acids can dissolve things like organic materials today.
And so because the acid that reacts with you does
so through a chemical reaction, the chemicals involved matter, so

(21:45):
some acids might actually have a lower pH than others
but still be less harmful. For example, hydrofluoric acid, when
we're going to talk about today, is one of the
most deadly acids out there, but it doesn't necessarily have
the lowest pH. And then when we're talking about the
deadly aspects of acids, another thing we'll touch on two

(22:06):
is that sometimes it's not only the corrosive aspects of
the acid, but what happens when it when it has
when it undergoes a chemical reaction, what kind of gases
can be admitted there. Some of these examples you end
up with with toxic gases that are released when the
acid comes into contact with the with the right substance exactly.
And another thing tying into hydrofluoric acid, which we're going

(22:27):
to talk about a little more in a minute, uh,
the danger associated with it isn't just from say, topical burns.
It doesn't just burn you from the outside in and
and kill you that way. By getting into your skin
and then getting into your blood, it can cause systemic
problems that can kill you, for example by causing a
heart attack right and for longed exposure to Some of

(22:48):
these have also been linked to cancer, So there are
a number of ways that these these dangerous substances can
can harm you. Yeah, okay, So let's say, based on
everything we've just looked at, you're going to try to
dissolve a organic material such as a batman. So you
have a very strong acid, so you've got a vat
of it, and you put that acid into an aqueous solution,

(23:09):
meaning water. So you've got your acid dissolved into water,
and then you put your batman in. What's going to
happen to your batman? Well, depending on the makeup of
the solution, what's probably gonna happen is that the acidic
solution will begin breaking the chemical bonds of molecules on
the outer surface of the batman, so that you know,
the excess of protons and charged molecules can form bonds

(23:32):
with other molecules in that batman material, and assuming it
can eat through the batman's suit, is going to start
hacking up the lipids and the protein molecules in the
batman's skin, forming new chemical bonds and slowly turning this
imbalanced acid water batman solution into a more homogeneous gloup. Basically, Yes, however,

(23:53):
there are probably some materials in the Batman and the
Batman's suit that will not react with the acid, meaning
you're not likely to end up with a perfectly homogeneous mixture.
You might get some glupe with some lumps in it. Essentially,
the villain's acid just wants to bring Batman into equilibrium.
Isn't that a nice way of thinking about it? Yeah?
He is definitely a character out of balance with the world, right,

(24:16):
and so unless somebody perhaps comes along with a dump
truck through full of a week base like baking soda
to pour in and neutralize the solution, that's what's going
to happen. Though I'm not sure exactly how that would
work out for the Batman if he's still in the
vat while they're neutralizing it. Yeah, would it? Would there
be an explosion, an eruption? I don't know that. I

(24:37):
think the classic Batman TV series, of course, with its
rigorous approach to science, you would probably see Robin show
up dump the base in. Everything would turn to a
big foam and uh everything, it would It would be
like a foam slippery dance fight party. Yeah, yeah, everybody
does the twist. All right, We're gonna take a quick

(24:59):
break and when we come back, we're going to look
at a rogues gallery of dangerous acids. All right, we're back.
Well let's yeah, let's let's roll through a few examples
of some powerful, potent real world acids. And again we're
not we're gonna try not to just really chemistry class

(25:21):
you too much on these, but we're gonna, you know,
roll through the some of the basic health ratings and
um and and attributes of these substances. Well, we talked
about early on the idea of these these acids that
occur in biology, and one acid that definitely occurs in
biology is hydrochloric acid HCl. So this is going to

(25:42):
be a bond between hydrogen and chlorine and it gets
the job done. And I want to note that, uh
these properties are coming off of the m s d
S as Material Safety data sheet. It's a good sheet. Yeah,
if you if you're interested in pretty much any substance,
any chemical substance, you can journal. We find um an
MSDS on on the internet for this and uh it's

(26:06):
it can be a little bit interesting, a little bit technical,
depending on how much that you read. Uh So, the
appearance of hydrochloric acid, it would not work in a
Mortal Kombat game because it's it's colorless, though it is
a fuming liquid, has a pungent odor of hydrogen chloride,
which means you're you're doing the bank vault with Batman
might be able to sniff it out. And um, when

(26:29):
it comes to its solubility, infinite solubility, and water with
slight evolution of heat, not necessarily boiling, but slight evolution. Right,
And so the the MSDS comes with these ratings. It's
a great rating system. It's kind of like the the
m p a A for acids. Know what you're getting
ahead of time exactly. Um, the most of the ones

(26:52):
we looked at use the JT. Baker s A f
T data scores essentially given it. Like you know, it's
kind of like character classes and done and dragons. Right,
it's health rating, it's flammability rating, reactivity rating, contact rating, etcetera. Um,
I'm not gonna deal with all these, but but as
far as hydrochloric acid goes, it's health rating is a three,
which is severe like a poison level zero in flammability.

(27:16):
Reactivity rating is a too. Contact rating is three that
means it's severe. It's corrosive. Do not touch it, so
you need to if you're handling this stuff in the lab,
you need some protective measures in place. Yeah, it's highly corrosive,
so it's dangerous for us to inhale if we should
not come into contact with it on our eyes, on
our skin. Do not ingest it. Uh. You don't want

(27:38):
to undergo chronic light exposure to it either. Um. And
then oh yeah, when it's heated to decomposition, it emits
toxic hydrogen chloride fumes and will react with water or
steam to produce heat and toxic and corrosive fumes. Yeah.
But of course, as I mentioned earlier, despite all this,
you've got hydrochloric acid in your body, that's right. I mean,

(27:59):
this is the stomach acid. This is uh, this is
part of you. And really it's an important thing to
keep in mind with acids in general. Like acids are
part of our chemical world. Acids are part of the
chemistry of life. They're part of our biochemistry, uh, in
varying degrees. So yeah, the even though we like to
position acid in that vat of of man made peril, uh,

