The Quest for 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 and Joe explore in this episode of Stuff to Blow Your Mind.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:02):
Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind from how Stuff
Works dot com. Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind.
My name is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick. Hey
real quick at the top of the show here. If
you want to explore more of Stuff to Blow your Mind,
head on over to stuff to Blow your Mind dot com.

(00:23):
That is our mothership. That is the main website where
you will find all of our episodes. You find videos,
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if you want to support the show, a great way
to do it is to simply rate and review us
wherever you 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

(00:47):
the Batman movies of the nineteen nineties, Think back to
Batman Forever. Oh that was That was a Dark Time,
directed by Joel Schumacher, 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

(01:07):
one was snarling a lot, kind of whipping his body
around in a frenzy, and that, of course was the
acid scarred and that telling of the Uh I believe
he was. Yeah, they So the story of two Face
in that version is that he's a Harvey Dent is
the lawyer who becomes two Face believe he's a district's
attorney and he gets scarred on one part of his

(01:27):
face and it drives him insane, and uh, yeah, I
don't think they go deep into the backstory and 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 there is a I believe a vault guard
of some kind tied up, and when Batman goes in

(01:49):
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. Okay, so a lot of
people may we were keeping their precious acid in this vault. Uh.
And the the vault guard realizes what's happening as as
Two Face taunts them that they're going to die in

(02:09):
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, this Batman film. I was super
into the first two. Yeah, when I was a kid. Yeah,

(02:29):
the Burton Batman's were great, and I wanted to get
into the Schumacher ones, and you know, it didn't work.
And I think part of the reason it's not worth
it is that boiling acid. Uh. It tightly sums up
everything about those funds well exactly. And one of the
things that I find so funny about 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

(02:55):
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 flating a sealed right, I mean, it can be
that it's room temperature water. We're gonna drown. Yeah, And
so this obviously brings in a favorite old trope of
the superhero genre. But really it's all throughout the movies,

(03:16):
and this is movie acid. Notice 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,
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

(03:39):
Hollywood acid. So you're probably familiar with this. You remember
lots of other scenes from Batman. I bet right, it's
always in Batman, like the villain captures Batman, is the penguin,
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 u like human technological achievement,

(04:03):
and then we can then utilize for menacing purposes. You know.
It's like it's like having a whole bunch of molten
steel on hand or a hydraulic press. Right. It 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.

(04:23):
It's a like a thing to have below you. It's
like a pit of piranhas or a pit of crocodiles
or something, and a pit of molecules that want to, uh,
want to play 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. Okay, go
for it. One of them is that it causes severe

(04:45):
and immediate burns to the skin and soft tissues. That
sounds about right, yeah, just immediate scarification, meltification, um. And
we can run through some examples of that in a minute, right. So.
Another one is if you put organicterials such as a batman,
into a vat of acid, it will kill and then
rapidly dissolve that organism. So it has not only killing

(05:07):
and burning powers, but also liquification 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
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

(05:29):
a few examples that I have instilled that that idea
to me. But like if I was to draw a picture, uh,
you know, doodle something with acid on the side of
a piece of paper, it would be green. Yeah. A
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.

(05:53):
They do nothing. It's great. But so another thing about
the acid is that it displays am being bubbling, so
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

(06:14):
the final effector 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 with some you know, room to
have some sort of a 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

(06:34):
Acid story. What what? What are your memories from childhood
of beloved movie Acid. Oh? I have I have several, uh,
but probably the most scarring was at a young age,
like too young of an age, I saw a RoboCop.
Who lets you watch RoboCop at a young age? I
think it was like, um, like an uncle's house. Uh,
and it was on. But then again, RoboCop is so

(06:56):
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 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,

(07:17):
in a 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 as a young person,
and I'm a little appalled at times. But yeah, there's
a scene where and I'm sure anyone who has seen
this has this et burned into their mind as well.
One of the villain's Hinchman's gets gets just coated in acid.

