We’re all gonna die! I
Enough potassium cyanide to kill 1000 people has been stolen from a professor at Kyoto University:
Officials of the graduate school’s pharmaceutical school said that one of its professors had found a 20-year-old bottle of potassium cyanide labeled KCN, the chemical symbol, while sifting through old chemicals on a shelf Wednesday night.
The professor kept the lethal chemical in a locked box to distinguish it from others he planned to dispose of.
On Thursday, the 62-year-old professor asked an assistant researcher to check the box that had been left in the corridor.
Not having taken chemistry for a good long time, I don’t know whether potassium cyanide degrades after 20 years, but I’m assuming a university would know how to store it properly to preserve it–and in any case, the professor, who’s in a position to know, sure seems worried. [Ooh, earthquake, one of those swaying ones…getting bigger…Whoa! Not intense, but not dissipating, either, and it’s been 30 seconds or so.]