(28:23):
it's really just a part of our world. So parietal
cells produce hydrochloric acid in our body. It's a strong
acid helps you break down your food. The acid in
your stomach is so concentrated that if you were to
place a drop on a piece of wood, it would
eat right through it. Really yeah wow. And the G
cells produce gastron, a hormone that facilitates the production of

(28:44):
hydrochloric acid by the parietal cells. So the stomach, because
of course, one of the big questions is, well, why
doesn't the acid in our stomach consumers right, Well, the
stomach is producted by the epithelial cells, which produce and
secrete a bicarbonate rich solution that coats the mucosa. Okay,
so that's taking the method of saving the batman by

(29:05):
dumping a bunch of baking soda into the bat Yeah. Yeah,
putting in a base exactly. The bicarbonate is an alkaline,
A base neutralizes the acid is secreted by those parietal cells,
producing water in the process. And this continuous supply of
bicarbonate is the main way that your stomach protects itself
from autodigestion um and the overall acidic environment. If you're

(29:27):
if you're tummy. So uh so, it sounds like this
process of creating the base to neutralize it is not
something you want going wrong in your body. Right, yeah,
that's one you generally what a good a good balance
in your stomach chemistry. Yeah, okay, so hydrochloric acid, that's
nothing to be toyed around with. But there are stronger
and more dangerous acids out there, and I think maybe

(29:49):
we should move on. So if if hydrochloric acid was
sort of the I don't know, the riddler of the
acid rogues gallery, I think it's time to move onto
the joker. Yes, the joker would definitely be sulfuric acid, right, yeah,
And this is one I would say of all the
acids they're technical names, sulfuric acid is the one that
is that is most commonly used in fiction, and not

(30:13):
without a real deep understanding of what it is. But
like the name itself sounds a little scary, sulfur It's
it's hellish, right, sulfuric the the name itself sounds a
little bit evil. Well, chemically, it's H two S O four,
So that's hydrogen with sulfur and oxygen and it forms
this molecule that is very very keen to protonate. Oh yes,

(30:37):
so it's it's a clear, oily liquid. It's odorless, so
sorry bank vault dude, both of these so far clear? Right? Yeah? Yeah?
Nothing green? Why why not green or orange? It's also
miscable with water, which means that it forms a homogeneous
mixture when added to water, liberates a fair amount of heat. Um,

(30:57):
And it's highly corrosive and dangerous to humans just across
the board, much like hydrochloric acid. So how does it
compare in terms of the ratings? So hydrochloric acid, for
for the health rating, we had a three, and for
the contact corrosivity rating we had a three, right right,
three on both yeah, and had a had a two
for reactivity and a zero for flammability. This time around

(31:21):
we have another zero for flammability. Um. However, reactivity went
up from a two to the to a three, so
we have severe water reactivity here. Uh. And then as
far as health rating goes, we have another three, so
it's just a severe poisonous. But contact rating goes up
from three to four from severe to extreme, so it's

(31:41):
extremely corrosive. How do they decide what word goes with that?
I might say severe is worse than extreme. Well, I
don't know. It's it's going to be specific to the JT.
Baker s a f T data score. I guess because
I need a good poet to go through and annotate
this data sheet instead of like a single like a
nice description exactly everyone encounter with it, or an example

(32:03):
from a movie, right like this is a you know,
this is a Mortal Kombat two level acid. Yeah, so
if you're going for this movie kind of acid, I
think we're we're getting more into the territory here of
acids that are really gonna maybe not behave exactly like
the movie acid you're used to, but get closer to
that than than many other things would right now. And

(32:26):
some other bad stuff about sulphuric acid. When heated to decomposition,
it produces toxic fumes of oxides of sulfur uh. It
will react with water or steam to produce toxic and
corrosive fumes. It reacts with the carbonates to generate carbon
dioxide gas, and with cyanides and sulfides to form poisonous
hydrogen cyanide and hydrogen sulfide, respectively. It all sounds lovely. Yeah,

(32:50):
So Again, that's something though that is often I don't
feel like that that's utilized the the the the resulting
toxic gas of acid interactions and films, like they were
so concerned with what happens when the xenomorph blood gets
on you or your armor or the floor, But how
about any resulting fumes. Well, yeah, we're we're always so

(33:10):
much more concerned with liquids than with gases. One example
is volcanoes in movies. You know, volcanoes in real life.
I think they're way more likely to suffocate and kill
you with gases emitted or or by covering you in
ash and and ejecta and stuff like that. But what
you see in the movies is the lava. People are
running away from liquid lava rolling down the hill towards them.

(33:31):
Your volcano is very likely to kill you, but it's
very not likely to kill you that way. Another thing
that this is going off topic a little bit, but
flamethrowers in a confined space, it's a staple of our entertainment,
and yet it is such a bad idea to just
rapidly consume. I mean, a flamethrower in general is a
bad idea. A real flamethrower, quick way to suffocate yourself.

