EXPERTS contacted by New Scientist say that most mainstream anaesthetics or nerve agents could never be used to end a siege involving hostages.
The only true anaesthetic gas is nitrous oxide, better known as laughing gas. To knock people out, troops would have had to surreptitiously pump a huge volume of nitrous oxide into the Moscow theatre, enough to displace almost two-thirds of the air inside it. “The concept of suddenly replacing all that air is a non-starter,” says Peter Hutton, president of Britain’s Royal College of Anaesthetists.
Nor would mainstream surgical anaesthetics such as halothane, isoflurane, desflurane and sevoflurane…
