What It Feels Like To Be Hit With Turkish Tear Gas

http://www.fastcoexist.com/1682321/what-it-feels-like-to-be-hit-with-turkish-tear-gas

by anjalimullany • 13 years ago

64 34 13 years ago

ck2• 13 years ago

Another ugly truth is it probably says "made in usa" on the canister.

ayi• 13 years ago

Actually getting hit by a turkish tear gas is no different then getting hit by any other tear gas. the only difference is our police (i'm from turkey) aims the canister at your face.

steveklabnik3• 13 years ago

They do it here, too. Just ask Scott Olsen.

wavefunction2• 13 years ago

We have sadistic cops over here as well. They will actually put it on q-tips and swab underneath the protestor's eyelids:

http://www.nopepperspray.org/

iaskwhy• 13 years ago

There's a good chance that is true: http://rt.com/news/turkey-teargas-import-us-208/

Turkey has bought $21 million in tear gas and pepper spray – mainly from US and Brazil – over the past 12 years, Turkish media reported.

moondowner• 13 years ago

I saw pictures on Facebook and Twitter, shared by some folks from Turkey, and indeed there were canisters labeled 'Made in USA'.

rmk2• 13 years ago

This picture supposedly[1] shows exactly that: http://pbs.twimg.com/media/BLnx94jCIAE8yQ9.jpg

[1]: I use supposedly since there is no obvious way for me to validate this, though the language on there is turkish...

notdrunkatall• 13 years ago

I had to go through the gas chamber in basic training, and we were essentially made to remove our masks and breathe some of the tear gas in. Let me tell you: it's not fun. There is no resisting the urge to cough and choke, your eyes water up, and all you can think about is getting out of the cloud.

It does have one positive side effect, however: it cleans out your sinuses like nothing else I've seen. :)

gjulianm• 13 years ago

May I ask what kind of training was that?

xradionut• 13 years ago

Every branch of the service has done tear gas exposure for decades. Speaking from my experience in the service, it sucks. (But it's not as stressful as fire fighting or damage control simulators...)

ef4• 13 years ago

US military recruits are typically exposed to tear gas as part of their training on "NBC" threats (nuclear/biological/chemical).

A major point of the exercise is to instill trust in your gas mask and your ability to use it correctly.

When I did it, we put on our gas masks, entered a little building full of gas, stood around a bit feeling the tingle on our exposed skin, then one-by-one were told to take off the mask and try to say something (I think it was our name and rank), then run out.

baha_man• 13 years ago

I heard that some people are pretty much immune to CS gas, the only reference I can find online is here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk%3ACS_gas#Immunity

jandrewrogers• 13 years ago

People who are repeatedly exposed to CS tend to rapidly build up a tolerance. Anecdotally, this has been observable both in myself and many other people.

A large part of the effectiveness is also psychological. When people first experience CS they tend to overreact and experience secondary symptoms not created by the CS. After a couple exposures, you know what to expect and CS becomes more of a nuisance than something to fear. You don't intentionally walk into a cloud of CS but you can kind of shrug it off if you do.

rolleiflex• 13 years ago

Tangentially relevant, but I was thinking of the European / American context switch happening somewhere about constitutional rights and specifically the right to bear arms. (I am an European, Turkish specifically) The idea behind the second amendment seems to be to stop the Government from turning against its own constituents. Nowhere in Europe such a reasoning exists, including Turkey. On one hand, it prevents this conflict—no, police attacking civilians—from escalating as people are not armed, but on the other hand as I see police violence like this [1][2] I'm starting to think we need an equivalent law that allows people to protect themselves.

[1] http://imgur.com/a/rwRPV

[2] http://sublunarorb.it/post/52144010490/liveblog-of-the-turki...

salgernon• 13 years ago

On the other hand it leads to the police assuming suspects are armed and taking precautions that can lead to completely innocent and or unarmed people being shot.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BART_Police_shooting_of_Oscar_G...

keiferski• 13 years ago

Maybe, but that's not really how gun ownership works in America. The people protesting things typically aren't gun owners, and even if they are, they don't bring guns with them. I've been at a G20 Riot (in America) where the police shot gas canisters at people; if any protesters had guns, it would have not gone down well.

The reasoning behind gun ownership is more like this: if the government institutes martial law / comes to take my guns or property / commits some huge atrocity against me or my family, gun owners will be able to defend themselves. This isn't a completely accurate view, obviously, but it's the general feeling I get from growing up in the US.

shpxnvz• 13 years ago

As it happens many, if not most, protests are held in locations where carry is heavily restricted if not banned entirely. For example, Washington D.C. effectively has a blanket ban on citizens carrying weapons in public. New York City is only slightly less restrictive.

