The Unofficial Hunger Games Companion (40 page)

Barbiturates, for example, are extremely addictive and include amobarbital sodium, phenobarbital, Numbutal Sodium, and secobarbital. Depending on the dose, they can sedate someone, make him tired and drowsy, or knock him out. Benzodiazepines such as Halcion, Librium, Valium, Xanax, and Ativan can be addictive and will sedate or put someone to sleep. Drugs such as codeine, opium, oxycodone, Percodan, Percocet, Demerol HCL, and others—typically used to relieve pain—can also become habit forming and possibly sedate users.

As for the morphling, which clearly refers to morphine, doctors prescribe this drug to people after serious surgery and it’s not the sort of drug you want to take casually. It acts directly on the nervous system to reduce pain. It’s no wonder that Katniss becomes a morphling addict in
Mockingjay
. She’s in the hospital for a long time under the influence of both sleeping syrup and morphling, which makes her feel empty inside (
Mockingjay,
218).

Morphine sulfate is typically a white crystalline powder, though it also comes in larger crystal form. It is soluble in water, and hence, it’s possible that the sleep syrup could contain some morphling. However, given that sleep syrup is common in District 12 and morphling must be obtained from the Capitol, it’s doubtful that the syrup does indeed contain morphling.

In 1804, German pharmacist Friedrich Wilhelm Adam Sertürner, isolated morphine for the first time. He named the drug after Morpheus, Greek god of dreams. In 1853, with the rise of the hypodermic needle, doctors started using morphine to relieve pain and also to attempt to cure opium addiction.

But opium-based elixirs have been around for much longer. Laudanum, an opium in an alcohol base, was cited in 1522 by Paracelsus as killing pain. In the late 1800s, it was supplied to adults and children in little kits that actually came with hypodermic needles.

As for the nightlock berries, these are probably a toxic berry named after a combination of the
night
shade and hem
lock
plants. Nightlock berries instantly kill someone, and in
Mockingjay
, Cinna makes sure that Katniss has these suicide pills in a pouch on her shoulder. As in many wars, soldiers carry suicide pills, so in case they’re captured, they can die rather than undergo torture and spill secrets. Earlier, when Katniss and Peeta both threaten to commit suicide using the berries rather than sacrifice one over the other, the Capitol has no choice but to declare two winners.

Nightshades are also known as Belladonna plants and Devil’s Cherries, among other names. Its flowers are purple tinged with green and have five large lobes in which the berries grow. Although the shining black berries contain sweet juice, they are deadly.

Every part of the nightshade is poisonous due to an alkaloid called atropine. Stories tell us that during the Parthian wars, nightshade was given to Marcus Antonius’s troops to poison them, and Plutarch graphically recounts the effects of the deadly plants.

Poison hemlock looks like a giant parsley plant, and its seeds are light brown and shaped like barrels. All parts of the poison hemlock are deadly, especially the stems and roots. The ancient Greeks used hemlock to poison prisoners, and indeed Socrates was killed in 339 bc using hemlock. It’s more likely that the nightlock berries are from a type of nightshade plant.

Another point about the nightlock berries: because Katniss and Peeta used them to circumvent the evil plans of the government during the first Games, the word, nightlock, becomes symbolic, just as the mockingjay becomes symbolic. When using the Holo, if someone in Katniss’s squad says “nightlock, nightlock, nightlock,” the Holo blows up everything nearby. Again, as with the nightlock berries she used with Peeta in the Games, the rebels can explode everything, including themselves, in case they are captured (
Mockingjay,
261). Indeed, Katniss uses this technique to destroy muttation human-lizard things that kill Finnick (
Mockingjay,
312–13).

Finally, let’s talk about the venom injected by the tracker jackers. These mutated wasps were created in government laboratories (see chapter 13, “Muttations and Other Hybrids”) and are huge, solid gold killers. We’re told that tracker jacker venom can kill, and at minimum, they induce hallucinations and insanity (
The Hunger Games,
185).

Of course, in the real world, we do have killer wasps, killer bees, and a large variety of venom. Real-life killer wasps don’t hijack our memories, nor do they track us wherever we go.

Cicada killer wasps are huge, up to two inches long. They’re black with yellow markings on their abdomens and thoraxes; and there’s also a solid gold killer wasp, the great golden digger wasp, but it’s not as big as the black-and-yellow version. Yellow jackets, which are sometimes called wasps, are black and yellow for the most part, and some people can die from the venom of a yellow jacket.

Asian giant hornets are the world’s largest hornet, with a body length of about two inches, same as the cicada killer wasps. Their wingspans can be up to three inches wide, and the venom in the stingers is so powerful that people describe it as having hot nails thrust into them. The enzyme in the venom can dissolve human flesh.

Tracker jacker wasps probably inject venom directly into the victim’s bloodstream. The venom, which contains enzymes and peptides, tears down cell membranes so the internal parts of the cells dump into the bloodstream. With neurons, the damaged cells send “pain” signals to the brain. The venom typically contains norepinephrine, which stops blood from flowing near the sting, so the damaged cells are awash in the venom and keep sending “pain” signals to the brain. Something called mast cell degranulating peptides and hyaluronidase enable the venom to melt the connective tissues between cells; and hence, the venom moves into adjacent cells, as well.

As for hijacking Peeta with fear conditioning, if the venom affects the amygdalae (see chapter 7, “The Nature of Evil”), then it has successfully hijacked his mind into being terrified about things he ordinarily wouldn’t think about twice. Remember, the amygdalae is vital to our memories of emotions and also key to how we process fear; and it’s part of the limbic system, which handles memories of physical sensations and makes us scared. The amygdalae transmits impulses to the hypothalamus, to the reticular nucleus, and to the nuclei of our facial nerves; and it also makes our emotions whip up and down wildly, putting us into a state of terror.

It’s also quite possible that a venom can alter someone’s basic attributes using genetic manipulation. Our genes determine how our bodies handle poisons, battle infections and other illnesses, digest foods, and respond to environmental conditions. Our genes determine what we look like and, in many cases, how we react to emotional stimuli and how we behave. How big a deal is it that scientists have cracked the human genome? According to Dr. Steve Kay, a geneticist at The Scripps Research Institute in La Jolla, California, “It’s comparable to Darwin’s theory of evolution.”
¹
We already know how to manipulate genes to eliminate many diseases, but think about the reverse. For example, if we know how to get rid of an illness by making sure our bodies activate particular genes, then we can just as easily manipulate genes to cause diseases, such as Peeta’s delusions and extreme paranoia.

How can tracker jackers follow people around? Well, in the real world, University of Georgia researchers have already trained wasps to smell chemicals and get treats if they do the right thing. Engineer Glen Rains explains that his portable Wasp Hound, a ten-inch-long PVC pipe holding a handful of wasps, “can monitor the behavior of wasps trained to a particular scent or volatile compounds.”
²

Typically, an animal’s venom is produced by one or more glands. These glands are connected to a body part that administers the venom to victims. So, for example, snakes and spiders administer venom with their fangs, bees and scorpions administer venom with stingers, fish use spikes, centipedes use pincers, millipedes use squirters, and cone shells use poisoned harpoons. The amount of venom injected into a victim varies, and most often, it is injected into the subcutaneous layers of skin; that is, the animal does not inject its venom into the victim’s internal layer of skin or body organs.