(33:55):
That's a greatay to sufocate yourself, and it's rarely rarely
is that explored? The only example I can think of
offhand is that there is a wonderful Nazi zombie film
from the seventies or eighties titled shock Waves, and there's
a scene where they don't have a flamethrower, but they
light some flares, I think to ward off the creatures,
and they're in a confined space and it just eats

(34:16):
up all the oxygen and everybody's like gasping for breath.
And I remember the time thinking, Ah, thank you movie
for for for thinking a little bit. That's smart. Yeah, okay,
but back to sulfuric acid. So sulfuric acid, based on
how dangerous it sounds, You're you're probably never going to
have this in your home, right, well, not necessarily. Now
you might be able to get sulfuric acid in the

(34:36):
home in some deluded uh concentrations. So a n study
in the Journal of Trauma and Acute Care Surgery that
I came across was called cutaneous burns caused by sulfuric
acid drain cleaner. Yeah. Pretty horrible. So a lot of
the commercial drain cleaner you're gonna be getting is actually

(34:57):
going to be based on a strong base rather than
a strang long acid. So it might have something kind
of like lie in it to dissolve uh, to dissolve
materials and the drain to do some some alkaline hydrolysis
and clear it out, get all that hair and gunk
out of there. But also there are some preparations made
with strong acids, such as highly concentrated solutions of sulfuric acid,

(35:19):
and and some people will sell these and you can
buy them. And this has caused accidental and sometimes intentional
burns in the home. So this study looked at a
period of thirteen years ending in May nine six, looking
at children and adults who sustained sulfuric acid burns in
the home through products like these, And it looked at

(35:42):
twenty one patients. There were thirteen kids and eight adults.
And I just want to read the results. They say
in eight instances the sulfuric acid burn was accidental, whereas
in thirteen cases sulfuric acid was used as a weapon
media and total body surface area burned was five or
scent or a range of one. Approximately fifty percent of

(36:05):
burns involved the face and the neck. Skin grafting was
required in fourteen patients, or sixty six percent. And it's
estimated that nationwide, approximately three thousand injuries per year are
related to drain cleaners and that one third of these
involved cutaneous burns. So this is, uh, this is one
kind of scary fact about what sulfuric acid can do

(36:29):
outside of the lab. And this does remind me that
in um, you know a lot of films and TV,
and and certainly in horror literature, uh, drain cleaner is
often used that kind of household horror. This thing that
is uh, you know, when you used correctly, is certainly
just a part of our lives and we don't think
about it, but if you turn it around, it becomes

(36:49):
this horrible, in human thing. And uh, and I should
also point out of view some people might have might
have missed this in this episode because it was kind
of maybe we're bearing the lead a little bit, but uh.
The most recent Creepy posta episode The Christian and I
did gets into the into the issue of acid attacks
and the restoration of surgical restoration of individuals who have

(37:11):
experienced act. Yeah, so it mentions the like the grafting
that was mentioned in this study. Uh, and so yeah,
I mean that's a horrible thing to think about. It
in real life being used as a weapon probably doesn't
behave exactly the same way we do see the movie.
Acid behaving are certainly not as rapidly, but at the
same time can cause it very severe burns and damage
to the body. So it's not something to mess around with.

(37:35):
But next, let's look at one more rogue in our
in our rogues gallery of dangerous acids, and I think
this one is going to be one of the most interesting.
This is hydrofluoric acid or h F, made of a
bond of hydrogen and fluorine. Let's look at the MSDS
scores here on this one. So health rating. Our previous
two examples were both three, which were severe. This one

(37:57):
is a four. This one is extremely poisonous. Uh. This
one also has a zero on flammability. Uh. Its reactivity
rating is a mere two, so that's down from three
that we had on sulphuric acid. And then it's contact
rating is a four extremely corrosive just like sulfuric acid. Yeah,
so it's a colorless fuming liquid. Uh. It has a

(38:19):
very very acrid odor. Do not breathe the fumes, and
it is infinitely soluble. Now, this this stuff because of
the nature of it, the hydrogen fluorine bond or the
hydrogen fluoride, it has a very unique sort of reactive
profile that's right on contact with metals. It liberates hydrogen

(38:42):
gas on heating to decomposition. It can yield toxic fumes
of fluorides, and it attacks glass and other silicon containing compounds.
It reacts with silica to produce silicon tetrafluoride, which is
also a hazardous colorless gas. Yeah. Now we should linger
on that last fact for a moment, because what do
we say here, Hydrogen fluoride can dissolve glass. Yeah, most

(39:06):
of the time. Glass is great for storing chemicals because
it's very nonreactive. You can put stuff in a glass
container and it will sit there. It doesn't it doesn't
react with what's inside it. Glass is made of mostly
silicon dioxide silica, same stuff as you know a lot
of rocks and sand, But hydrogen fluoride smashes up those
silicon dioxide bonds in order to replace them. With silicon

(39:28):
fluorine bonds, and so for this reason you can't store
it in glass. You have to store it in a
special container, often one made out of something that won't
react with it, like polyethylene plastic, but a few other
materials will work. And I wanted to talk about a
couple of videos that I found on the Internet that
are very interesting dealing with hydrogen fluoride. And if you

(39:51):
want to watch these, if you're in a physician, to
watch these as you listen to the podcast episode. We
will include links to these in the landing page for
this episode is stuff to Blow your Mind dot com.
So these were done by a group that puts out
chemistry videos on the Internet called periodic videos or periodic
table videos. It's out of believe the Chemistry Department of
University of Nottingham, and there are a lot of fun

(40:12):
They do some experiments with some very unsettling chemicals. One
of them was hydrogen fluoride, where they they decided to
put a light bulb in the hydrogen fluoride. So it's
a live light bulb with power running to it, lighting
up half submerged in a container of hydrogen fluoride. And
what do you know, after a little while sitting in
the solution, the glass part of the light bulb breaks off,

(40:36):
and it breaks off in a very strange way, cleanly,
with a circle around where the surface of the acid
is is lining the outside of the glass bulb, and
it just kind of shears it off as if it
had been scored and then removed. And that, of course
is pretty freakingly freaky because then the filament immediately comes
off and it starts kind of sparking. But then they

(40:58):
did another video which I thought was really interesting, and
this one's really worth a watch. So this is comparing
the flesh dissolving properties of three different acids, actually the
three we've just talked about. This is the one I watched,
and uh, yeah, this is a lot of it's fantastic.
So in all three cases, what they did is they
got a raw chicken leg and they suspended it from

(41:18):
a string partially submerged in the acid. Uh, And then
the states of the three chicken legs are monitored. And
the three acids they did, like we said, are the
ones we've just talked about, hydrogen chloride or HCl, sulfuric
acid or H two s O four and then hydrofluoric
acid or HF. Now, the the sort of the profile

(41:38):
we saw affecting the chicken leg was very similar for
the hydrogen chloride and the sulfuric acid, wouldn't you say, yes,
uh yeah, they seem to do the same thing, which
is that after about five minutes, not really any noticeable changes.
I'm sure if that chicken leg could feel it probably
wouldn't feel good, But you don't really notice any burning
on the outside. After thirty minutes, still nothing really noticeable.