Even in other areas, there are myriad restrictions on where a person may carry. For instance, nearly all federal buildings, many "sensitive" locations identified by the state (such as within a quarter mile of a school), national parks, etc...

And those who carry legally are well aware of how fragile their rights are - one run-in with a policeman having a bad day can cost you your right to ever touch a gun again.

One thing to add to this - the point of the second ammendment is not only to ensure the rights of individuals to protect themselves and their property from both other citizens and the government. It's presense is also intended to act as a reminder to those who wield the power of the government that they are the servant rather than the master.

"The beauty of the Second Amendment is that it will not be needed until they try to take it."

cobrausn• 13 years ago

As an aside, I recently realized it makes it more difficult for the government / police to quietly 'disappear' you. If you choose to resist with firearms, it won't stay off the news, or at least won't go unnoticed unless you live in the middle of nowhere. You probably won't live through it though.

colanderman• 13 years ago

If protesters in the US defended themselves with guns, the police would simply respond – fully legally (shooting police being a crime and all) – with bigger, better guns. The end result would not be pretty.

ajmarsh• 13 years ago

Yeah CS gas is no joke. They used to hit us with it all the time in the Marines for training purposes. If you have ever been hit with pepper spay, CS is about twice as bad.

To combat the effects carry a bottle of solution made up from water and sodium metabisulphate (sold as Campden tablets used in home brewing) as this combination neutralises the effects of CS. If you cannot get this use clean water to rinse the eyes and skin affected.

wavefunction2• 13 years ago

What about milk? It works well on pepper spray.

Never been sprayed directly, but I was cleaning out a dorm room for a summer-time job and someone had left a bottle that went off by accident. And somebody in a club I was in decided to mace the room one time... ugh...

quarterto• 13 years ago

Pepper spray is capsaicin, on which the caseins in milk have a detergent effect. No such luck with 2-chlorobenzalmalononitrile.

bruo• 13 years ago

NEVER USE CLEAN WATER.

That was the first thing my mom told us when as kids went to protests against Pinochet. CS reacts with water, even if you are not feeling the effects water can make the chemical react again.

The CS gas effects are just temporal, no longer than 5 minutes... try to survive them.

I've been documenting social movements in chile since 10 years ago, i've been exposed to CS directly more than a hundred times. I know you will panic, but never try to use clean water on an affected area.

salud

ps. I don'know if sodium metabisulphate works, but cops use a chemical when they got hit by CS, if this is the thing they use ill give you a pizza when you come around here.

gee_totes3• 13 years ago

To add on to tips for dealing with tear gas, I would also suggest carrying half an onion or something else strong smelling with you in protest situations.

when the gas comes, remain calm. When you feel yourself panicking from the gas, breath through the onion. For some reason, the smell of the onion (in Turkey I've also seen people using lemons) seems to re-center you and mitigate some of the instant psychological effects of the gas (i.e. suddenly you're in a poison cloud).

squozzer• 13 years ago

I'm thinking of ways I can help.

Gas masks? I own an old Israeli Civil Defense mask with some sealed canisters that expired in the 90s. Might work, but not sure if anyone in Turkey would wear it -- the filters have Hebrew printing on them.

My Army-Navy store has some M17s but I think they're out of filters.

steveklabnik3• 13 years ago

Actually, it's American tear gas; all the photos of canisters I've seen so far say 'Made in the USA.'

That said, getting hit with tear gas sucks. If you're wearing contacts, really bad things can happen...

http://www.blackcrosscollective.org/attachments/File/textzin...

gokhan• 13 years ago

Actually, it appears that it's from all over the world.

https://twitter.com/paulocoelho/status/341991902704459776

IgorPartola2• 13 years ago

What the hell does this have to do with hackers?

Off-Topic: Most stories about politics, or crime, or sports, unless they're evidence of some interesting new phenomenon. Videos of pratfalls or disasters, or cute animal pictures. If they'd cover it on TV news, it's probably off-topic. [http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html]

There are so many categories that this story (and most other stories currently on the front page) fits. While it is an interesting article, what is it doing here with 49 upvotes?

gee_totes3• 13 years ago

Maybe if we start protesting en masse against the NSA (or whomever), we will also be tear gassed.

Then you'll be glad you read this article on Hacker News!

IgorPartola2• 13 years ago

Good point. In fact, forget all this stuff with compilers and operating systems. Let's just post articles about basic combat training here. It seems much more practical.

tomjen3• 13 years ago

One of the things I wonder about is that you can straight out buy gas masks in military surplus stores, yet I have never seen protesters use them. Don't they work with tear gas?

steveklabnik3• 13 years ago

Undercovers tend to target the individuals in the mass who are more well-prepared. Plus, it can be used as evidence of intent.

What It Feels Like To Be Hit With Turkish Tear Gas

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