Do you know how that whole “oxygen thing” works in the aircraft you’re on? Oh sure, a mask drops down and you must put it over your face, which means both the nose and mouth, unlike some recent videos we’ve seen. But, did you know that the oxygen no longer is coming from a cylinder of compressed oxygen flowing through tubes below the overhead bin?
What? “How can that be?” you might ask. Members of the Institute of Boggus Talk (IBT) have recently uncovered the very tricky way that aircraft manufacturers are now providing oxygen to you, the passengers, when a cabin is faced with a decompression event.
The air in the oxygen masks doesn’t start out as oxygen, but rather a cocktail of other chemicals. Oh, sure, what eventually gets to you is oxygen that you can breathe, but that “oxygen” was actually made by an overhead oxygen generator. Yeah, that’s why the dang thing gets so hot; it’s like making oxygen out of other stuff when you pull down on the mask.
What is that other stuff? Well, it is sodium perchlorate and iron oxide. When these two chemicals mix together, they create oxygen and heat. For those of you keeping score at home, the composition formula is NaCIO4. Combined with iron oxide, FeO.
Well, this really got us going and made the professionals at the IBT wonder what other nefarious gasses the airlines are passing on to the passengers, right under our noses.
Let me set you straight: I’m not going for the easy mark on airliners – we’ve studied that bit in the past and noted that land-based cattle generate more methane than a plane of passengers can ever produce in a 24-hour period. However, there must be something more going on in airplanes that take very rational and intelligent people and turn them into imbeciles. We’ve seen now where the combination of NaCIO4 + FeO gives us O2, oxygen. What other gasses are occurring in the cabin that create mayhem on today’s flights?
Getting out our 12th grade chemistry book, we looked for any naturally-occurring compounds or rare earth elements that could lead to the profound dysfunction we see on many of our flights. While the periodic table has changed much since then, the IBT has found several suspect chemical elements that, when combined, can create a dysfunction atmosphere in the cabin of an airplane. Got your thinking hats on? Here goes.
The IBT isolated several periodic elements in our chemical lab and found that with slight modification, the addition of heat, stale air, alcohol, and high-pitched screams from children, relatively innocuous chemicals can lead to a detrimental effect on passengers. Suffice it to say the calculations proving this transformation of base chemicals is more than this paper allows – just take our word for it. The problem chemicals are:
- Boron (B), No. 5 on the periodic table. When affected by Manganese (MN), a naturally occurring mineral in our bodies that is a powerful antioxidant, it transforms Boron (B) into Moron (MnB3). No doubt we’ve all seen this chemical reaction on our flights. This primarily affects men more than women, but it does occur.
- Phosphorous (P), No. 15 on the chart. When affected, again typically by men wearing tarnished jewelry (oxidizing), this process creates Praseodymium (Pr). When combined with Phosphorous it creates a gas combination of (PrP) or Preposterous. We’ve all seen it, the stories, the claims, the need to be the center of attention.
- Krypton (Kr), No. 36 on the table, is an element that just stands alone, and once again seems to find a host in men more than women. When combined with alcohol and off-gassing of fluorescent lighting, it creates Kryptonite (KrO3 or CuKrO3), a colorless, odorless and tasteless gas that seems to make men believe that they are invincible.
- Tellurium (Te), No. 52 on the chart. Primarily occurring in gold and platinum, this element generally affects women, but effects are not just limited to them. Often referred to – in slang form – as “Tell’m,” this compound when activated by jewelry, body sweat and the thrill of travel renders a person a regular “Chatty Cathy.” They just cannot wait to tell you all about themselves, their travel, their life, etc. It is a common fact that even over-the-ear sound isolation headphones cannot defeat a person under the influence of Tell’m.
- Our last candidate for consideration is Astatine (At), No. 85 on the table. When combined with alcohol and the heat of friction caused by bodies rubbing together in tighter and tighter cabins, this element begins to decay into a new compound, (Ass). Generally, it is a short half-life – never longer than 8 hours – but during this period of Ass-like conditions, the infection rate of others can be problematic.
So, how do we de-escalate the type of events we’ve come to see and hear about regularly on our air carriers? Glad you asked!
The crack scientists at the IBT have determined that traditional de-escalation protocols just are not doing the trick on aircraft. There’s all that filming and broadcasting on social media. There’s the dragging folks off of the plane and the whole trying to open the exterior door in flight thing, just to name a few.
Heading back to the periodic table, it’s easy to see that the answer is He, Helium. No. 2 on the periodic table and one of the most readily available gasses on earth today outside of Hydrogen. How about we get Boeing and Airbus to not only install an oxygen generator on our flights but also a helium generator, that when activated by the cabin crew, the cabin is filled with helium gas.
We all know how much fun it is to suck in a mouthful of helium from a party balloon and talk with high, child-like voices until you take another hit off the balloon. Imagine, if you will, how the next incident goes down if the cabin is flooded with helium. It would be really difficult to have a serious argument under these conditions because it would be hard to take anyone seriously when they all sound like Donald Duck.
Sure, we have to be careful not to overdue the helium ingestion due lack of oxygen, but hey, then we get a little more practice using those oxygen masks. And, while everyone is laughing we can de-escalate the situation or even zip-tie an individual down under the pretense of a good time.
Think about it the next time you are flying. Who says your chemistry class was useless?