(07:38):
Leave his name is Emal Is that is that his name?
So Emal gets coated in acid. I don't even remember
how it happened, Like the RoboCop shoot a vata acid
that was behind him and they're setting well, there are
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 asked

(08:00):
it 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, 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 Stadi's in and then
like robocopper, one of the villa I think it's the

(08:20):
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 because of RoboCop. I knew what he was
capable of. Clarence Botocker, he's a great villain. Yeah, so
he hits him with the car and he just turns
to liquid. He's like a bag of soup and uh

(08:41):
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 and 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 of bounce out off. But my favorite example

(09:03):
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 uh called I think the deadpool where you're
fighting on a platform and there's just just green acid,
uh through fills the room or ambiently bubbling, I can't

(09:23):
remember it's bubbling or not. But if you upper cut
your opponent into the acid at the 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.
Oh how long does that take? One second? Two seconds? Yeah,

(09:43):
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 think that for granted now,
but he also spits acid. So he takes his little
mask off and goes and this, uh, this green glob
comes flying across the screen and burns you. One of
the most horrible acid scenes I remember from a kid

(10:04):
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, uh, to homogenize their flesh. Yeah.
I think there's an early scene where Brundle fly be
of course, you know, if you haven't seen it, first

(10:25):
of all, go see it. But mad scientist and a
fly their DNA is spliced the teleportation accident, and there's
a scene where he's recording himself feeding on something like
so just a bunch of sugary junk food, right, and
you don't actually see it, happy to just hear it
and it's horrific. And then of course later he weaponized

(10:45):
is this biological effect? And speaking of weaponized acid biology,
we would have to mention I guess this will be
a final example of the xenomorph from the films. Uh So,
in Ridley Scott's Alien you might remember this the old
classic Alien, we first see the xenomorphous acid blood during
the scene where if you remember, John Hurt's character gets

(11:06):
a gets an alien parasite attached to his face called
a face hugger, like burns through his helmet. 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 to see if they can remove it, and

(11:26):
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 stops reacting
a few levels down, finally neutralizes and goes through the
entire hole. And then Tom Skret's character Captain Dallas. He

(11:49):
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 some of their friendly acid that's highly deluded

(12:11):
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 xenomorphes at the end. But anyway, so,
why why this obsession with acid? We we love this stuff.

(12:35):
I mean, it keeps showing up in our media all
the time, even though we were 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 acid. It's just basically like a magical corrosive substance. Yeah, exactly.
So we we wanted to talk today about the real

(12:55):
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 assets out there
the movie Acid, we we should do a real simple

(13:15):
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

(13:36):
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

(13:58):
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

(14:20):
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, which

(14:42):
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. Do ionization
of water. You can just have water sitting there in

(15:02):
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 uh a molecule called hydronium, which
is H three OH. It's a positively charged water molecule

(15:26):
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 Braunze said and the

(15:46):
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 it into water, it wants to
send free hydrogen ions. These protons out into the solution,

(16:08):
and 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.

(16:29):
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 water, and it wants
to break apart and donate that positively charged hydrogen ion
to the water, creating some negatively charged chloride and positively

(16:51):
charged hydronium. And here hc L is the acid and
water is the base by the bronzet Dead Lowry definition.
But all this stuff about acids and base this 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.

(17:12):
So when you add a strong acid to a water,
because you're giving away those positively charged UH hydrogen ions,
you're proton aating 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

(17:34):
as a pH of three or pH of six. What
does that mean? pH is just the concentration of those
hydrogen ions in a solution. So normal water, that's a 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

(17:56):
going to stay on this math for a long time,
but just to be clear, a mole is just the
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.

