In Popular Culture
A miniature binary weapon is used in an assassination in the Frederick Forsyth novel The Devil's Alternative. It consists of two half-capsules, a non-resistant one containing potassium cyanide and an acid-resistant one containing hydrochloric acid. The substances mix after the halves are assembled and the seal between them is broken, and form hydrogen cyanide. The surplus acid eats through the capsule walls of the non-resistant half, and after a delay of several hours, the lethal content is released into the intestinal tract of whoever ingested it.
While technically possible, the assassination tool as discussed in the novel is presumably fictional. However, there are claims that in September 2003 the SVR (Russian Foreign Intelligence Service) prepared to assassinate Boris Berezovsky with a similar device.
The 2002 movie xXx features a Soviet-made binary chemical weapon codenamed "Silent Night", after its supposed ability to render an area silent by killing its inhabitants. In the movie, the chemical was acquired by the terrorist group Anarchy-99, and their leader, Yorgi, plans to launch missiles containing Silent Night from an autonomous solar-powered submarine called Ahab, with the intent to sow chaos among civilized nations as they all blame each other for the attacks.
In the 1995 movie Die Hard with a Vengeance, the terrorists use timer and otherwise activated binary explosive bombs, where two inert fluid, a white and a red coloured, right before detonation mixed by the bombs' mechanism creating a highly explosive mixture.
Read more about this topic: Binary Chemical Weapon
Famous quotes containing the words popular culture, popular and/or culture:
“The lowest form of popular culture—lack of information, misinformation, disinformation, and a contempt for the truth or the reality of most people’s lives—has overrun real journalism. Today, ordinary Americans are being stuffed with garbage.”
—Carl Bernstein (b. 1944)
“The very nursery tales of this generation were the nursery tales of primeval races. They migrate from east to west, and again from west to east; now expanded into the “tale divine” of bards, now shrunk into a popular rhyme.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“Both cultures encourage innovation and experimentation, but are likely to reject the innovator if his innovation is not accepted by audiences. High culture experiments that are rejected by audiences in the creator’s lifetime may, however, become classics in another era, whereas popular culture experiments are forgotten if not immediately successful. Even so, in both cultures innovation is rare, although in high culture it is celebrated and in popular culture it is taken for granted.”
—Herbert J. Gans (b. 1927)