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Does pepper spray need to be in the face to be effective?


Alpo

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I had a dream where I was being sprayed as I ran away, and it was landing on my bare back, and it stung. But it did not incapacitate me.

 

Of course since it was a dream it could have hit me in the face and still not have incapacitated me.

 

Got me to wondering though.

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I can only speak personally about CS gas, but I hear the effect is similar. 
 

If only on the skin, it burns pretty bad, but in a way that just ticked me off at the butthead who thought it’d be funny to pop a canister while a bunch of us were sleeping. 
 

In the eyes or inhaled is a different matter. It temporarily shuts down breathing and vision, and tends to make bodily fluids squirt out the eyes, nose, and mouth. 
 

But after a few minutes, it’s just a irritant that the body adapts to. Embrace the suck and keep going. 

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Pepper spray doesn't work on about 10% of the people. It's really hard on smokers, when we were sprayed at the SO the boys that smoked were coughing up colors of mucus that Crayola hadn't seen. You can work through it if you have a goal.

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In the face works best, but it’s very unpleasant even if it’s not direct. As far as being incapacitated, it depends on several factors including mental state and drugs in you system. And like Assassin said, some people tolerate it without much effect. I’m not one of those but I can still function if it’s a life or death situation, at least we’ll enough to run away.. Some people just fall down and roll around.

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46 minutes ago, Charlie Harley, #14153 said:

I can only speak personally about CS gas, but I hear the effect is similar. 
 

 

Oh pard, no.  No no no no no no no no NO!

 

Let me put it this way:  I will undergo the Army's infamous CS chamber every day of my life as long as I live if I never have to get pepper sprayed again.  THAT STUFF IS BRUTAL!  CS wears off in a few minutes.  Pepper spray (OC) affects lighter skin and lighter eyes worse than dark.  My eyes are so blue they're almost grey, and my Scottish skin gets burned by the moon.  It literally takes 3 days for my eyes to stop hurting and 6 days total for them to stop itching.  

 

To the OP:  Pepper spray (OC, for oleoresin capsicum...Latin for "the hot crap in peppers"), is most effective when deployed to the face and eyes.  It does cause skin irritation, but when shot into the eyes it forces the eyes to slam shut involuntarily, causing your attacker to have difficulty targeting you.  Its effects also cause respiratory difficulty, and a BURNING sensation that feels like a blow torch blasting your face.

 

 

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7 minutes ago, Cyrus Cassidy #45437 said:

 

Oh pard, no.  No no no no no no no no NO!

 

Let me put it this way:  I will undergo the Army's infamous CS chamber every day of my life as long as I live if I never have to get pepper sprayed again.  THAT STUFF IS BRUTAL!  CS wears off in a few minutes.  Pepper spray (OC) affects lighter skin and lighter eyes worse than dark.  My eyes are so blue they're almost grey, and my Scottish skin gets burned by the moon.  It literally takes 3 days for my eyes to stop hurting and 6 days total for them to stop itching.  

 

To the OP:  Pepper spray (OC, for oleoresin capsicum...Latin for "the hot crap in peppers"), is most effective when deployed to the face and eyes.  It does cause skin irritation, but when shot into the eyes it forces the eyes to slam shut involuntarily, causing your attacker to have difficulty targeting you.  Its effects also cause respiratory difficulty, and a BURNING sensation that feels like a blow torch blasting your face.

 

 

Yeah. It’s hard to explain it to somebody who hasn’t been sprayed. CS is unpleasant. OC is waaay beyond that.

It’s like the difference in peeling an onion or dumping the bottle of Tabasco sauce in your face.

 

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9 minutes ago, Cyrus Cassidy #45437 said:

 

Oh pard, no.  No no no no no no no no NO!

 

Let me put it this way:  I will undergo the Army's infamous CS chamber every day of my life as long as I live if I never have to get pepper sprayed again.  THAT STUFF IS BRUTAL!  CS wears off in a few minutes.  Pepper spray (OC) affects lighter skin and lighter eyes worse than dark.  My eyes are so blue they're almost grey, and my Scottish skin gets burned by the moon.  It literally takes 3 days for my eyes to stop hurting and 6 days total for them to stop itching.  