(18:18):
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.
To put that in um in perspective, what lemon juice
is a too I believe, yeah, that's about right. In fact,
we can read a few a few examples of of

(18:39):
phs INN. And then also on the other end of
the scale, UH, compounds with higher pH values are stronger basis,
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, distilled

(19:01):
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 going to be like thirteen. That's a strong base.
But then going lower on the scale, acids are gonna
be things like vinegar is going to be around a

(19:23):
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 dern acid, and then I

(19:44):
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

(20:06):
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

(20:27):
some acids might actually have a lower pH than others
but still be less harmful. For example, hydrofluoric acid, when
we're gonna 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 is

(20:48):
that sometimes it's not only the corrosive aspects of the acid,
but what happens when it when it has when it
undergoes the 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 to

(21:09):
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 and prolonged exposure to some of these that

(21:31):
have also been linked to cancer. So there are a
number of ways that these that 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 some organic materials 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,

(21:51):
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 may cup
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

(22:14):
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 gloupat. Yes, however,

(22:35):
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 gloup 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,

(22:58):
And so unless somebody perps 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 gonna 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 think the classic

(23:19):
Batman TVs series, of course, with its rigorous approach to science,
you would probably see rob and 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 five party. Yeah, yeah, everybody does the twist.

(23:40):
All right, we're gonna take a quick 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, not we're gonna try

(24:00):
not to just really chemistry class you too much on these,
but we're gonna, you know, roll through the some of
the basic health ratings and uh 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.

(24:23):
So there's going to 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 S Material Safety Data Sheet. Yeah,
if you if you're interested in pretty much any substance,
any chemical substance, you can generally find um an MSDS

(24:44):
on on the internet for this and uh it's 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, Uh, 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

(25:06):
might be able to sniff it out and when it
comes to its solubility, infinite solubility, and water with slight
evolution of heat, not necessarily boiling, but slight evolution defeat. 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

(25:28):
ahead of time, Yeah, exactly. Um, the most of the
ones 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 in Dungeons 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

(25:50):
far as hydrochloric acid goes, it's health rating is a three,
which is severe like a poison level zero, and flammability
reactivity rating is a two. 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 we

(26:13):
we should not come into contact with it on our eyes,
on our skin, do not ingest it. Uh, you don't
want 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 we'll react with water
or steam to produce heat and toxic and corrosive fumes. Yeah.

(26:34):
But of course, as I mentioned earlier, despite all this,
you've got hydrochloric acid in your body. That's right, I mean,
this is the stomach acid. This is uh, this is
part of you. And really it's 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.

(26:57):
So yeah, the even though we liked to position acid
in that vat of of man made peril, Uh, 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

(27:18):
right through it. Really. Yeah, wow. And the G cells
produce gastron, a hormone that facilitates the production of 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

(27:38):
bicarbonate rich solution that coats the mucosa. Okay, so that's
taking the method of saving the batman by dumping a
bunch of baking soda into the vat. Yeah. Yeah, the
putting in a base exactly. The bicarbonate is an alkaline.
A base neutralizes the acid that's secreted by those parietal cells,
producing water in the process. And this continuous supply lie

(28:00):
of bicarbonate is the main way that your stomach protects
itself from autodigestion um and the overall acidic environment if
you're 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

(28:24):
nothing to be toyed around with. But there are stronger
and more dangerous acids out there, and I think maybe
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 on
to the joker. Yes, the joker would definitely be sulfuric acid, right, yeah,

(28:44):
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. Granted not
without a real deep understanding of what it is. But
like the name itself sounds a little scary, soulf for
it's it's hellish, right, sulfuric the the name itself sounds
a little bit evil. Well, chemically, it's H two S

(29:07):
O four, So that's hydrogen with sulfur and oxygen and
it forms this molecule that is very very keen to protonate.
Oh yes, so it's it's a clear, oily liquid. It's odorless,
so sorry bank vault dude. Yeah, both of these so
far clear? Right? Yeah? Yeah? Nothing green? Why why not green?

