10 Horrific Ways Feces Have Been Used as Weapons

1. Scythian Arrows

Going all the way back to the 5th century BC, Herodotus describes how Scythian archers would dip their arrows in feces or blood from dead bodies. Often times, they mixed it with venom from decomposed vipers. This meant that even the smallest wound would be lethal! Blood and feces already contain bacteria that cause tetanus and gangrene — add poison to the mix and you have very slight, if not non-existent, chances of survival.

Steffen Berg, a physician, theorized that it would only have taken about an hour for the poison from a Scythian arrow to induce shock. If the victim got through the shock, he would be unlikely to survive the effects of the ensuing gangrene. But — if by some miracle — he got through that too, then he would be debilitated for the rest of his life.

2. Disease Outbreak

In the Middle Ages, the corpses and stool of those infected with the bubonic plague were catapulted over enemy cities and utilized as biological weapons. One such instance was in the 14th century during the siege of Kaffa in Ukraine; the Mongols threw the dead bodies of the Golden Horde over the city which lead to an outbreak of the plague. The forces of the city retreated and the Mongols were able to take over.

Later on, the creation of the trebuchet, which is a more powerful type of catapult, enabled armies to hurl bodies that were hundreds of pounds in weight. Biological projectiles continued to be utilized well into the 20th century in conflicts such as the Russian Revolution, South African Boer wars and several European battles.

3. Punji Sticks

Perhaps one of the more well-known instances of feces being used on the battleground was in the 1960’s during the Vietnam War. The Viet Cong made an innovative but quite revolting weapon known as a punji stick. These were sharpened wood or bamboo sticks which they dipped in human feces and hid under vegetation in the ground, in places where the other army was likely to pass through or take cover in. Horrible as this was, it was actually quite a clever strategy when you think about it — if the enemy fell on said punji sticks, it was unlikely to be fatal but the chances of contracting a bacterial infection would be very high. This ultimately weakened the enemy’s side because hundreds of soldiers would have to be hospitalized and treated for infection.

Oof! Infection of any kind is not fun but to get one from a poop booby trap — not the most pleasant experience, I would imagine.

4. Gunpowder

Speaking of the battleground, urine has been extensively used in combination with ash to make gunpowder during times of war. “How?” you may ask. Well, ammonia — which is a chemical used to make gunpowder — is also found in urine. The ammonia reacts with oxygen and forms nitrates that bind with the other metal ions in ash and voila: you have potassium nitrate, the main ingredient in gunpowder. Interestingly enough, this was common practice until the 20th century when potassium nitrate started being produced synthetically. And thank god for that! Well, not for the fact that we make a lethal chemical on such an incredibly grand scale — just that it is not made of urine anymore.

5. Frozen Feces Knife

An anthropologist called Wade Davis, in his book Shadows in the Sun, recounts the tale of an Inuit man who fashioned a knife out of his feces and used it to dismember a dog. Has a more horrible sentence ever been uttered?

In a TED talk he gave in 2003, he recounts the story of the elder man who refused to comply when the Canadian government forced his people into settlements. He vehemently wanted to stay on the ice. His family then took away all his tools, thinking that might induce him to change his mind. What he did instead, was defecate into his hand, form it into the shape of a blade, let it freeze and use saliva to sharpen the edge. He then skinned a dog, made himself a sled out of its ribcage and used the skin as a harness for another living dog. With his new knife and sled, he rode off into the night. If that doesn’t send shivers down your spine, I don’t know what will.

6. Chicken Poop Prison

As I mentioned, ammonia is naturally found in urine. But it is also found in chicken poop, a substance that can actually be lethal and was, in fact, used as a torture device in Thailand. In 1893, the nation was occupied by French troops and they built a prison for those who resisted the occupation. They called it Khuk Khi Kai which translates to “chicken poop prison”. On the terrace directly above the prisoners, they constructed a chicken coop that would let down the excrement through holes in the floor.

Now, what you need to know is that when ammonia enters the human body, it reacts with water to form ammonium hydroxide — a chemical that burns the throat, nose and respiratory tract. So prisoners who were exposed to the chicken poop for a long time would experience headaches, nausea, irritation and even depression in some cases. What a strange, strange tale of cruelty. And to make it worse, the tower still stands today!

7. Drowning in Urine

The next tale of unimaginably brutal punishment takes place in British India, as related by John Masters in his autobiography Bugles and a Tiger. He was stationed in British India in the 1930’s and was witness to one of the most peculiar execution practices in the world. And that’s putting it mildly!

The Pathans of India would capture soldiers not belonging to their religion and kill them by drowning them in urine. They would force their mouths open with a stick to stop them swallowing, and the women of the tribe would take turns urinating in their mouths until they drowned. That has to be one of the absolute worst ways imaginable to die. As if the method of execution was not gruesome enough, sometimes the women would gang-rape the men before proceeding with the “golden shower”.

8. Poopotov Cocktails

Back in 2017, when Venezuela was in the grips of its economic crisis, a group of demonstrators arranged a protest against President Maduro during which they filled up plastic bottles with a horrendous mixture of feces and water, and threw them at security officers. Although not quite as deadly as Molotovs, these “poopotov cocktails” were declared a biological weapon by the Venezuelan government (in reality, all they did was cause insufferable amounts of nausea). This bizarre way of protest originally started in Los Teques, outside of Caracas, but very soon was adopted by multiple cities across the nation. The slogan “they have gas, we have excrement” no doubt aided in its propagation.

9 . Feces Fluid

Have you ever heard of someone trying to kill a person by injecting feces into their IV line? Well, you’re about to.

Back in 2014, Rosemary Vogel poured said substance into her convalescing husband’s IV in an attempt to murder him. Lucky for him, the alarm on the monitor went off, the staff rushed in and Vogel was not able to follow through with her sinister plans. Once the authorities found out, she was just charged with attempted first-degree murder and adult abuse. When the police searched her bag, they found three additional syringes — two were filled with fluid, one with feces. It turns out Mrs. Vogel was a registered nurse and had, at one point, worked at that hospital. Of course, she had to turn her certificates in after the incident and was sentenced to one year in jail and four years of probation.

When questioned about her motives, she claimed that she could not remember any part of what lead up to the event and insisted that she had always loved her husband “through sickness and in health”. Even more bizarre still, her husband, Phillip, said in court that he continues to love his wife and has forgiven her.

10. Feces Fluid…Again

If you thought the above story was so bizarre that it could not possibly happen twice, I am here to prove you wrong. Except this time, it is worse.

In 2016, Tiffany Alberts injected what turned out to be her son’s own feces into his IV tube. Her son, 15 years old at the time, was being treated for leukemia at Riley Hospital for Children. He started to develop blood infections that the doctors had no explanation for, though his blood tests did reveal organisms found in feces.

One of the nurses looking at the video surveillance of the boy’s room saw his mother injecting a substance into his IV on several occasions. After Alberts was arrested, she revealed that she had been trying to get his son moved to a different floor at the hospital in hopes that he would receive higher-quality treatment. Somehow she thought giving him his own feces would do that. On the contrary, the boy had to stop chemotherapy for close to two months due to the infection which could have compromised his odds of survival. Alberts was eventually acquitted of an attempted murder charge but was sentenced to seven years in prison.