The Assassin's Favorite Plant 

"In fact, learning in general evolved as a concept so we can avoid stupidly dying." Exactly 😂❤

A lot of common garden plants are poisonous. Monkshood, Foxglove, Angel's Trumpet.

Here in Brazil, castor oil plants are a really common sight, as they grow easily everywhere, even neglected backyards. When I was a kid, I heard from my mom and other adults to beware the seeds. Still, kids love to throw the fruits at each other playing catch.

Small pet peeve, synthetic oils are *infinitely* better at lubricating engines than castor oil, it's not one of the best lubricants but it is better than most seed oils

14:48, "I personally have dabbled in learning from time to time". Oh hey, me too! In fact, I'm doing it right now!

Hi. In my grandparents house we had castor bean plants as decoration in the garden. I didn't know the name of the plant back then when I was a kid. It was a common plant in many gardens. I collected and played with the castor bean seeds cuz they were pretty. Didn't know how poisonous they were. When I grew up I learned about this plant and I'm happy I didn't eat any of those back then.

The main problem with ricin is there is no antidote but a person with atropine poisoning can be treated by acetylcholinesterase inhibitors in early stages .

I remember being trained to use Atropine autoinjectors when I was in basic training. They were park of the Nerve Agent Antidote Kit, or NAAK, and were one of two agents, Pralidoxime Chloride (2-PAM Chloride) and Atropine Sulfate. The kit comes as a set of two autoinjectors. Both are to be administered in the event of a suspected nerve agent attack. Beneficial as they are in such a situation, they will still leave you incapacitated. Our instructors were careful to let us know that we're out of the fight the instant the NAAK is given, so they stressed ensuring that we got into our chem suits as quickly as possible, and moved to decon ASAP.

So hear me out: I once ate about half a berry from deadly nightshade... I was curious, the internet said I wouldn't die. Firstly, they're delicious. Like a sweety fruity chocolate flavour, highly recommended. The downsides: I felt nauseous for two days, and most frustratingly my vision was perpetually blurry so I was unable to read or see anything properly. I had extreme cottonmouth but other than that, it wasn't terrible... That was half a berry.

5:26 castor bean plants are invasive in my area, so hundreds of these beans are available every fall here in any empty lot or roadside patch. (one popped up in my yard once, but i think my dad got rid of it while he was weeding.)

You forgot to add that nightshade also gives us hyoscamine, used for stomach cramping. Great video!

"Stupidly dying" is one of my favourite expressions now.

I love castor bean plants especially the different colors. In the 30 years that I have grown it I've never had anyone come to my door to see if I was planning on killing people. 😂

As soon as I see a Real Science video it's an instant click, an instant like and I'm never disappointed and always amazed at the narration, production and massive information compacted into their short videos! Thanks for enlightening me a little more with another fascinating video RS!

Castor is a pretty common plant where I live, so I have been around castor plants since childhood, but I never knew that they were poisonous. My uncle in India farms castor plants every year for seeds. I have even helped him harvest seeds multiple times.

The backing tracks on this one are so good

I remember when I was a child I once ate half a castor bean seed. And the world felt like it was spinning. Luckily I didn't die

Scopolamine is also known as hyoscine (particularly outside the US). I think you have mistaken its use as an antidepressant for use as an antipsychotic. Hyoscine has been used as a rapid-onset antidepressant, but I am unaware of its use as an antipsychotic, in fact I'd imagine it'd make that worse given it can trigger hallucinations.

Uh-oh. Maybe I should tell my brother. He's been deliberately growing castor plants in our parents' yard. Not because they're poisonous- he just loves all plants the way Clint of Clint's Reptiles loves pretty much every animal, except a bit less wide-eyed and a bit more "can I propagate this?" He grows them because they are beautiful to him. I'm the crazy pants who had to talk herself out of trying to acquire some seeds to make poison with. "It's too d*mn dangerous" and "when would a situation severe enough that you could even justify using it?!" worked, though. Especially the danger vs potential usefulness. Because the only situation I could see it seeming fair would be if a hostile foreign power managed a land invasion of the U.S., because in that case poisoning their food or water would be tempting. But that would also be a war crime, and if they weren't committing them before it would make them feel free to commit war crimes on us civilians after, so even in that extremely remote case it would likely be worse in the end than not doing it, and then there's the difficulty of even making the stuff without accidentally killing yourself and trying to store it so that no one could ever accidentally find and consume it. So yeah- tempting, but really, really not worth it.