(29:28):
Or or it's also mistable with water, which means that
it forms a homogeneous mixture when added to water, liberates
a fair amount of heat. Um. 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,

(29:50):
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 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,

(30:14):
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 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
gonna be specific to the JT. Baker s a f

(30:35):
T data score. I guess because I need a good
poet to go through and annotate this data sheet instead
of like a single word like a nice description exactly
everyone is encountered with it, or an example from a movie,
right like this is a you know, this is a
Mortal Kombat two level ascid. Yeah, so if you're going
for this movie kind of asset, I think we're we're

(30:55):
getting more into the territory here of assets that are
really gonna maybe not be of exactly like the movie
acid you're used to, but get closer to that than
than many other things would. Now, some other bad stuff
about sulphuric acid. When heated to decomposition, it produces toxic
fumes of oxides of sulfur uh. It will react with

(31:15):
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, 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

(31:39):
of acid interactions in 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 much more
concerned with liquids than with gases. And what one example
is volcanoes in movies. You know, volcanoes in real life.

(31:59):
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 toward them.
Your volcano is very likely to kill you, but it's
very not likely to kill you that way. Another thing

(32:19):
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 way to suffocate yourself. That's
a great way to sufcate yourself, and it's rarely, rarely
is that explored. The only example I can think of

(32:41):
off hand 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
up all the oxygen and everybody's like gasping for breath.
And I remember the time thinking, Ah, thank you movie

(33:02):
for for for thinking a little bit. That's smart. 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
home and some deluded uh concentrations. So a nine study

(33:23):
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
going to be based on a strong base rather than
a strong acid, So it might have something kind of

(33:43):
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 sulf furic acid,
and and some people will sell these and you can

(34:04):
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
twenty one patients. There were thirteen kids and eight adults.

(34:27):
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 percent
or a range of one. Approximately fifty percent of burns
involved the face and the neck. Skin grafting was required

(34:51):
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 outside
of the lab. And this does remind me that in um,

(35:13):
you know a lot of films and TV, and and
certainly in horror literature, uh, drain cleaner is 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 this horrible
in human thing. And uh, and I should also point

(35:34):
out of view some people might have might have missed
this in this episode because it's kind of maybe we're
bearing the lead a little bit. But the most recent
Creepy Posta episode that Christian and I did gets into
the into the issue of acid attacks and the restoration
of surgical restoration of individuals who have experienced fact, so

(35:54):
it mentions the like the grafting that was eaching 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 indeed. But next,

(36:17):
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, and
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

(36:38):
is a four. This one is extremely poisonous. Uh. This
one also has a zero on flammability. Uh. It's reactivity
rating is a mere two, so that's down from three
that we had on sulphuric acid. And then its contact
rating is a four. Extremely corrosive, just like sulfuric acid. Yeah.
So it's a colorless, fuming liquid. Uh. It has a

(37:01):
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 fluorian bond or the
hydrogen fluoride. It has a very unique sort of reactive
profile that's right on contact with metals. It liberates hydrogen

(37:23):
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

(37:47):
of the time. Glass is great for storing chemicals because
it is 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 is you know, a
lot of rocks and sand. But hydrogen fluoride smashes up
those silicon dioxide bonds in order to replace them with

(38:09):
silicon 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

(38:32):
you 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 on the landing page
for this episode Stuffable your Mind dot com. Yeah, 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,

(38:52):
and there are a lot of fun 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

(39:15):
part of the light bulb breaks off, 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. 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

(39:38):
kind of sparking. But then they 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

(39:59):
and they suspended it from 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 we saw affecting the chicken

(40:21):
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. So this already

(40:43):
is not exactly lining up with what we know about
movie acid right right, And these are best in our
brightest athletes, 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 turned into this dark,

(41:04):
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 the chicken leg. Don't know

(41:27):
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,

(41:48):
well there you know. There are different jellifications of flesh
that are consumed arthur In, like French busine. 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

(42:09):
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

(42:30):
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,

(42:52):
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 in the soul 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

(43:13):
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 could possibly imagine. Yeah, And so I do
recommend the the video because the chemist who they talked

(43:35):
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

(43:56):
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(45:00):
in stuff that Stamps dot com inter stuff and 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

(45:20):
as a superhero. Oh yeah, he's got the costume, he's
got the technology. So yeah, maybe if 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 look into it exactly. So what is
a super acid? Well, super acid is an acid that