 

To the OP:  Pepper spray (OC, for oleoresin capsicum...Latin for "the hot crap in peppers"), is most effective when deployed to the face and eyes.  It does cause skin irritation, but when shot into the eyes it forces the eyes to slam shut involuntarily, causing your attacker to have difficulty targeting you.  Its effects also cause respiratory difficulty, and a BURNING sensation that feels like a blow torch blasting your face.

 

 

 

2 minutes ago, Utah Bob #35998 said:

Yeah. It’s hard to explain it to somebody who hasn’t been sprayed. CS is unpleasant. OC is waaay beyond that.

 

That's interesting, because I don't think I have a tolerance for OC, but I found CS much worse. CS left my mucosa in overdrive, barely able to breathe, and even after my stomach had emptied itself, the dry heaves left me sore for a couple of days. As for the skin and eye irritation, I did find the OC worse and more persistent, to my best recollection.

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I agree - the periodic "gassing" that we did for mother Army was unpleasant - getting sprayed in the face with pepper spray was waaaay worse. 

 

Did some training a while back when we got pepper sprayed in the face - had time to pat off the excess - and then we proceeded to have a force-on-force paintball fight.

It was very much NOT fun. 

Getting hit with the taser and riding the lightning was preferable to getting sprayed in the face with OC.

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7 minutes ago, Chuck Steak said:

Getting hit with the taser and riding the lightning was preferable to getting sprayed in the face with OC.

 

Yeah, 5 seconds and it's over.  The pain stops immediately.  

 

Of course, when I went through the Taser instructor school, we spent every break using up all the outdated cartridges that had not been used before their expiration date on each other.  That was fun.

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36 minutes ago, DocWard said:

 

 

That's interesting, because I don't think I have a tolerance for OC, but I found CS much worse. CS left my mucosa in overdrive, barely able to breathe, and even after my stomach had emptied itself, the dry heaves left me sore for a couple of days. As for the skin and eye irritation, I did find the OC worse and more persistent, to my best recollection.

 

I've never been pepper sprayed, but CS really didn't bother me much after the first 5 minutes.  I had been mildly congested due to allergies and the CS cleared out my sinuses so well that I felt great the rest of the day.  I do remember CS affecting people much differently on a person by person basis.

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I am one of those that  cannot handle CS, pepper spray, mace, etc.

 

When hit my body reacts very negatively. I can say that given a choice of getting hit with one of the three I would  prefer a  kick in the nuts.  Yep,  it's  that bad...

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1 hour ago, SOUTH-PACIFIC,SASS #59402 said:

have you ever been hit with oc laced with cs that is the big shut things down cs opens the pores in skin cs then slips in it gets every thing it touches

 

Given the option, I will pass, thank you.

 

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Would Windex help to get rid of it?

 

There is a video of some little girl at one of the riots. It appears that she has been pepper sprayed, and she is screaming and crying. And there's a man there with a spray bottle of some blue liquid that he is spraying in her face. Looks for all the world like he is washing her face off with Windex.

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Just now, Alpo said:

Would Windex help to get rid of it?

 

There is a video of some little girl at one of the riots. It appears that she has been pepper sprayed, and she is screaming and crying. And there's a man there with a spray bottle of some blue liquid that he is spraying in her face. Looks for all the world like he is washing her face off with Windex.

 

I believe Windex has some alcohol, correct?  If that's true, then it would make OC (pepper spray) much worse!  Alcohol opens the pores and allows the irritant to enter them.  

 

There are some decontamination solutions out there, but we have found they do no good whatsoever.  The best thing is Johnson's baby shampoo.

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We just carried a gallon jug of water in the trunk of the patrol car.   If I remember correctly, I believe the policy changed that the officer had to call EMS to check out the person and decontaminate them prior to transport if possible.  EMS was also called to check someone out if the officer tasered them too.  The jail wouldn't accept any DUI arrest if they went over a certain alcohol level without a medical release from the hospital.  They were getting pretty liability conscience by the time I retired in 2015.  Good time to retire.

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2 hours ago, Cyrus Cassidy #45437 said:

 

Lean forward and don't let anything run down your body, my friend.  

I know that and you know that. FNG's need to figure that out.

