'80's Trivial Pursuit; the Light on Conspiracy

02.02.14

   Have you ever played the '80's version of Trivial Pursuit? If you have, you may have gotten this enlightening little tidbit of information; Amygdalin was a test-drug for cancer in the 1982 that was discontinued because it contained the lethal poison, potassium cyanide. In the same year, some lunatic poisoned Tylenol Extra Strength and it ended up killing 7 people in Chicago. What do you suppose was that poison? I really hope you guessed potassium cyanide because, I mean...pretty obvious (my friend Rishika had to give me a pretty big hint so don't feel TOO bad if you had a silly guess at first).
  Naturally, this warranted a conspiracy theory. To those of you who were born after the '80's, it was a tense time in the country (much like the 70's, 60's, 50's, etc.). Tensions with Russia were mounting to what would be a very confusing and probably one of the most bad-ass wars in history. No, war is not cool. I'm not condoning war. I'm just saying - spies were never cooler or deadlier than during the Cold War.
  The Cold War didn't just "happen"; it would seem it was kind of a 'world war' but with the word 'cold'. It was what took over when World War II was getting tired. People were like "genocide is unsettling and very, very wrong. We're sick of having to actually see the war as it happens"; and the Cold War was born.
  When many think 'Cold War' they think spies. Spies, spies, everywhere - wait, is that a spy? Haha!Get it? How would you know!? 
  Spies were the basis of every 80's movie - this includes 'Breakfast Club' and 'Say Anything'. You couldn't go anywhere in the 80's without having to worry that the person hiding behind that newspaper was going to lower it menacingly as you walked out of the coffee shop with your purchase. In this time of tension & mistrust, how could the government get anyone to volunteer for their spy-games tactics?
  This is where the cyanide poisoning gets conspiracy theoried (that is my tribute to the podcast 'Stuff They Don't Want You to Know'; give it a a listen). 
  The level at which the CIA would need to use in order to kill a person on the side of the enemy wasn't something you'd get a lot of sign-ups for. Even drug addicts and mental-patients-forced-homeless wouldn't put their scratch on that pad! So, why wouldn't the government just, you know, use it's own? The theory is that the CIA put various amounts of cyanide in various drugs to test the fatal levels. For the cancer drug, it wasn't a lot. A smaller amount was used in the cancer-treatment drug so it didn't kill the "test subjects", but it did make all but one of their tumors grow. As for the Tylenol Extra Strength? Well, if the theory is true, then someone one the inside of the factory was paid to lace a batch of headache relief with what some would consider the ultimate relief. That's death, by the way. Which means that whatever that amount was was clearly much too high.
  The things you get from a game of '80's Trivial Pursuit are so much more than you ever expected. If you want to play a game, hit me up.