u/blorpgoob

In prisons within some countries like the UK, prisoners have access to kitchen equipment that allow them to boil water, giving them the ability to make what is known as "prison napalm" which consists of boiling water and a ton of sugar. Plain boiling water runs off skin quickly, adding sugar increases its viscosity and makes it a thick jelly-like liquid which prolongs contact with the skin and solidifies as it cools down, making it stick to tissue and be harder to remove. Adding sugar to the boiling water also increases the boiling point of the mixture, above the point of temperature where water would start boiling and evaporating.

A part of a story I'm writing involves a sadist murderer who loves seeing their victims suffer and scream in agonizing pain, looking for ways to kill in a slow and torturous manner. Inspired by prison napalms, the murderer would slowly pour an extremely hot mixture on the face of their restrained victim.

Initially, I was about to continue this post with the following: "The mixture would consist of hot oil, sugar, and a ton of chili powder. The added sugar to the mixture would make it thicker, while the chili powder amplifies the excruciating burn sensation as it penetrates through the flesh."

But I quickly realized that this would not be viable in a realistic scenario, sugar in heated oil would not create the thick gooey mixture that I was expecting for a moment, as sugar does not dissolve in oil, and with the high temperatures that oil can easily reach, the sugar would most likely decompose and carbonize, turning it all into a mess.

Cooking oil on its own loses its viscosity as its temperature gets higher, is there anything else that the murderer could realistically add that would increase the viscosity of hot oil? Or would it be better to just use a mixture of boiling sugar water, avoiding the complications of trying to use oil instead? Additionally, if water is used instead of oil, would it be viable to add sodium hydroxide (caustic soda/lye), or would it cause issues at high temperatures? The theory is that sodium hydroxide would react with skin fats turning it into soap through saponification (same reason why it can't be used with hot oil) and dissolve proteins, allowing burns to penetrate deeper through the flesh.

In a story I'm writing, I have an assassin character who is tasked to kill two sleeping people in a non-gory way, a man capable of fighting back and a woman sleeping within the same room, and they have chosen to overdose their opioid naive targets with fentanyl. They have over a gram of pure fentanyl powder in their possession, which even a fraction of it would be more than enough to dissolve into water and inject into the two (~25 mg/mL water solubility). But would it be realistic for both of the targets to sleep through a subcutaneous injection of 1 mL of water with concentrated fentanyl in an area with the most available fat like the buttocks or lower abdomen, using a very thin needle like a 31 gauge?

Or are there other better ways the assassin could pull off to seal the fate of the two that is more likely to succeed in a realistic scenario? It does not matter if the targets get alerted and wake up as long as both of them get eliminated, it's only important to keep the targets asleep with the subcutaneous injection method, as waking the first target during injection would also alert and wake up the other, making it impossible to pull off the same on the other target.

Another idea I have is an intranasal shot of concentrated liquid fentanyl, where the assassin would make two needle-less syringe guns for the two targets, each syringe gun is made up of two syringes next to each other, designed to shoot out liquid at both nostrils at the same time. Each syringe would shoot 0.5 mL of the liquid into the nose. The assassin would first shoot the man's nose, waking him up feeling confused and shocked, but before he could react and realize what was happening, the assassin would shoot the nose of the other woman and flee the scene. Would this be viable in a realistic scenario? The biggest concern with this would be triggering a sneezing response which might expel a large amount of the liquid, or the targets attempting to blow off their nose upon realizing what just happened. Or would a few seconds of the liquid getting in contact with the nasal mucosa enough to overdose them in a few minutes? Intranasal administration of drugs is something that I haven't done much research into.

Thanks!