(45:41):
is as strong as or stronger than, one hundred percent
pure sulfuric acid. Uh, And why would 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, the industrial settings,
some big open vets. Yeah, but they have. They have
a number of applications and potential applications in fuel cell

(46:04):
technology and the chemical and petroleum industry. So, for instance,
acids don't usually react with hydrocarbons, oil, petroleum, but super
acids 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

(46:24):
acid or h s b F six. Then this is,
as far as we know, the strongest super 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

(46:45):
of times stronger than sulfuric acid. Yeah, it's billions and
billions of times or just many orders 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

(47:06):
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 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

(47:26):
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 acid. Right, 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.

(47:49):
But but you might be wondering, you know, with with
an acid that strong, something that that reactive, how would
you even store it? Right? Because just the hydrogen, uh,
just with the Jeff, you've got this problem where you
you you're dissolving glass containers. Uh so what do you
use to story? This wasn't an interesting piece of information
I found cited in several sources. You can actually store

(48:13):
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,
so polytetrafluora ethylene. It's a ptf E and that's just
a 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. Alright,

(48:36):
So if you are battling a lizard ninja that may
or may not have um super acid in its body,
where your teflon ninja costut to battle it? Exactly? Okay,
that's what Batman uses, I bet sustain his encounters with
vats of acid is a teflon batsuit. So this would
be what McBain's underwear was made off in that that

(48:58):
scene we were talking about from The Simpsons, because when
the flood of acid and throws him through I think
mill houses, uh trailer, that the acid like quickly eats
off all of his clothing except for his underwear. Yeah, well,
I'm sure that was done for a network censorship reasons
rather than than scientific accuracy reasons, but it could be

(49:18):
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 asset in the world, is 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

(49:39):
seeing how they don't really match up to our Batman
dissolving needs. Doesn't mean they're not dangerous something that are
certainly credibly dangerous, but they don't behave exactly like we
we want them to to make 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

(50:00):
not going to get the green, bubbling, instant dissolving you
kind of thing. But in many cases, 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

(50:22):
or potassium hydroxide KOH. And so I wanna bring to
your mind a scene from a movie you might or
might not have seen it. 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,

(50:42):
and one of the ingredients in making soap, and this
is true is lie. And in the scene, brad Pitt
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

(51:03):
sense of carpet d m, brad Pitt convinces Edward Norton
to just sit there and endure the pain, the chemical 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.

(51:24):
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 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

(51:45):
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 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,

(52:07):
but it's highly diluted with water. But yes, in any case,
this is an example of what strong 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

(52:30):
this is one thing we also see the movie acid
being used for. It's like the Mafia hitman in the
movie have some vat of acid in their basement and
they whack 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 of evidence is just science presented by

(52:53):
the Mafia Science Institute. Apparently the better 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

(53:14):
human remains and green burials and stuff like that, and
so the method, one method we talked 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

(53:34):
like this. 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 the chamber to
around a hundred and sixty degrease celsius or you know,
over three hundred 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

(53:54):
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 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

(54:17):
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 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,

(54:40):
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 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 sentence, despite the fact that

(55:01):
it might not be as great a wonderful dissolver of
organic material or something like lie. But yeah, I'm ready
Robert for 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

(55:23):
in the episode. This is one fantastic example of movie ascid.
I think it's probably my favorite movie asset is the
Aliens Blood Right, Yeah, 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, and when
we do wounding, it might kill us. Yeah. So we've
described sort of what happens in the scene in the

(55:44):
first scene where these that there. There are many different
ways the asset appears throughout all of the movies that
have aliens in them, 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 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

(56:07):
is a fantastic question, um, But before I get into it,
I do want to 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 Grendel.
Oh wow, Yeah, it's been so long since I've read
from Bayol. It's been so long, Yes, since I've read Beowulf.