Castor bean is poisonous, but castor oil is regularly used and commercially available in India, and have I seen castor oil used in a specific food (which I have eaten). People use castor oil as some kind of laxative(as a home remedy) and apply it on the skin. I am not sure if castor oil is poisonous. So far nothing has happened to me. Atropa belladonna ( I think it is called as sag angur) it is poisonous.

In my more adventurous days, a group of friends and I once brewed a tea from the root of a plant that contained atropine, scopalamine, and hyscopalamine under the direction of a shaman I knew and trusted. It was a nightshade the shaman grew for this purpose, but not the one in the video. The tea tasted very strongly of potatoes and was bitter. It was hard to drink. I don't think I could eat potatoes for months afterwards, lol. Every time you took a sip of the tea, your mouth would become drier. It was by far the worst dry mouth I have ever experienced. Nothing even comes close. No matter how much water you drank, your mouth was as dry as the desert the second it was down. It was somehow dry with water in your mouth, even. We all got very tired and heavy. It became difficult to move, like when you first enter extremely cold water. The psychotropic effects took over two hours to set in. It was not like any other psychedelic, even fully immersive ones. It was most like dreaming, and I understand the acetylcholine receptors are involved in dreams. You would see the world around you, but thing would appear or disappear in a way that is completely illogical, and your brain would accept it as if it were real. For example, my computer monitor disappeared and a ten inch woman walked out of the wall behind it and had a conversation with me. A friend leaned over my shoulder and I knew him, he joined the conversation. It was a really rational and invigorating conversation, until my computer went to screen-saver. Instantly, the monitor appeared, the girl was gone, the friend was gone, and I realized in that moment I had been alone in the room and the entire experience of the past five minutes had not been real. There is no way to describe that feeling. My (real) friend had a conversation with a vacuum and tried to send an email by typing on a microwave. We had dilated pupils and blurry vision for the next three days. There was nothing pleasant about the experience, nothing at all. I do not regret it, but I haven't done it again and I do not recommend it. It is extremely dangerous. It is extremely hard to dose correctly and there is a very small therapeutic index, the difference between the TH50 (the lowest dose at which half of the consumers experience any effects), and the LD50 (the dose at which half of the consumers die). Different cuttings from the same plant can have different amounts of alkaloids. We had someone experienced who had trained with indigenous shamans and had administered this dozens or hundreds of times. It was interesting, but nothing about it was fun and it is not worth your life. Ultimately, I went on to study dreams. Seeing how acetylcholine analogs affected me awake has given me a bit of insight and appreciation for what our brains do when we are asleep.

I'm from the Caribbean,the castor bean plant is very Popular here.most people don't know about its toxicity,when I was younger I even used to taste the beans.people also drink ricin as a way to clean up your whole system,they say.

Castor oil was used to lubricate aircraft engines in WWI. Engines at the time were not particularly well-sealed and tended to spray oil as they ran. One reason the pilots wore that dashing scarf was to wipe the castor oil spray off of their goggles. The scarf was not effective in keeping the castor oil spray from the pilot’s mouth and nose, so pilots often ran headlong to the latrines shortly after a flight due to the laxative effect.

I love this channel. Your monologue at the end about learning is epic.. 😂❤ Thank you! You're amazing!

Love your series. Wanted to point out the in the video at 7:30-7:40 you show 2 brief shots of black nightshade (Solanum nigrum). A related plant, whose *ripe* fruits can be cooked into safely edible pies and jams. Note the fruit clusters and toothed leaves, vs the solitary fruits and entire leaves of deadly nightshade.

one of the best channel on youtube, thanks for the content! i love your narration too!

I have a friend who likes to forage, and he went to the ER after eating a bunch of castor beans. He said they taste like Jalapeño cheese bread.

There was a castor tree in the next block from my home, right there in the sidewalk. No one knew what species was it. And I liked the spiky balls, so I used to play with them, and the seeds are really nice like dotted. So I made bonsai trees from them, they grew easily. I only found out they were so poisonous recently. Last time I went to visit, I checked and the tree was no longer there. I guess I was lucky.

Scopolamine's psychological effects, should get their own video 📹.

POV: You're realising you wrote a scene where someone dies of belladonna poisoning wrong but you don't care because you never specified the poison in the story

3:50 I guess the graphics person didn't understand the definition of LD50. The more it takes to kill 50% the less deadly it is.

Omg , back when i was a kid ... we used to play with the castor plant... they grew everywhere

Regarding castor oil, i remember hearing that all british pilots during the battle of britain had diarrhoea because of the castor oil used to lubricate spitfire and hurricane engines. Weird to think of the extra level of danger involved in that time of history. I'm also sure you can buy castor beans in a supermarket near me, although I am pretty sure it must be a separate variety of the plant.