(42:01):
So this already is not exactly lining up with what
we know about movie acid right right, And these are
best in our brightest ATHLETs, yeah, exactly. But overnight some
really interesting stuff started to happen with these two. So
the previously clear solution takes on a dark pigment, and
the part of the chicken that has been submerged has

(42:21):
turned into this dark, viscous jelly that drips off of
the bone when you lifted up. Uh. And then after
that they went a whole hog where they cut the
string and just dunked the whole chicken leg in and
it's gross. It just continues to darken the acid solution,
turn it into this gloopy, dark and jelly, and it
it sort of begins to liquify the outer layers of

(42:44):
the chicken leg. Don't know what what would have happened
if they just kept it going for weeks after after
a day, it was not looking good. It was thoroughly unappetizing,
that is for sure. Yeah, I don't know. People just
don't for some reason, you want to eat a piece
of chicken. You don't want to eat some chicken jelly,
but yet you like grape jelly. Yeah, well, um, well

(43:07):
there you know, there are different jellifications of flesh that
are consumed arthur in like French cuisine. Oh I suppose so, yeah,
that's right. What's it called aspect? Yeah? Okay, moving on
now now, So that's hydrogen chloride and sulfuric acid. But
the real strange one contributing here is the hydrofluoric acid,
this being the one that we just covered, the one

(43:27):
that dissolves glass. Yeah, and so similar profile at the beginning.
After five to thirty minutes, really not any significant observed changes.
Like we said, probably if you could be that chicken leg,
it would not be pleasant. But just looking at it,
nothing strange seems to have occurred, but again, overnight, some
really crazy stuff starts to happen. Unlike the other two

(43:49):
acid solutions, which darkened and took on the red red pigment, uh,
this acid solution remains clear, and the part of the
chicken legs submerged in the acid has sort of partially
disappeared and has a white discoloration along the sheared away surface.
It looked to me, I don't know what you thought
about this. It looked to me like frost or freezer burn. Yeah, yeah,

(44:11):
I did have that kind of appearance. Yeah. And then
also the entire rest of the leg has become discolored,
so all of the red pigment and the muscle it
looks like it's just been drained away. And even the
part way up out of the acid has become pale
white with greenish spots. It's lost its pink pigment. Uh.
And then after they dropped the whole thing and when

(44:32):
they cut the string, it looks almost like extremely overcooked
boiled chicken, pale white all over except for a little
part sticking out which looks green and disease like they
just the worst example of steamer tray lunch room chicken.
Legs you can possibly imagine. Yeah, and so I do
recommend the the video because the chemist who they talked

(44:54):
to in the video has a theory about why this happens.
And I'm not going to repeat his theory, but it's
worth checking out. It's pretty interesting. He also has wonderful
like frizzy white hair. He's just a fabulous example of
of a British scientist. Yeah, all right, we're gonna take
a quick break and when we come back, we will
get into the realm of super acids and then we

(45:15):
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(46:21):
start mailing things. Okay, here's a question. When does an
acid become a super acid? We've talked about superheroes at
the beginning of Batman is a Is he a hero
or superhero? Well, he doesn't really have superpowers, but I
guess he counts as a superhero. Oh yeah, he's got
the costume, he's got the technology. So yeah, maybe if

(46:43):
these other acids we just discussed dissolving chicken legs won't
dissolve a Batman fast enough, you need a super acid
to dissolve a superhero. It seems like the kind of
thing is super villain would need to to look into exactly.
So what is a super acid? Well, super acid is
an acid that is as strong as or stronger than,
one hundred percent pure sulfuric acid. Uh, And why would

(47:06):
you ever have anything like this? What's the point of it? Well,
acids are an incredibly important catalyst in the chemical industry,
which is maybe why they're in you know, these industrial
settings and big open vets, but they have they have
a number of applications and potential applications in fuel cell
technology and the chemical and petroleum industry. So, for instance,

(47:27):
acids don't usually react with hydrocarbons you know, such as
oil petroleum, but superacids do. Yeah, And so we figured
it's worth looking up what's the strongest acid known to humankind?
There is an answer to this question, right, It is
fluoro antimonic acid or h s b F six. Then
this is, as far as we know, the strongest super

(47:49):
acid on earth. So what's the deal with it? So
this is made by combining hydrofluoric acid with antimony pentafluoride.
And this is gonna sound crazy, but it the resulting
acid is billions of times stronger than sulfuric acid. Yeah,
it's billions and billions of times or just many orders

(48:10):
of magnitude stronger than sulfuric acid. That is crazy, obviously
something we don't exactly know. Like, I couldn't find any
videos that were clearly real of people dealing with this stuff.
I couldn't find a lot of first person accounts of
people dealing with it. There there's some some research materials
about it, but they don't really get into, uh, into

(48:32):
what exactly would happen by combining this with stuff. I
imagine if you dipped a batman in it, some some
stuff would go down. Yeah, I mean, we found numbers
that were kind of all over the place, and there's
no MSDS score for this. There's no s A f
T data on this, so we can't we can't even
like look at numbers that put it, uh, you know,
to make a comparison between it and sulfuric acid. Right,

