hornet spray vs. attacker

I have a slightly different option that is just as effective and legal to stop an attack.
Have you thought about getting a small can of Bear Spray. The hornet spray is that it's a very effective nerve agent, and can cause death if taken in a large enough quantity. Bear Spray is non-lethal and will certainly stop an attack from a human. It's a highly concentrated form of Pepper Spray.

Are you sure you'll have enough time, and the frame of mind to use something like this if the need arises. If it takes less than a second for a person to cover 20 ft, will you be able to recognize the attack is taking place in time? Will you have practiced enough that your instinct is for fight, instead of flight?
I would hope an incident like your considering won't take place but I find it likely at some point you will need to defend yourself.
Pepper Spray and Bear Spray are both non-lethal and designed for just such a situation - a sudden unplanned attack.

I wish you the best in your endeavor to protect yourself from the BG's out there.

Let me mention one thing, in partial defense of our OP. Do not get the idea that I am advocating use of wasp spray, or anything else not intended as a self-defense device. I am not. How many of you have been sprayed with OC spray, or have sprayed it even into a trash can indoors? Unless you are among a pretty small fraction of the human population, you will be affected. Your eyes will water and burn, you will cough and choke, and overall, it will not be pleasant. I have been so sprayed, and have sprayed it indoors, just to find out how it affects ME. Wasp spray will not likely have such adverse affects on the "sprayer." Again, no advocacy here,and no recommendations. Just pointing out something that might have been overlooked...

I was just about to comment about that after reading the bear spray post. Seeing that the OP is in such a tight area, she too will be affected by the spray. If bear spray is that much more concentrated, it'll be that much worse to the sprayer.

Whereas a gun doesn't spray you back... Check this out instead- Double Action Derringers If you can't hide one of those, you should probably rethink your wardrobe.

A double tap of .38 or .40 S&W will definitely get the job done in a pinch, and give you time to access your .38 snubbie you have hidden somewhere. Think of it as a back up to your back up weapon.

Just a thought.

Wasp spray worries me. A quick googling turned up this, which may make you want to reconsider.

According to Snopes.com pyrethrins are the active ingredients in wasp spray. Pyrethrins work on the nervous system of the insects they are sprayed on.

Looking at a few of MSDS (material safety data sheets) for RAID wasp sprays, I see statements including "Aspiration into the lungs may cause severe health effects," "Inhalation may cause central nervous system effects," "Can enter lungs and cause damage" and "Harmful if absorbed through skin."

A few sound vague, and a few sound quiet serious. I would prefer to err on the safer side and consider pepper/mace or a taser, maybe... or look for a way to keep a small automatic within reach, after all.

This stuff is a form of poison... might it be considered just as deadly a weapon? Seems to me that if this were a viable alternative use of their product, SC Johnson might have been marketing it as such already. A LOT of sales could be made there, and I doubt they'd be averse to that.

I would advise caution there.

I would like to seriously recommend that you purchase and read the book "In the Gravest Extreme" by Massad Ayoob. You can find it on Amazon, it's not expensive. Paperback, 130 pages; it's actually a fast read. Mr. Ayoob is a recognized expert with a very long resume; so what he says has some weight. The book is a common sense, fairly comprehensive book about using a gun for self defense. It is NOT a "gun" book! It covers many of the legal considerations, practical issues, things you should think about/know when you decide to carry. I would recommend it for anyone who carries. The issues about when to use deadly force, etc. are big. He also gives a lot of specific examples of things that have happened to bolster his words. Buy it, read it.

Wow, I honestly thought around mid-morning yesterday that this thread was about done, then it exploded. I am SO appreciative of the interest and efforts by so many. And also learning more all the time, which is a good thing.

Gary7 said:

Bingo. Let's say she blinds some miscreant with the wasp spray. His lawyer is going to argue that it was unreasonable to use this product in a manner that it was never designed for. This argument would not be available if she used her gun or pepper spray. The reasonable person standard would still apply, of course, but at least she would be using a product and device designed and intended for self defense.

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I understand this point, and appreciate you reinforcing it.

38-44HD45 said:

How many of you have been sprayed with OC spray, or have sprayed it even into a trash can indoors? Unless you are among a pretty small fraction of the human population, you will be affected. Your eyes will water and burn, you will cough and choke

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Thank you for making this point. Though I haven't mentioned it in earlier posts, this has been a very conscious part of my reasoning because I am aware of this. In search of non-gun option that does not partially incapacitate me as well.

one_fast_ls1 said:

A double tap of .38 or .40 S&W will definitely get the job done in a pinch, and give you time to access your .38 snubbie you have hidden somewhere. Think of it as a back up to your back up weapon.

Just a thought.

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It's far down on my list of preferences, as you know, but it's not entirely off the list and is worth mentioning, so thank you for the thought.

jamesmhebert said:

Wasp spray worries me. A quick googling turned up this...

I would advise caution there.

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Thanks so much for taking the trouble to get this information, which in fact answers my initial question about what will happen to someone if you use it on them. It sounds like legally, there could be some issues, and also that on a practical level, it might work well for this non-recommended, not-intended-by-the-designer purpose.

bitstream said:

I would like to seriously recommend that you purchase and read the book "In the Gravest Extreme" by Massad Ayoob.