Near my house there are some castor bean trees, never realized they were so dangerous. There is also some black berries that we call "black maries", but I don't think they are nightshades, they taste sour, so it's hard to eat much of it, and I didn't see anybody getting sick.

beautiful presentation, very neat animations ;)

There are various medicinal uses of the alkaloids these plants. Castor oil is used to treat constipation. Atropine is also used in snake poisoning. It reduces the affects of overactivity of Acetylcholine on the cardio- respiratory systems. Atropine is also used in anesthesia to increase heart rate when there's bradycardia. It is very useful to reduce secretions during intubation and ICU scenarios. Hyoscine is used as an antispasmodic in abdominal colic and pain. Scopolamine is used to treat motion sickness.

thanks a lot for valuable n incredible information about dangers plants..

Actually this is my favourite yt channel, love her voice and the very well made videos

Very informative video, scary history of these plants 😳

'Learning evolved in the first place so we could avoid stupidly dying, its also useful for other stuff' looool 10/10

This is exaclty what i was looking for, thank you!

I never knew assassins had a favorite plant! This was such an interesting video. Can't wait to learn more about the different plants they use.

Both of these plants grow all over European gardens and forests. I never thought they were this poisonous. I think my grandmother has some in her garden next to her "beautiful flowers" 🤨

Fascinating video, thanks!

My parents: Plants are good for you. The plants:

Ironically I use to harvest and play with the thorny fruits of the Castro bean plant totally unaware 😮.

some Poachers in Europe Allegedialy use Deadly Night shade to dialate their pupills to see better at night while poaching but this can obviously be dangerous and deadly ...

Fascinating video per usual

There's another plant that will ask you to throw off a cliff in northern Australia. It's leaves have a fibre glass needle that's like glass, it takes months to years to shed it out

We used to play with ricin as children and we never got sick. I grew up in a place called Lupane in Zimbabwe, Africa

That intro was amazing

I hate ads but I gonna say, y’all are real smooth with the transition to the sponsor.

the best assassination weapon of modern times is the induction cook stove and the death pan, its a pan with windings on the bottom to complete the transformer so when the old lady goes to cook she gets an ohms law step up on the gfci outlet on the counter and a sweet worded there there it was her time from the adjuster and inheritance lawyer.

Worked with this stuff in the 80's. Nasty stuff. To dispose of it you have to boil it in concentrated (10 Normal) Sodium Hydroxide for an hour.

An interesting video. Loved it,liked it and commented.

atropine is used routinely to maintain blood pressure and heart rate during anesthesia

.....this was a dark episode Even the music is on point esp towards the end of the Belladonna section

1:20 Therr it is. Apparently people who want to self delete have consumed them to commit the act. I've also seen these things being dried out on plastic sheets(there seems to be some actual utility other than for self deletion, Though i dont recall what it is.)

Wow I learnt a whole lot, thanks

It is legal to plant castor beans .. but given the potential hazards of extracting the oil, I still prefer to use commercially produced castor oil to preserve our bottle gourds - once rubbed down with the oil, rodents will avoid the are where they are stored, allowing them to be used to dry store grains. If I ever _did_ need to extract the oil myself, I think I would use the native technique of just cracking the beans, and immersing in boiling water: skim the oil off the top with a dipper (made from a bottle gourd, of course!) and discard the rest. Ricin is not oil soluble, so the extracted oil is safe for human use. If I used my oil press, the press cake would be troublesome to dispose of, and I would not like to have any residue left when I'm pressing sunflowers!

And to think I’ve been taking those things and ripping them apart to look inside!

I know people growing Castor plants in their yard as a decorative plant. If this plant is so deadly, how is it legal to grow when things like marijuana have been illegal for so long? Finally the stigma behind marijuana is leaving, but it was just the best example I could think of.

Bill Wilson, the creator of Alcoholics Anonymous, was administered Belladonna as some sort of treatment for alcoholism. He said that it initiated a spiritual experience, and he experience a complete release of control, some sort of oneness. This is a reason why religion is a big focus in AA, it's capable of creating such a powerful experience. Bill W. was very interested in LSD as a much safer/ less terrifying initiator of spiritual experiences, but AA ultimately did not agree, continuing to focus on complete abstinence from mind altering substances (excepting nicotine and caffeine). Crazy they were administering poison for alcohol abuse, but it seemed to work out in the end

My grandmother makes curry out of nightshade plants leafs . It tastes really good

As always top tier video ❤👍

As soon as I saw the thumbnail I immediately knew it had to be ricin because I have rewatched breaking bad 3 times in 3 weeks

I have been planning on getting a prescription for scopolamine for a Zero-G plane flight I'm going on in May to test some space hardware. I was wondering why it required a prescription. My coworkers say it works well for Zero-G flights. Dramamine and ginger gum only delayed how long it took until I vomited on my 3 previous 0-g flights.

