Distaste for Corona saves geologist from assassination

Buried in Wikileaks' Afghanistan documents is a largely ignored 2007 warning that Pakistani spies were planning to poison booze intended for American soldiers using sulfuric acid. It sounds a little far-fetched.

Until you hear the story of James Yeager, an American geologist who claims to have narrowly avoided being poisoned in exactly this way in, yes, 2007.

Yeager was in Afghanistan advising the government as they took bids on a massive mining contract ...

he returned to his residence in Kabul to find it had been burgled. The intruder took money from a drawer and left behind a bottle of Corona beer. The Corona bottle sat on his counter for the next two weeks Yeager says, because Corona is one of his least favorite beers. He finally opened it during a going away party as the other drinks began to run low. [emphasis mine]

"I pulled it out and when I popped it there was no fizz and the cap was loose," says Yeager. "Because this one didn't have fizz you wonder if it went rancid or not, and I just kind of sniffed it and I went 'Oh, that doesn't smell like beer.' "

Yeager, a geochemist familiar with acids, realized it smelled like sulfuric acid - otherwise known as battery acid. He called a friend over who had the same reaction to the smell. Yeager poured the "beer" into the toilet and it foamed and fizzed, leaving "no question" in his mind it was sulfuric acid.

Insert your own Corona joke here.

Christian Science Monitor: Wikileaks confirmed? A plan to kill American geologist with poisoned beer

Image courtesy Flickr user Kyle May, via CC

Maggie Koerth-Baker is the science editor at BoingBoing.net. She writes a monthly column for The New York Times Magazine and is the author of Before the Lights Go Out, a book about electricity, infrastructure, and the future of energy. You can find Maggie on Twitter and Facebook.

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Anonymous

Oh boy, another all but incompetent plot by the scary turrists to frighten Americans. First exploding underwear, then fireworks sitting close to gas cans, now magically appearing beer bottles filled with acid. Western civilization is, without a doubt, doomed in the face of such prowess.
bobk

Little Willie was a chemist
Little Willie is no more
For what he thought was H2O
Was H2SO4

/this version rhymes better
Anonymous

beer edu-ma-cation:
beer is affected by sunlight, and by contact with air. Corona is in a clear glass bottle (mistake) and the caps are not airtight. Most people believe that the ‘skunky’ smell of Corona is just ‘what it tastes like’… wrong, most of the international product is gone off, but somehow, the marketing and the lime in it have the world believing that this is some sort of ‘luxury’ product. and it is charged a premium for. ha. suckers.
try a Corona in Mexico, it’s an ok beer, but nothing special – I recommend Negro Modello.
gTron
The Dour Salmon

I do not always drink poisoned Mexican beer, but when I do, I prefer Dos Equis.
- Johnny Cat
  
  Stay thirsty, my friend.
whitcwa

So if he loved Corona and, as he said, “there was no fizz and the cap was loose” and it “doesn’t smell like beer”, would he be dead? Or would you have made the headline “Love for Corona saves geologist from assassination”?
Sagodjur

“Insert your own Corona joke here.”

So all the Corona ended up in the toilet in the end, huh?

Same thing happens when I drink Corona.
se7a7n7

Are you sure it wasn’t Bud light Lime?
Anonymous

I’m pretty sure that actually was Corona.
Anonymous

As a chemist, I would definitely feel certain of the analytical technique of pouring an acid into the toilet to determine identity.
Anonymous

I once walked into the back yard while my brother was cleaning the pool. He had a plastic cup of what looked like orange juice on the picnic table, and I thought it would be funny to down it while his back was turned. As I lifted it to drink, I happened to inhale, and the fumes were overwhelming. It was hydrochloric acid that he was going to put in the pool. I’m sure I would have been permanently and majorly disfigured at the very least.
Anonymous

At least Mr, Yeagermeister, familiar with acids, was smart to add his acid to water, not water to acid. :)
Matt Deckard

So every time you open a beer and it smells funky, and fizzes when you pour it out, that means someone was trying to assassinate you with sulfuric acid?
Dilapidus

Oh for christ’s sake.. just squeeze a little lime in there like the rest of us do.
Baldhead

I thought Corona was poisonous enough as it is…
Snig

He missed the opportunity to experiment with menthos.
Anonymous

Not implausible, but concentrated sulfuric acid is odorless and doesn’t give off a smell until it reacts with certain materials. Haven’t tried mixing it with beer though…
Anonymous

“Yeager poured the “beer” into the toilet and it foamed and fizzed, leaving “no question” in his mind it was sulfuric acid.”

He sounds like a pretty rigorous scientist, applying all the most recent & precise assessment tools in his arsenal to determine whether or not the beer had been manipulated.

I smell a Nobel prize…
Phrosty

It could have been worse. It could have been a regular Corona… and he could have drank it. :o
phisrow

That seems like an oddly amateurish assassination attempt, by the standards of either Pakistani spooks or hardened local militants…

You’ve burgled his house, that implies a level of physical access for a reasonable period of time… No IED behind the bathroom door/under the mat/in the refrigerator? No introduction of some nasty poison(agricultural region=pesticides, herbicides, rat poisons, etc. on the open market) into food that was already in the house?

