Bleeding a Victim to Death--Intentional Hemorrhage

I have a kidnapper that wants to slowly bleed his victim to death. How long will it take, and how much blood loss (the villain is collecting the blood in a jar).

First, let’s consider how much blood the average adult has. Ten to twelve units, or pints. A substantial portion will have to be lost to kill a healthy adult.

Second, the rate of blood loss is important—acute versus chronic.

When lost slowly (chronic), the blood count can drop to half normal and the individual may still be upright and walking around. This is something that happens over weeks to months, like with an ulcer in the stomach.

The proposed scenario is acute—rapid loss of blood—otherwise known as hemorrhage. The speed at which the blood is lost will depend on what’s bleeding and how. If it’s an artery, the blood loss will be faster; the flow is under pressure. With a vein, the loss is slower. There is a chance of clotting off whatever you’re using to extract the blood. An IV line in a vein in the arm is likely to clot off, and not yield much blood flow before this happens.

Sticking a large IV line in the carotid artery (in the neck) would give rise to a lot of blood loss; the velocity (due to the pressure) helps prevent clotting.

Loss of forty percent of the blood volume is usually fatal, so four to four-and-a-half units. The collection jar will need to hold that much if all the blood is to be collected. Consider using an IV line in the carotid artery, and have the line attach to a vacuum jar. The suction accelerates the blood loss, it has markings on it for volume collected, and it keeps the area clean. Four units can be extracted perhaps as rapidly as fifteen minutes.

With regard to the victim, if the blood loss proceeds over hours, he/she may experience racing heart, shortness of breath, dizziness, and tingling in the extremities. Upright posture is poorly tolerated and may lead to fainting. As the blood loss approaches forty percent, the victim may feel cold and anxious, or may become sleepy. With continued blood loss, the patient will go into cardiac arrest and die due to lack of volume in the vascular system (hypovolemic shock).

Good luck!

Questions? Comments?
~*~
Kelly has worked in the medical field for over twenty years, mainly at large medical centers. With experience in a variety of settings, chances are Kelly may have seen it.
Sometimes truth seems stranger than fiction in medicine, but accurate medicine in fiction is fabulous.

Find Kelly’s fiction at www.kellywhitley.com

 

 

Killing Someone With a Pumpkin

Can a pumpkin be used to kill someone?

Short answer: yes.
Long answer: Yes, but it takes some planning about how you want the pumpkin to be deadly.

My first thought was trauma. A pumpkin dropped off a bridge has the potential to kill someone.

It’s that time of year. The big orange gourds are everywhere from supermarkets to front porches.

Unfortunately, a pumpkin combined with gravity can be lethal—or not, depending on the scenario.

There are multiple reports of pumpkins being dropped onto moving vehicles resulting in accident. With adequate height and a large pumpkin, the windshield can cave in. Depending on what happens to the car after impact, yes, a deadly accident can result.

A dropped pumpkin striking a person directly—such as on the head—would be tougher to pull off, but could be done. The timing and placement of the injury would be somewhat difficult to write in a plausible manner. Of course, if the impact resulted in the victim falling and hitting a hard surface with the head, a more serious injury would occur.

There are competitions with catapults and pumpkins; these missiles can be dangerous. This would make a possible scenario.

An anaphylactic (a dangerous allergic reaction) to touching or eating pumpkin could work.

Last, there’s always choking to death on pumpkin pie, pumpkin seeds, or pumpkin soup.

Good luck!

Questions? Comments?
~*~
Kelly has worked in the medical field for over twenty years, mainly at large medical centers. With experience in a variety of settings, chances are Kelly may have seen it.
Sometimes truth seems stranger than fiction in medicine, but accurate medicine in fiction is fabulous.

Find Kelly’s fiction at www.kellywhitley.com

Death by Black Widow Spider Bite

I want to set up a scenario where my victim dies from black widow spider bites. I’d like it to look “natural.” How many bites would it take? Would this work?

A tricky question.

Black widow spiders are recognizable by their glossy, bulbous black bodies and the red hourglass mark on the abdomen. Their legs are long and slender. They are found all over the world, and are everywhere in the USA. These creatures prefer dark, quiet, undisturbed areas like woodpiles and unfinished basements—places where “food” is plentiful. They will bite if disturbed/provoked.

There are multiple factors that go into how severe a person’s reaction to a bite might be.

--The evenomation (bite): how much venom is injected.

--The health and size of the victim: children, the chronically ill, and the elderly are more susceptible.

--The reaction of the individual to the bite: some people have minimal reaction, some have much more.

 

Let’s take for example a single bite in an adult male, and a general reaction.

The bite itself is likely to feel like a pinprick. Within an hour, a localized reaction of pain, swelling, and redness develops at the site of the evenomation. These symptoms can be treated at home by washing the wound and elevating the extremity (if possible). Ice at the site may help.

More severe symptoms require a trip to the Emergency Department:

Sweating, along with muscle cramps and abdominal pain, which can be severe (patients with unrecognized bites may seem to have appendicitis). Backache can be a problem. Sweating, elevated heart rate and blood pressure, and chest pain can occur. Fainting is occasionally seen.

Life-threatening symptoms include shortness of breath and seizures.

Pregnant women may go into labor.

Treatment in the ED:
Pain control—generally with morphine.
Anxiety control—with a valium-like drug for sedation.
Antivenin—like a snake bite, antivenin may be given for a severe reaction to a black widow bite. Because this is a “horse serum,” (produced by making a horse produce antibodies to the venom) there is a chance of an allergic reaction. Therefore a skin test is recommended before administration. Giving the antivenin results in significant improvement within a day.

For death by black widow, the best scenario would be an ill individual suffering multiple untreated bites. How many bites and how long untreated is up to you. As there’s no good data about multiple bites, I think you can pretty much create what you’d like. If you intend to kill a healthy adult male, it may take lots of bites—more than the number of spiders likely to be at the location by chance. An underlying heart condition would work for having the bites kill your victim. That scenario could even look like a heart attack, but the bites will be noted at autopsy.

Good luck!

Questions? Comments?
~*~
Kelly has worked in the medical field for over twenty years, mainly at large medical centers. With experience in a variety of settings, chances are Kelly may have seen it.
Sometimes truth seems stranger than fiction in medicine, but accurate medicine in fiction is fabulous.
Find Kelly’s fiction at www.kellywhitley.com