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One night in Phouc Vinh base camp In 1970 about 9 pm we received a hefty rocket attack that lasted about 10 minutes our battalion escaped unscathed but a neighboring unit, that had just moved into an area we vacated a few days, before took several casualties. 
As the officers gathered after the attack, the Bn Exec rushed in screaming they were using gas and for everyone to man the perimeter etc. He was coughing, snorting, and really hyper. As usual the attack was not followed up by any ground assault. It was the work of a few local VC firing from improvised launchers. There were no mainforce NVA units in the area.
I didn’t know what the the XO was talking about by a gas attack.

We found out the next morning that he had been walking along the road that led to the 1/9 Cav officers club. At the sight of the rocket’s red glare the intrepid major dove into the nearest shelter along the road. It was an old abandoned ARVN bunker that was used by some of the local good time girls to “entertain“. After repeated attempts to curtail the business, the MPs had dumped a 25 pound bag of CS crystals in it. CS is in crystalline form and only becomes a gas when heated or a spray when mixed with a liquid medium. That tactic effectively ended any future  illicit rendezvous.

The major dove right into the pile of CS like hitting a sack of four, filling the bunker with a nice cloud of irritating dust. :lol::lol:

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2 hours ago, Alpo said:

Would Windex help to get rid of it?

 

There is a video of some little girl at one of the riots. It appears that she has been pepper sprayed, and she is screaming and crying. And there's a man there with a spray bottle of some blue liquid that he is spraying in her face. Looks for all the world like he is washing her face off with Windex.

The articles I saw said it was milk. I assume the fat in the milk helped cut the pepper spray just like the way sour cream cuts the heat of chili.

https://www.wikihow.com/Cool-Burns-from-Chili-Peppers

 

 

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Yeah, I heard on the news that many of the rioters were carrying around bottles of milk to decontaminate themselves and others who had been hit with pepper spray.  I was thinking the same thing about the milk fat being the decontaminating agent.  I thought that whole milk might be best for that.  But, shoot, from what I just read, it doesn’t sound as if ANY “decontaminating agent“ works very well.

 

Has anyone ever tried just plain ice water?

 

Cat Brules

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I've watched the video a couple more times. It's a crappy cell phone video, and because it came over as a text I can't enlarge it, so it's about an inch tall and a half an inch wide.

 

The man appears to be wearing blue nitrile gloves, and the liquid in the bottle seems clear. When I first watched it I was seeing the blue gloves on the bottle and thinking it was a blue liquid.

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Windex contains ammonia, so a bad choice for that reason alone.

 

My youngest daughter, who lives in Columbus, decided that she wanted to help somehow at the protests, but not protest herself, so she volunteered at a medical tent. With my background, she asked me what was good for OC. She already knows a good bit of first aid skills. We trained to do saline irrigation of the eyes. Tilt the head to the side and pour saline across the eyes to flush. not down the face, just like was taught in science lab, and elsewhere. Milk also works better than most things, based on my knowledge, for the reasons @Cholla gave. I also advised to get sheets, large towels, large shirts and the like so that people could remove clothing as necessary, because it could be persistent in them.

 

This has me wondering. A number of years back some chili heads at MIT determined the best thing to lessen the burn of really hot chili was chocolate milk. I wonder if it does better for OC spray than regular milk.

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45 minutes ago, Tennessee williams said:

I can tell you for a fact it does not have to be in the eyes to be effective. Don't believe me? Spray some on your hands and go to the john before washing.


I reckon THAT would keep you focused for a while!

:wacko:  :(

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2 hours ago, Tennessee williams said:

I can tell you for a fact it does not have to be in the eyes to be effective. Don't believe me? Spray some on your hands and go to the john before washing.

 

Contrary to popular opinion, I'm not as dumb as I look.

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Bear spray works on people quite nicely.

 

B)

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27 minutes ago, Dantankerous said:

Bear spray works on people quite nicely.

 

B)

We had some discussion on that the other day. The oc content in bear spray is less than self defense spray because bears have more sensitive olfactory receptors. So it’s less effective on humans. The advantage is Bear spray puts out a big cloud rather than a stream. Good for a crowd. Not good for close quarters. I had an expired can of bear spray so I went out and let it rip just to see the range. About 35 feet and a big orange cloud.

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Yeah, I did that once. And the moment I did, an unexpected wind gust blew it right back in my face from across beautiful St Mary’s Lake, Glacier NP Montana 

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