Thank you i really needed this video....... For research purposes of course (and people that annoy me)

The background music was overwhelming with headphones on.

The production quality is high as always, it's a shame the algorithm doesn't like you

Castor oil is a regular part of food in some states of India ! 🤣 others use it less frequently . still others use it as a part of joint pain treatment ( as lexative ) ! Night Shade is eaten in India wherever it grows ! the current teens in big cities don't know the plant but anyone with some rural connection or aged 30 + has eaten its fruit if not the green leaf as vegetable.

There’s one poison that’s common in household that I didn’t know existed , it’s in very small traces & it’s in a fruit we all eat , that Apple . The seeds of the apple have very very small traces of cyanide in them , didn’t know that & bananas are radioactive , they have very very small trace of being radioactive because of the potassium that’s in them . I did some research about samurai’s just looking up the history of them & in lead me down a big old rabbit hole , I seen poisons that ninjas back in the day used , none of them that could be used in the states just because most of them were sea based & I have to tell you the sea based poisons are the nastiest ones as far as effects on the human body , I’ve heard of snake venom being one too that they use to use .

I'm fascinated by deadly nightshade. I managed to grow it from seeds and I got first ripe berries this year. I ate one, do not recommend, they don't taste amazing 😂

Good narration.

Beautiful

Very good I've actually bought some caster beans a while back but was too lazy to plant them This just motivated me

Yay, I'm on a watch list now :D

i love Belladona!! I grow most of the nightshades, amazing plants!

Small error at 3:57 LD50 is actually the "median lethal dose" (abbreviation for "lethal dose, 50%")

Great video Thank you

Wow nice to know. A lot of deadly plants exist.

Wolfsbane used to be really popular in Europe aswell ^^

Castor oil is the proper lubricant for vintage aero engines such as those featured in the EAA's "Flyer and Glider" magazine reprints. And while I would love to make such an engine and use castor bean oil as a lubricant. But what is the safest (and legal) method for disposing pf the left over meal/residue. The last thing that I want is to have ricin laced crap poluting my air, soil or water shed. Anyone have information on proper disposal??

5.31 seen those many times in the wild here in Spain, they get stuck to clothes and pets; ie easy to bring inside. So for people with small children, be careful.

Quote "Nothing and everything can become a poison, it's about the dose that determines whether something is useful or poisonous". Bathing in super super diluted bleach (we're talking like 1 part bleach to 1000 parts water) is something you can do to remedy specific temporary skin conditions for example.

We have castor beans all over. My grandmother and the other grandmothers planted them because they supposedly keep moles away. They even call them Molebeans. We never had an FBI agent show up. It is kinda scary thinking about me smashing those deadly beans in my hands.

Esa es Tijerilla!! 😮

Oh. I see. Devil's Breath. That fits. Who's their chemist?

At 7:04 , 7:31 , 7:39 they showed solanum nigrum not atropa belladona (7:24)(12:30) though both belong to nightshade family

It's very common plant in my village. Day before Holi we have a rituals make a logs with it, and burn this in fire.

Belladonna is an antidote for wolfsbane (aconite, another good assassin's tool).

I presume that's where hunger games came up with the nightlock berries, as it seems to be almost exactly the same name too, nightshade, nightlock

Eletromagnetic waves can mimmic the plant effects if the body condutance let

It's complicated to make though. You do need a few more tools than what you find in your kitchen.

Can we have a follow up episode on this?

The closed captioning doesn't match!

Crushed ladybugs are the perfect poison as there is no antidote.

You showed more woody nightshade than deadly nightshade in your video. Woody nightshade isnt the same thing, and isnt nearly as toxic. Thats the nightshade with the red berries and purple stem on the plant.

Pet peeve: when finding footage of deadly nightshade, use footage of deadly nightshade not black nightshade - the two are quite different and visually distinct!

As a kid, we used to play with castor beans as some sort of 'toy', where we would press 2 beans against each other with our palms to see which one cracks and the one still intact as the winner. Let's just say we're lucky we never accidentally ingested one :s