Just introduce a (suspicious, I’m assuming Coronas don’t just show up in Kabul…) food item, laced with a hazardous; but not wildly lethal, chemical that has a distinctive odor? Seriously? Is this amateur hour?
- Anonymous
  
  Can’t I get some frikin sharks with LAZER BEAMS!?
- Tdawwg
  
  Which is more chilling, more absurd: that the American government has given Pakistan billions and billions in aid, only to have them actively assisting the Taliban, killing Americans, etc.; or that this is the kind of craptastic result all those lost billions have paid for? How does one even think about these things?
  - Felton
    
    Yes, but assassination contracts going to the lowest bidder? It worked! Our western ideals are spreading! :-P
- Xopher
  
  Seriously? Is this amateur hour?
  
  Yes, of course it is. Haven’t you been paying attention?
JudgeDef

Maggie, you know how to write a headline and cut to the bloody, still pumping heart of a story. I had read this at the source as linked from Google news, so I only got to the sweet part by chance. Having good taste in beer matters. Corona is still great with grilled burgers.
Anonymous

Someone burgles you and leaves his cruddy beverage and the natural inclination is to keep it in case you need a brew later?
- Anonymous
  
  Thank you for saying that! I was thinking the same thing. “Oh, well I’ve been burgled, but hey! Found beer! Doo dee doo dee doo I’ll just put this in the fridge for my next party.” Ridiculous!
AirPillo

Alduterated? Quite the opposite, that Corona was unusually pure.
- AirPillo
  
  Curse you, typo monster.
  
  Also @#7:
  I know, right? why not just use some damned arsenic? It’s not like the stuff is hard to come by. You can buy it by the pound…
  
  They must really think U.S civilians are a joke, the way they keep sending their special-ed operatives against them.
  - dculberson
    
    “Special-ed operatives” has got to be made into a movie. Please. Simon Pegg and Edgar Wright, are you listening?!
    - Anonymous
      
      There has been such a film made recently, Four Lions by Chris Morris. Check it out.
    - phisrow
      
      The Onion covered similar ground…
zyodei

Reminds me of the first time I drank “Corona.” I was 14, at a party with a bunch of seniors. Someone handed me a corona, I said “thanks! you’re nice!”

I had never had beer before in my life.

I choked down pretty much the whole thing, thinking “boy, beer really is terrible.”

A friend smelled it, and told me it was actually a bottle of piss…

I have never really enjoyed beer since then in my life :(
- Xopher
  
  Where are the seniors buried?
  
  Please tell me you at LEAST vandalized their cars.
Brian

1) Sulfuric Acid wouldn’t “foam and fizz” when added to water.

2) Corona has a clear glass bottle. If you left it out for 2 weeks in diffuse sunlight it would smell absolutely awful (look up skunked beer).

3) Sufficiently drunk people will drink it anyway. I know this from first hand knowledge.
- Anonymous
  
  Wouldn’t sulfuric acid (in a toilet) foam and fizz if somebody had utilized said toilet recently? (Urea + Water -> Ammonia (NH3), Ammonia (NH3) + H2SO4 -> (NH4)2SO4 + H2, I think. It’s been a loooong time since I took chemisty.)
  - dainel
    
    I smell an Ignobel prize. What concentration of sulfuric acid and what concentration of residual pee is required in the toilet is required, for fizz and foam to form, when you pour the acid into the toilet. Sensitivity of the toilet bowl as a device to test for the presence of sulfuric acid.
Jazzhigh

Reminds me of the urban legends about Corona (or was it just any Mexican beer?) containing formaldehyde.
LightningRose

Corona: Beer not worth the expense of brown bottle glass.
- Cynical
  
  True, but that implies Budweiser is worth drinking…
Anonymous

Corona,originally a German beer brewed in Mexico
Anonymous

Instead of using lime, like they do in Mexico, to sterilize the mouth of the bottle, they use sulfuric acid. Shame on him for not being willing to accept their cultural choice.
Mitch

… but the worst part of the story was when he took the film in his camera to be developed and saw what the burglars did with his toothbrush.

I found a five-pack of Corona on the curb and I took it home and drank it. I figured the possibility of someone who owned a capper messing with the beer and leaving it for a random stranger to find was pretty remote.

The beer was fine. Corona is pretty good as far as light mass produced lagers go.
Mitch

I would guess that there would be trace amounts of formaldehyde as a by product of fermentation in most beers.
TNGMug

The headline isn’t even accurate. He DID try and drink it in the end. I guess maybe the saving it for later meant he paid more attention when he opened it?

The “this is crappy beer – I’ll drink it last” ethic though… that’s priceless (and as I work with geologists, not actually that surprising!)
- Anonymous
  
  The great part of that method is that it also moderates one’s intake. You open the fridge, see only the crappy beer left, and opt for water instead, but put off buying more beer because you still have some.
  - TNGMug
    
    nope, Sorry, you lost me at “opt for water instead”
Anonymous

It’s Dos Equis that is originally a German recipe, never heard that of Corona.
mdh

I also work with geologists,and you and I agree that a random unclaimed beer left on a table is like a flystrip to a geologist.
Anonymous

If you don’t drink beers the terrorists have won.
Anonymous

Finally something we didn’t already know about Afghanistan coming from the Wikileaks documents.