(56:30):
I've certainly read things since then that have Grendel in them.
But it's been so long I didn't I didn't even
realize this. I have sort of rediscovered this in our research.
This is crazy. So, of course Beowulf is a classic
of Anglo Saxon literature Old English literature, where you know
you've got this epic. The hero Beowulf 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?

(56:53):
And so what's the deal? So he goes into slay
Grendel and he encounters some acid blood. Yeah, basically like
he ends up getting this special sword, and then at
the end he 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

(57:16):
the sword blade began then the blood having touched it,
contracting and shriveling with battle icicles. It was a wonderful
marvel that had melted entirely. So it's my understanding that
you could kind of interpret this is maybe a blood
is really hot and just melted it um you know,
as in a you know, a great fire, or that

(57:36):
it's acidic, depending on your interpretation. Either way, that's that's
quite uh 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

(58:00):
as far as 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

(58:21):
been harassing the town. 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 magical weapon is ruined. Yeah, maybe spraying him on
the face in the process and killing him getting the
last laugh after all. Oh yeah, well, you know it's
Beowulf's they probably dodge it. I always have this thing,

(58:42):
I always since sympathize with Grendel. Uh. Yet to see
an 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 the aliens blood might
be would be to look behind the scenes in the

(59:03):
movie and see, Okay, so how do they create the
special effect in the In the alien movies, you see
the aliens spilled their blood like in the first movie
in Ridley Scott's film, you see it's 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

(59:23):
where this special effect came from, and supposedly it was
created by the alien special effects supervisor Brian Johnson, and
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

(59:43):
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.
What's the name of the company, the corporation while wait, wait,
waitl in Utahi and maybe they're just super cheap and
they're like styrofoam. That's great. I'm sure that's what it was.

(01:00:04):
But in any sense, so what was it made of? Well,
the blood they had was made of chloroform, acetone, cyclohexylamine,
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 diluting diluted in in water

(01:00:27):
to make vinegar with some other flavorings. Acetone is not
an acid, that's neutral neutral pH seven uh, Cyclohexulamine is
a base. And then and then of course the head
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

(01:00:47):
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. If you ever want
to make a head melt for a bunch of children,
this is a fun party trick. I 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 massa

(01:01:09):
tone on that styrofoam head. It's just oh no, it melts.
So it works great for a special effect, but probably
would not work for a real organism that 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? It? Is this an evolved trade?

(01:01:31):
Is this an engineered traite? But what is the origin
of the xenomorph? Then? Uh? Depending on how these work.
But I have I have a couple of proposals here, Okay,
as to what could be going on with the xenomore.
So my my first more modest and explosive proposition is
this UH. And I'm sure that this doesn't match up
to everybody's UH interpretation of the franchise or every entry

(01:01:54):
of the franchise. But here's the Okay, So we see
the thing bleeding acid when it's hard, right, you shoot it,
cut whatever acid shoots out. And of course we also
see it using the acid offensively occasions such as when
that face hugger UH melt through the glass dome on
the helmet. Oh yeah, I didn't have to cut itself
to do right if somehow just utilized treated this. So

(01:02:15):
what if this isn't the creature's blood at all, really
not properly, but rather an acid stored throughout the body
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. 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

(01:02:36):
the body. It would be there expressly to rupture during
physical harm to UH, to harm or destroy 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

(01:02:59):
call this sub process this practice autopsis, and this is
the process by which a natural world organism 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

(01:03:23):
what started off is like poop on the enemy when
they attacked and defensive defecation. But then it becomes like,
if you can't get that poop out of the ain
is 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

(01:03:44):
here is Neo caapa termes tarracula, and this is um.
This is a fabulous organism. So the species workers grow
abdominal sacks of toxic blue crystals throughout their lives. But
these explosive backpack to some studies refer to them, are
are most pronounced and elderly workers. So so as they

(01:04:05):
become less useful to the colony, and that sort of
turn into the suicide bombers exactly like you know you
don't have you have dull and useless mannibles, 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 end they just rushed for,

