IS IT POSSIBLE TO STUPEFY SOMEONE?

It’s 2011, the location is London, England, and you’re a police officer taking a well-deserved break to scoff your lovingly prepared sandwiches. Your shift will be over in a couple of hours and you’re desperate to get back to your family. Then there’s a call on your police radio.

“Youths are looting shops and burning cars in Tottenham. All available units required.”

You drop your sandwich and respond, immediately heading over to the scene with your colleague. As the situation literally heats up, you find yourself surrounded by rioters, most of whom appear younger than your own kids. Fearful for your safety you draw your weapon and get ready to engage. Situations like this are real for the thousands of law enforcers across the globe, and with the prevalence of terrorism there has been a call for greater security.

In such a profession, it’s clear to see that there is a real need for safe methods to incapacitate these would-be aggressors, without causing them serious harm. Especially when they are not legal adults and not legally responsible for their actions. Clearly a muggle equivalent of the Stupefy stunning spell is in order. But how possible is that?

Stupefy!

On J.K. Rowling’s Pottermore website, the stupefying charm is described as a useful spell used to knock out an opponent in a duel by stunning them or rendering them unconscious. You don’t need to be a wizard or cast a spell to create that effect in the real world though.

The stupefying charm is like the wizarding equivalent of a boxer’s knock-out punch. In boxing a knock-out is simply a blow that incapacitates an opponent, whether immediately with a loss of consciousness, or subsequently receiving a strong body blow that prevents an opponent from continuing.

Although a knock-out can be caused by a blow to any part of the body, a shot to the head is the one that usually springs to mind. When struck, the blow can cause the victim to lose consciousness, falling to the ground in a slump. However, if the casting of the stupefying charm worked in this way, the wizard on the receiving end would be hard pressed to hide the physical after effects.

What exactly is happening inside a person’s head to actually cause a knock-out?

Head Trauma

The brain is a fragile organ with more than 100 billion nerves connected via trillions of synapses. Thankfully, the brain is surrounded by the cranium which forms a hard shell to help protect the brain from things like contamination, penetration, and deformation.

However, while the skull may be able to take an impact, the brain can still get rattled around inside as a result of a sudden, forceful movement. This is because there is a fluid filled space between the brain and skull. Depending on the force of the impact, the brain can receive trauma in the form of concussion, where a person may feel dazed or even experience a loss of consciousness for a few seconds or minutes.

Concussion is the most common type of brain injury. As the brain wobbles, contorts, and ricochets against the inside of the skull, stretching the blood vessels, damaging the cranial nerves, and killing brain cells, multiple neurotransmitters in the brain also fire off simultaneously, overloading the nervous system into a temporary state of paralysis. As the muscles subsequently relax, the person collapses to the floor.

It’s also possible for an impact to disrupt the flow of blood and oxygen to the head, again leading to a blackout. In any case, you can expect the victim to suffer negative effects such as headaches, confusion, mood changes, and memory loss. Rest is considered as the best thing for recovery but even then, it can take a few months or even years for a concussion to heal fully.

Clearly, stupefying through concussion would leave most wizards with heavy heads. What about a less traumatic means of knock out?

Knock-Out Substances

For this, we need look no further than a medical operating room. In surgery, it’s important that a patient stay completely still and relaxed while the surgeon makes their precise incisions. A cocktail of drugs is used to achieve the desired state in the patient. These are administered by an anesthesiologist who typically provides sedatives to make you sleep and analgesics to help with the pain. Generally, anesthetics are used to reduce sensation, which includes pain, whereas analgesics only deal with the pain.

As Stupefy acts to effectively render a person unconscious, it’s more like a sedative than a straight up anesthetic. In surgery, they use general anesthesia to induce unconsciousness, although it can also be used to remove sensation in a conscious patient. It can be administered directly into the veins, or inhaled as a gas through a breathing mask.

Under general anesthetic the patient often requires a breathing tube to be inserted (intubation) into the trachea to assist in breathing and protect the lungs. Side effects following general anesthesia can include a low chance of vomiting and/or nausea.

Some substances that have historically been used to render people unconscious include Trichloromethane (AKA chloroform) and Diethyl Ether, often just referred to as ether. These methods of delivery all require direct, close-up administration by somebody. The implications are that a muggle would have to get up close to administer their Stupefy charm equivalent, whereas wizards can stun from a distance.

Do we have anything that could provide the same advantage?

From a Distance

Considering the aforementioned ways in which the brain can be rendered unconscious i.e. through head trauma or chemically, there are a few ways that a person could be knocked out from a distance. Some that are more immediate and others that would take a little longer to produce their effect.

Regarding head trauma, it’s possible that this could result from a so-called non-lethal projectile such as a bean bag or a rubber, plastic, or wooden bullet. These are fired from regular or specially modified guns. However, in real situations the use of these projectiles have led to some fatalities when fired at close range or towards a particularly vulnerable part of the body.

Less dangerous may be to fire a tranquilizer dart instead. These are used frequently for catching animals, where the dart is basically a drug-filled syringe that empties into the animal upon impact. The injection isn’t into the veins either, it’s actually absorbed through the muscles, which means it can take anywhere from a few minutes to more than half an hour for the animal to feel its effects.

This isn’t a realistic option for humans though. The dose must be strong enough to be effective but not so strong that it overdoses the target. Also, the clothing the target wears can affect the way the dart impacts their body. So, whenever we see tranquilizer darts used in movies, the immediate effects are more artistic license than reality.

So how about another staple of the storytelling industry, namely throwing in some sleeping or knockout gas? Well, it would first need to be potent enough to affect any individuals within a certain proximity. Additionally, it would have to be released in a way that immerses relevant targets in enough of the substance to cause the necessary stupefying effect, but this has proven to have some problems.

In 2002, Russian special forces stormed a Moscow theater to free 850 hostages from 40 or more captors. Before the special forces entered they pumped a sleeping gas into the theater with hopes to subdue the occupants. Unfortunately, 130 hostages lost their lives due to the effects of the gas. It’s thought that they suffocated as their unconscious state meant that they couldn’t adopt a necessary posture to breath properly.

Is It Possible to Stupefy Someone?

The answer is a resounding yes. Although it’ll probably involve a head trauma or a drug-filled infusion. However, in the case of a head trauma there’s no guarantee that you won’t cause the person brain damage or other problems as a result of it. In the case of medical substances, they would have to be administered under carefully controlled conditions to avoid any adverse effects. So, although it’s possible, there’s little likelihood that a police officer could get away with deliberately choosing this method to incapacitate an aggressor.

And just in case you were thinking that a taser (AKA stun gun) was the obvious answer to this question, it’s not. A taser works by disrupting the electrical activity within the muscles between the taser probes. Once it has disconnected, the target can move again, unless they have suffered any unforeseen side effects. While it stuns, as per a stunning charm, it does not render a person unconscious. Unless, of course, the person was unfortunate enough to fall and suffer head trauma.