This cunning plan involves a well-marketed pill that promises striking, morbid death on demand but in fact hides a hidden payload. The size of the pill would probably have to be explained due to its needs to have enough of the "active ingredient", which would be partially true.

Because what it actually contained within the pill is a low-power broadcasting unit that uses stomach acid to power a signal that local health and trauma teams can detect. You can now print mobile phones on paper, after all.

Ideally the coating would knock people out too but the instructions could also include the instructions that lying down near a window (or an ambulance station if the writers thought they could get away with it) would help to accelerate the effects.

The idea is that people respond to this call for help and the rescuee has plenty to consider.

The secret behind the product would have to be maintained with the same vigour that we protect the secret of Father Christmas, zombies and Rush Limbaugh.
-- Aristotle, Jun 03 2010

All-in-one Pill All-in-one_20Pill
A fake one of these. [Aristotle, Jun 03 2010]

Cillit Bang cleans up old Plutonium http://www.nda.gov....ngusedincleanup.cfm
How Cillit Bang advertising persuaded scientists to try it out on Plutonium. This is the kind of industrial strength advertising that this product needs! [Aristotle, Jun 03 2010]

(background for us yanks) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cillit_Bang
[normzone, Jun 03 2010]

I thought "suicide pills" were produced for situations where their user wants to die to escape a worse fate, for example being interrogated as a spy by a government that tortures. Finding out that you've just called an ambulance instead would really suck.

[sp: its need, accelerate]
-- jutta, Jun 03 2010


Well, you've just blown it by posting it here, then.

I think it would be worth marketing something very like this (bulky; accompanied by implausible advice to lie near a window etc), but with a genuinely fatal active ingredient. Anyone dumb enough to swallow it (so to speak) would probably increase the local average IQ by passing over.
-- MaxwellBuchanan, Jun 03 2010


Actual suicide pills are widely know to be quite small and are probably very accessible to the spies that might need them.

This is a more of a mass market "solution" to act both as a placebo and a way to get the "call for help stage" without maiming, ineffective poisoning and a rather traumatising clean-up aftermath.

If the marketing was impressive enough then taking the pill would represent a striking decision, enough to trigger a rethink, prehaps.
-- Aristotle, Jun 03 2010


MaxwellBuchanan:

Ahh, the pill that you just described is already half-baked - see link.
-- Aristotle, Jun 03 2010


What if you're not quite ready to end it all, like when you've simply missed the bus and are stuck in the rain? Could you also pop a call-for-a-ride-home pill?
-- swimswim, Jun 03 2010


Excellent, [swimswim], for hidden within this pill (and this idea) is some technology that obviously could have wider implications - the digestion powered broadcast device.

I would prefer to eat such a thing wrapped in a delicious kebab, of course, but a pill does have the advantage of space and storage.
-- Aristotle, Jun 03 2010



random, halfbakery