(01:04:25):
where the invaders then bite into their bodies, and that's
when the blue crystals combine with salivary secretions to produce
a deadly chemical weapon. Huh. So that would mean that
the 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 and is

(01:04:46):
therefore an act of autopices. So this would be like
highly concentrated stomach acid or something else that has evolved
into this 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

(01:05:08):
part of the body. You just need specialized cells along
whatever you know, body's tissues containing it to to buffer
it essentially to 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

(01:05:29):
course not all modes of life, not all biochemistry is
out there, are necessarily based on carbon or based on water.
So we might have to take it a bit bit further.
What sort of organism might have blood that is either
incidentally or adaptively corrosive at least to our sort of flesh. Well,

(01:05:50):
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 in our hair, our nails, or
but dermist. Uh, So it seems conceivable that this, or
perhaps hexafluoro silsilic acid might play into a silicone based

(01:06:11):
xenomorphs anatomy. Huh. 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 what we see in the films,
but this is an area where I think, you know,
there any biochemist listening off to weigh in on that
for us? Yeah, well, I mean, how how reactive would

(01:06:31):
an acid or whatever the chemical is. Maybe it's a
strong base actually that it's releasing. How strong would it
have to be to really eat through the hule that fast?
Is there any chemical that would really eat through the
whole that fast? I don't know about that. Maybe what
if it has the fluoro antimonic acid in it? And
you know, the thing is for a defense, you know,
if you're if you're thinking about something that has evolved,

(01:06:54):
this as a basic defense against human oid creatures that
are there 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
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,

(01:07:17):
it is a perfect organism. Now, some experts, including the
late great Carl Saken, have speculated that alternate astrobiologies 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

(01:07:41):
uh and what does hydroflulic acid do? But it can
break down glass, as we mentioned. Yeah, of course, now
it does take a while. Again, one of the things
that's always not quite matching up right 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 instant in the films,
and it just it doesn't seem to be that way

(01:08:02):
with real chemistry. So here's a quote from Sagan in
nineteen eighties Cosmos, his book. Perhaps elsewhere some solvent other
than 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

(01:08:27):
stable in its presence. I like your Carl Sagan voice.
It's it's it's not that great of a voice. We
really know what we need is 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

(01:08:48):
put yourself down, all right. Well, you know, well Sagan
is 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

(01:09:09):
book The Limits of Organic Life in Planetary Systems, and
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

(01:09:31):
More Exotic Habitats, they state the following quote, Sulfuric acid
is a reasonably good solvent that supports chemical reactivity. Sulfuric
acid is known to exist above Venus, where three cloud
layers at kilometers are composed mostly of aerosols of sulfuric acid,
about eight in the upper layer and the nine percent

(01:09:52):
in the lower layer. The temperature about three kelvin at
about fifty kilometers altitude at about one point five a
t m is consistent with stable carbon to carbon covalent bonds.
So the take home here is that, yes, it is
conceivable that we would have a a a carbon based

(01:10:12):
life form in which the solvent is sulphuric acid. It's
reasonable now whether 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

(01:10:36):
that the xenomorph exists in the realm of forms. Yeah,
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 a xenomorph would be welcome
to my ears. Yes, so 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

(01:10:57):
life prolonged by all the areas technology is available to you,
and you set yourself on the perfect death. You want
to die the the 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

(01:11:19):
us so much about acid. 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 as interesting. For some reason,
we want acid. Why is acid so interesting as a
way to kill people when you could get the same

(01:11:41):
thing done with just a hot uh normal liquid. You know,
it could be hot uh bleach. I mean, well yeah,
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 or not every day. It's like

(01:12:01):
even like most people have some experience of putting the
macaroni in the 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.

(01:12:23):
We don't understand what's going on there. And for that reason,
it's 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 goo of melt. But yeah, that's why they're

(01:12:45):
both wonderful. That they capture the magic of nonsense exactly.
They put it right into your face or on the face. Hey,
so there you have it, Hollywood acid. Uh so again,
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(01:13:07):
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