(48:55):
But just based on on what we do know about it,
I think it's safe to assume that this stuff is
incredibly dangerous and dipping a Batman and it would have
some some consequences. But but you might be wondering, you know,
with some with an acid that's strong, something that that reactive,
how would you even store it? Right? Because just the hydrogen, Uh,

(49:18):
just with the HF you've got this problem where you
you you're dissolving glass containers. Uh so what do you
use to store this wasn't an interesting piece of information
I found cited in several sources. You can actually store
it with something you keep around the house. It's something
with a solid bond that really doesn't want to let
go and bond with other stuff. It's teflon ptf E,

(49:41):
so polytetrafluora ethylene. It's a ptf E and that's just
a fluorine carbon bond molecule. That's it's it's very monogamous.
It just doesn't want to go bond with other stuff. Interesting, Okright,
So if you are battling a lizard ninja that may
or may not have of um super acid in its body,

(50:02):
where teflon ninja costume to battle it? Exactly? That's what
Batman uses, I bet sustain his encounters with vats of acid.
Is a teflon batsuit. So this would be what mcbaine's
underwear was made off in that that scene we were
talking about from The Simpsons, because when the flood of
acid and throws him through I think Millhouse's um trailer,

(50:25):
the acid like quickly eats off all of his clothing
except for his underwear. Yeah. Well, I'm sure that was
done for network censorship reasons rather than than scientific accuracy reasons,
but it could be. Could be uh teflon underwear protects
you from the acid. Though I don't know if that
would work with every acid. That's true. I just have
to assume if it works for the strongest acid in

(50:47):
the world, it's going to be generally pretty effective. Alright, So, Joe,
at this point, we've we've talked about what Hollywood acids
look like, we've talked about the real properties of acids,
and we're already seeing how they don't really match up
to our Batman dissolving needs. Doesn't mean they're not dangerous.
Some of that are certainly incredibly dangerous, but they don't
behave exactly like we we want them to to make

(51:09):
Batman burn. Well, are there other things in our natural
world that do behave like these fictionalized substances. Well, still
probably not exactly. You're not going to get the green, bubbling,
instant dissolving you kind of thing. But in many cases,

(51:30):
I think if you want a chemical that burns through
human flesh more like it does in the movies, what
you want is not necessarily a strong acid, but a
strong base on the opposite end of the pH scale,
such as LIE, which would be usually sodium hydroxide in
a O H or potassium hydroxide KOH. And so I

(51:51):
wanna bring to your mind a scene from a movie
you might or might not have seen. You've seen Fight Club, right, Oh, yes,
you remember the scene in Fight Club where Brad Pitt
and Edward Norton they're sitting around a table and they're
making soap, because this is a plot point in the movie,
and one of the ingredients in making soap, and this
is true, is LIE. And in the scene, Brad Pitt

(52:13):
he takes Edward Norton's hand and he kisses him on
the hand and then he pours LIE across the wet
spot where his lips were, and this causes a reaction
that begins to burn Edward Norton's hand, and for the
sake of, you know, kind of macho and somewhat grandiose
sense of carpet d M. Brad Pitt convinces Edward Norton
to just sit there and endure the pain the chemical

(52:35):
burn instead of washing off the LIE, and he also
tells him that washing it off with water would only
make it worse, and eventually he uses vinegar to neutralize
the acid. Now, you shouldn't take your chemical safety information
from a podcast. We are not chemical safety experts, and
you should always consult those real experts before dealing with
strong acids or bases. But from everything I've read, brad

(52:57):
Pitt's wisdom about the vinegar here is not exactly true. Uh.
It is true that a strong base like LIE is
activated in the presence of water, and that you can
use acids to neutralize bases. But if you've got LIE
on you, my non expert opinion is that your first
priorities just get it off. You get it off your
skin as fast as possible, rather than running around looking

(53:18):
for a creative lemons to squeeze on and neutralize it.
Washing it off with water would be one way, but
you just want it off your skin as fast as possible.
Also worth pointing out that commercial vinegar is mostly water.
It's acetic acid, but it's highly diluted with water. But yes,
in any case, this is an example of what strong

(53:39):
bases can do to the skin, and in some ways
the scene is kind of accurate. Like a strong base,
like a lie in the presence of water on the skin,
can definitely burn you. It can cause bad chemical burns,
and can definitely truly dissolve human flesh under the right conditions.
So this is one thing we also see the movie
acid being used for. It's like the Afia hitman in

(54:01):
the movie have some vat of acid in their basement
and they wax somebody and they put him into the
vat of acid and it dissolves them. But studies have
actually shown that if you really want to dissolve a
human body. We're not trying to give anybody pointers on
how to commit murder, and this is evidence is just
science presented by the Mafia Science Institute. Apparently the better

(54:24):
way to do that would be with a strong base
rather than a strong acid for for fully dissolving flesh.
And one piece of evidence for this is something we've
actually talked about on the podcast before and you remember
the episode we did last October about the future of
the dealing with human remains and green burials and stuff
like that, and so the method, one method we talked

(54:45):
about is known as alkaline hydrolysis, and this is a
method of disposing of condevers. It's used by lots of
medical facilities and there's increasing interest in using it as
a cheaper and greener alternative to traditional burial incremation. And
essentially it goes like us. You put the body into
a pressurized chamber that contains a mixture of water and
lie so here's your strong base, and then you heat

(55:07):
the chamber to around a hundred and sixty degrease celsius
or you know, over three degrees fahrenheit, and the body
is liquefied in just a few hours and it can
be washed down the drain and any remaining bone fragments
that can be pulverized and dealt with however you want.
But now, obviously the heat and the pressure here are
playing a big role in what's going on. But the
strong base is crucial. It's an m v P dissolver

(55:31):
of organic materials such as a human body or or
an animal carcass or a Batman. And so one of
my suggestions is that maybe we should start replacing movie
acids in our fiction with movie bases. I think part
of the problem is that acid sounds cooler. Acid is
more even though I think most people know that you

(55:52):
have acids and bases. Uh, it's like the just the
word itself acid, Yeah, instead of like base, you know,
like which one which one is just like linguistically potent? Yeah,
for for fictional purposes, which one sounds scarier? To be
protonated or to be deprotonated? Yeah, And then of course acid.
I mean we talk about, oh, well that person has

(56:13):
a really you know, acidic attitude or something. You know,
it's like it's we we Acid is just going to
make your sentence that much stronger. It's gonna make your
threat to the superhero that much stronger. Yeah, it's it's
it has more resonance, despite the fact that it might
not be as great a wonderful dissolver of organic material
or something like lie. But yeah, I'm ready Robert for

(56:34):
you to take us back to the Nostromo. All right, Well,
you know the my motion detector is going off here.
I think it's actually coming from inside the room at
this point. So yeah, let's let's talk about the xenomore. Yeah, okay,
so we mentioned this earlier in the episode. This is
one fantastic example of movie acid. I think it's probably
my favorite movie acid is the Aliens Blood right, Yeah.

(56:55):
I mean it's so well utilized and uh and and
feels like a real threat and helps to just position
the creature. You know, we can barely touch it, we
can barely wound it in. When we do wounding, it
might kill us. Yeah. So we've described sort of what
happens in the scene in the first scene where they
use that. There there are many different ways the asset
appears throughout all of the movies that have Aliens in them,

(57:16):
but it typically always burns and dissolves things. It's it's
you don't want to get it on you. It might
kill you, might burn you. But is there anything we
can relate this acid too in the real world? Could
an organism really behave this way? And what might it's
acid blood be? Ah? Well, this is a fantastic question. Um,
But before I get into it, I do want to

(57:38):
mention that, as a fun note, there is an older monster,
perhaps the most famous monster in Western literature that also
boasted corrosive blood, and that's Grindel. Oh wow, Yeah, it's
been so long since I've read from Bayol. It's been song, Yes,
since I've read Bao Wolf. I've certainly read things since
then that have Grendel in them, but it's been so

(57:59):
long I didn't I didn't even realize this. I had
sort of rediscovered this in our research. This is crazy.
So of course be a Wolf is a classic of
Anglo Saxon literature Old English literature, where you know you've
got this epic. The hero Beowolf goes into slay the
monster that's been harassing this Uh. I don't know, would
you even call it a town, this encampment of humans? Uh?
And so what's the deal? So he goes into slay

(58:21):
Grendel and he encounters some acid blood. Yeah, but basically
like he ends up getting this special sword and then
at the end he's earlier, He rips off Grindel's arm,
wounds him, follows Grindel back to his layer, cuts his
head off, and then the blood from the from the
beheading it melts the blade. This is a translation, obviously,
but the sword blade began then the blood having touched it,

(58:44):
contracting and shriveling with battle icicles towards a wonderful marvel
that had melted entirely. So it's my understanding that you
could kind of interpret this as maybe as blood really
hot and just melted it um, you know, as in
a you know, a great fire, or that it's acidic,
depending on your interpretation. Either way, that's that's quite uh

(59:06):
an adaptation on the part of the Grindel organism. Oh man,
I wonder if this is the oldest single version of
the creature that spits toxic chemicals maybe, you know, I can't,
I can't think of another mythic creature that has this fire.
But yeah, there's certainly fire breathing, but as far as

(59:26):
acids or something that is corrosive that is, you know,
destroying the weapons that are used against it, I can't
think of one offhand. Yeah. Crazy. Well, anyway, we we
should return to our modern example though, So imagine Beowulf
goes into slay a xenomorph. He'd have exactly the same problem, right,
the xenomorph queens in there. She's been harassing the town.

(59:48):
He takes in his special sword. He lops off its
head and the sword melts. Right, Yes, the sword melts
and you got the job done. But yeah, your your
magical weapon is ruined. Yeah, maybe spraying him on the
as in the process and killing him getting the last
laugh after all. Oh yeah, well you know it's Beowulf.
They probably dodge it. I always have this thing, I
always since sympathize with Grendel. Uh yet to see an

(01:00:11):
adaptation of the story where I'm like, oh, yeah, Beawolf
is a good dude, I can get behind him. I
always sympathize with the monster. Well, I mean, yeah, Grendel's
the loner. Well, maybe one of the first places we
should look to see what what the aliens blood might
be would be to look behind the scenes in the
movie and see, okay, so how do they create the
special effect in the In the alien movies, you see

(01:00:33):
the aliens spilled their blood like in the first movie.
In Ridley Scott's film, you see it spill on the floor.
It burns through the floor, and it just keeps burning
through floors until finally it stops. What what was going
on there? Well? I found some accounts online of the
where this special effect came from, and supposedly It was
created by the Alien special effects supervisor Brian Johnson, and

(01:00:56):
the the acid effect was essentially a combination of some
various chemicals and then that was applied to and this
is pretty clever, styrofoam floors they just made. They made
styrofoam ship hull. I don't know what styrofoam stuff that
would be the floors of the ship, and then spray
painted its silver to make it look like it was metal.

(01:01:19):
What's the name of the company, the corporation while wit
in Utani and maybe they're just super cheap and they're
like styrofoam. That's great. I'm sure that's what it was.
But in any sense, so what was it made of? Well,
the blood they had was made of chloroform acid, tone, cyclohexylamine,

(01:01:39):
and acetic acid, which is vinegar. Pretty much, acetic acid
is deluded to create vinegar and then some other compounds.
But I thought this is funny because so acetic acid, yes,
of course, is an acid deluding deluded in in water
to make vinegar with some other flavorings. Acetone is not
an acid, that's neutral neutral pH of seven uh cycle

(01:02:00):
hex Lamine is a base and then and then of course,
the head of chloroform and stuff, and apparently it eats
through styrofoam all right, but it probably wouldn't eat through
a real spacecraft's hull. And one of the big reasons
it eats through styrofoam is probably the presence of acetone.
I don't know if you've ever seen videos of what
happens when you pour acetone on a styrofoam wighead or
something like that. I don't think I've seen those videos.

(01:02:22):
If you ever want to make a head melt for
a bunch of children, this is a fun party trick.
I just don't don't get any of the Well I'll
keep that in mind from my son's a fifth birthday. Yeah, So, like,
here's the head of your enemy, and you just pour
some acetone on that styrofoam head, it just, oh no,
it melts. So it works great for a special effect,
but probably would not work for a real organism that

(01:02:43):
wanted to melt through metal and plastic and all all
of the other stuff that probably makes up a ship. Yeah,
and one is a good uh, it's a good verb
to use here, because, of course that brings up the question, well,
how does this occur? Is this a an evolved trade?
Is this an engineered trait? But what is the origin
of the xenomorph? Then? Uh? Depending on how these work.

(01:03:03):
But I have I have a couple of proposals here
as to what could be going on with the xenomor.
So my my first more modest and explosive proposition is this.
And I'm sure that this doesn't match up to everybody's
the interpretation of the franchise or every entry of the franchise.
But here's the thing. Okay, so we see the thing
bleeding acid when it's hard, right, you shoot it, cut

(01:03:25):
it whatever acid shoots out. And of course we also
see it using the acid offensively occasions such as when
that face hugger uh melts through the glass dome on
the helmet. Oh yeah, I didn't have to cut itself
to do, right, It somehow just utilized treated this. So
what if this isn't the creatures blood at all, really
not properly, but rather an acid stored throughout the body

(01:03:46):
to react to physical harm. Uh, that in turn harms
the attacker. That's interesting because it wouldn't have to be
the blood, would it. I mean, you wouldn't be This
wouldn't have to be the substance that's circulating molecular oxygen
to the body tissues. Right, it wouldn't be serving other
purposes in the body. It would be there expressly to
rupture during physical harm, to uh to harm or destroy

(01:04:09):
the attacker. And the thing is, we see something very similar,
really identical in terrestrial termites and ants who also serve
a queen. You know, they also, I mean that the
termite had a huge influence on especially aliens. So um,
So we call this a process, this practice autopsis, and
this is the process by which a natural world organism

(01:04:30):
destroys itself via the internal rupturing of an oregon or
gland that in turn ruptures the skin. So it's a
purely muscular exercise caused by deliberate contractions around the engorged tissue. Fascinating. Yeah,
I mean it's crazy because this is the kind of
thing that apparently evolved from pooping on your enemy. Like
what started off as like poop on the enemy when

(01:04:51):
they attacked and defensive defecation, but then it becomes like
if you can't get that poop out of the aim
as fast enough, just like make it rupture through your body,
and that has steadily evolved over time into more complex
modes of self rupturing, and the body buster par excellence
here is neo Kapa Termes tarracula, and this is um.

(01:05:15):
This is a fabulous organism. So the species workers grow
abdominal sacks of toxic blue crystals throughout their lives. But
these explosive backpacks, as some studies refer to them, are
are most pronounced and elderly workers, so so as they
become less useful to the colony, they sort of turn
into the suicide bombers exactly like you know, you don't

(01:05:36):
have you have dull and useless mandibles. You really know,
not that much use, but you've become a stockpile for
toxic substances, and that becomes your purpose. When enemies invade
the termite mound. Uh, the the ind they just rushed forward.
The invaders then bite into their bodies, and that's when
the blue crystals combine with salivary secretions to produce a

(01:05:58):
deadly chemical weapon. Huh. So that would mean that the
xenomorph here would simply boast a system of pressurized acid tubes,
and it's it is merely the rupture of those tubes
that we see uh and it and is therefore an
act of autos So this would be like highly concentrated
stomach acid or something else that has evolved into this

(01:06:19):
defensive mode. Yeah, and of course we do see from
our own stomach. So like we talked about earlier, that
it's possible for a body to contain within it some uh,
some concentration of acid that would be very damaging if
we encountered it externally or in the wrong part of
the body. You just need specialized cells along whatever you know,
body tissues containing it to to buffer it essentially, to

(01:06:42):
keep it, uh from reacting with the rest of the
body exactly. Now, of course, all of this is taking
a very terrestrial approach to it. It's taking a very
carbon biased, water biased approach. But of course, not all
modes of life, not all biochemistry is out there, are
necessarily based on carbon or based on water. So we

(01:07:04):
might have to take it a bit further. What sort
of organism might have blood that is either incidentally or
adaptively corrosive at least to our sort of flesh. Well,
perhaps they're silicon based life forms as opposed to carbon based.
So even here on Earth we have solicit acid, which
is very weak acid, and our hair, our nails, or epidermists. Uh.

(01:07:27):
So it seems conceivable that this, or perhaps hexafluoro silsilic acid,
might play into a silicone based xenomorph's anatomy. And this
is the exact sort of biochemistry that could enable a
life form to thrive in a sulfuric acid rich environment.
Now I'm not sure it could be as potent as

(01:07:48):
what we see in the films, but this is an
area where I think, you know, there any biochemists listening
off to weigh in on that for us? Yeah? Well,
I mean, how how reactive would an acid or whatever
the chemical is, Maybe it's a wrong base actually that
it's releasing. How strong would it have to be to
really eat through the hull that fast? Is there any
chemical that would really eat through the hull that fast?

(01:08:09):
I don't know about that. Maybe what if it has
the fluoro antimonic acid in it? Yeah, And you know,
the thing is for a defense. You know, if you're
if you're thinking about something that has evolved, this as
a basic defense against human ooid creatures that are very
or at least semi human like. All you would need
you wouldn't need a very strong acid or base at
all to just like get in their eyes and give

(01:08:30):
you a moment's advantage in some sort of an altercation.
But it seems as if it's an organism perfectly conceived
to be unkillable on a spaceship for plot purposes. Indeed,
it is a perfect organism. Now, some experts, including the
late Great Carl Sake and have speculated that alternate astrobiologies

(01:08:50):
could still entail carbon but depend on something other than water.
Is the solvent such as ammonia or perhaps hydrofluoric acid. Yeah,
and of course this is crazy because we we mentioned
the face hugger burning through the presumably glass helmet, and
uh and what does hydrofluoric acid do? But it can
break down glass, as we mentioned. Yeah, of course, now

(01:09:12):
it does take a while. Again, one of the things
that's always not quite matching upright between the movie acid
and the acid in the in the real experiments we're
talking about is just rapidity. It's just the time it
takes to dissolve things. Right. Everything is instant in the films,
and it just it doesn't seem to be that way
with real chemistry. So here's a quote from Sagan in
Nine Cosmos his book. Perhaps elsewhere some solvent other than

(01:09:35):
the water is used, hydrofluoric acid might serve rather well,
although there is not a great deal of fluorine in
the cosmos. Hydrofluoric acid would do a great deal of
damage to the kind of molecules that make us up,
but other organic molecules paraffin waxes, for example, are perfectly
stable in its presence. I like hear Carl Sagan voice.

(01:09:55):
It's it's it's not that great of a voice. We
really what we need as we need Chuck to come
in and do his kermit the frog voice, which I
think also sounds very sagany. I don't think I've ever
heard that. Oh you should, you should ask him to
do a little kermit. But read some Cosmos. I think
your Carl Sagan is pretty good man. Don't don't put
yourself down, all right? Well, you know, well Sagan is

(01:10:16):
not the only one to chime in on this. Uh.
Plenty of other biochemists have also looked at, you know,
possible alternate biochemistries, and they've presented sulfuric acid as a possibility.
So it's certainly more cosmically common. You know, so it
would it would make sense. In the two thousand seven
book The Limits of Organic Life in Planetary Systems, and

(01:10:38):
this is a book by a number of authors, it's
it's It's credited authors are the Committee on the Limits
of Organic Life and Planetary Systems UM, the National Research Council,
and a few other bodies. I'm not going to list
them all, but in a chapter titled Hawai Water Toward
more Exotic Habitats, they state the fall quote, sulfuric acid

(01:11:01):
is a reasonably good solvent that supports chemical reactivity. Sulfuric
acid is known to exist above Venus, where three cloud
layers at KOs are composed mostly of aerosols of sulfuric
acid about in the upper layer and then in the
lower layer. The temperature about kelvin at about fifty KOs

(01:11:23):
altitude at about one point five a t m is
consistent with stable carbon to carbon covalent bonds. So the
tacomb here is that, yes, it is conceivable that we
would have a a a carbon based life form in
which the solvent is sulfuric acid. It's reasonable now whether

(01:11:44):
that life could actually match up to the just profound
the standards that we set with the xenomorph. That's another issue. Yeah,
are you are you breaking my heart? Robert? Are you
telling me that there's probably not a xenomorph anywhere in
our solar system. I'm saying that the xenomorph exists in

(01:12:04):
the realm of forms. Yeah, and and but the universe
that we live in, it's it may be at least
willing to meet us halfway. Well, even a pale imitation
of xenomorph would be welcome to my ears. Yes, so
in my eyes as it burned them out. So if
you yeah, if you lived to be um, you know,
several thousand years old, your your life prolonged by all

(01:12:25):
the various technologies available to you, and you set yourself
on the perfect death. You want to die via the
acidic blood of of of an alien species. There is
maybe some hope. So, Robert, I've enjoyed exploring this with
you because I've always loved movie Acid, and I wonder
what it is that captivates us so much about Acid.

(01:12:46):
I want to go back to that question I started with,
why you know they so they put Batman in the
bank vault. Oh no, it's boiling acid. It could have
been boiling water or even room temperature water and it
still would have killed him. But that wouldn't be nearly
is interesting For some reason, we want acid. Why is
acid so interesting? Is a way to kill people when
you could get the same thing done with just a

(01:13:08):
hot uh normal liquid. You know, it could be hot
uh bleach. I mean, well, you know that would be
that would be a pretty weird interesting way to kill people.
But hot water, boiling water that people would be like, huh,
why why didn't you go to acid? Well, because well,
for one thing, boiling water is every day, right, yeah,
or if not every day, it's like even like most
people have some experience of putting the macaroni in the

(01:13:30):
boiling water. Yeah, yeah, And I think that's right. I
think heating. Heating is a method of changing the chemical
nature of something that's very familiar to us. Whereas the
chemical reactions that take place in the bond breaking that
takes place when you've got an acid solution of water,
that that's something that's less familiar to us. We don't
understand what's going on there. And for that reason, it's

(01:13:52):
kind of like magic. Yeah, it's to the the average viewer,
like a bad guy dissolving an acid makes as much
scientific sense as one ron silver touching on another ron
silver in time cop and then becoming a big red
goog of melt. But yeah, that's why they're both wonderful.
That they capture the magic of nonsense exactly. They put

(01:14:14):
it right into your face or on the face. Hey,
so there you have it, Hollywood acid. Uh so again,
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(01:14:35):
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(01:15:04):
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