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Consider it done. I have some familiarity with Ayoob's work and already have great respect for whatever he has to say. He's done so much frankly, that I've never had a good sense of where to start with his work so I've read miscellaneous articles, looked at YouTube segments, etc. This will be the first of his books that I will read, and it will get done in the immediate future. Thanks for suggesting a clear starting point.

Just a thought.............your firearm in a pocket holster in the chair seam, providing that you have pillow'd armchair that you sit in during your sessions. Hopefully this hasn't already been suggested, as I didn't read every one of the posts.

i feel yer frustration. i, though male, deal with occasional drug seekers who become irate when i won't prescribe what they want. A coupla yrs ago was when i really got serious about protection. So after many consults with my LEO pts, i now have weapon immediately in front of me at all times magnetically held in place and ready for use on the underside of my office desk. Think about it, hope this helps. -docpopster

if you are going to use wasp spray at a close distance….4 feet or less…be careful that your shot does not ricochet off the attacker's body/head and strike you.

The only safe answer, is to modify your clothing, so that you can carry your S&W on your person. Not in your purse, but ON YOUR PERSON.

AirLitenewbie said:

Thank you, 38-44hd45, for the kind reply and good ideas. I'm adding your holster recommendations to those I will check out shortly.

Thanks to everyone, as always, for the support and information.




Believe it or not, getting onto the fire extinguisher idea was what led me to the hornet spray. I was actually going to get a fire extinguisher when I thought about hornet spray having a more directed stream and frankly, much easier post-incident clean-up. Fire extinguisher sure beats spray can for a striking weapon, however.



This was my thinking, exactly. And no, I'm not worried about the bad guy at all. I'm not afraid of hurting them with hornet spray -- I want to know how much I can hurt them with it.



I laughed out loud when I saw this! It's so fitting and evil-in-a-good-way. I'm still laughing, and may actually do something like this.


This thread was never meant to be a mental exercise/experiment for me, but it turned into one. In addition to getting lots of ideas and good information, it caused me to really think about how I feel about self-defense, what limits I feel about it, and why. I concluded that I'm in a pretty decent place with it for the moment, meaning measures taken so far, and also measures not taken. There's a balance between living with maximum safety and living with maximum freedom/fulfillment/comfort/satisfaction/whatever, and we all have our own right place on that spectrum. My right place on the spectrum, for now at least, involves not wearing a gun on me when doing therapy. I don't like it, it feels wrong, and considering this thread for a day or two has helped me realize there's nothing wrong with that. It feels wrong enough to me that I prefer accepting the increased physical risk that potentially comes with the choice. I could, for example, turn my home into a barred fortress with security systems that keep me safe but make me feel like I live in a prison; I have elected not to do that because it's more important to me that it feels like a home than that it be the safest it could possibly be.

I've brought guns into my life to feel safer, and have changed a number of things (some specifically involving the guns) to support the "be safe" project. I am much, much safer now than before, but not as safe as it is possible to be. Because of info from this thread, there are more changes I will consider and some I will put into action. Some things will be left undone because doing them would start to turn my life into something I don't want it to be. There's more than one way to "save" your life, I'm seeing, and so I'm going for the best of both worlds.

Again, many, many thanks. I wish you all safety and peace.

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My wife carried a revolver off-and-on for years, but she had the same complaint that you raised about concealing it with the typical form-fitting female attire. Both the cylinder bulge and overall weight of the (stainless steel) revolver were a problem. Bottomline is that she and I both are unwilling to make drastic changes in our attire for concealment purposes. So, despite the frequent advice to the contrary, the gun really does have to fit the clothing, not the other way around. Being a man, I have the edge in that department, but a large pistol is out the question even for me because I simply won't dress around it.

As a practical matter, what this has meant is that we have purchased several small handguns and a box full of holsters to accomodate a variety of situations and selections of clothing. Is it the solution that optimizes speed of draw, caliber, capacity, etc.? No, it's not. However, it is the solution that maximizes our respective chances of having something other than harsh language to offer if the situation should call for it.

My wife's latest acquisition is a pocket-size 380 semi-auto, a Kahr P380 in particular. I would really encourage you, as I did her, to take a look at the new generation of pocket-size 380s. The name is accurate: they literally fit in a pocket. They also are flat enough for her to carry in other types of holsters most of the time, which is better than little or none of the time.

Anyway, we looked at the Kahr P380, the S&W Bodyguard 380, the Ruger LCP, and the Taurus TCP. All of them proved to be acceptable to her, but she preferred the Kahr (and, no surprise here, it was the most expensive of the bunch). Reliability with her Kahr has been a non-issue. Despite the reports of a lenghty break-in period (with many failures anticipated), she had one failure on the second round that she fired. After that, she had 198 problem-free shots, with a mix of target ammunition and defense ammunition. Frankly, I am very impressed with the little pistol and wonder if I should have purchased one for myself as well, instead of the Bodyguard 380 that I actually ended up buying for myself (and which I had to send back to the factory within 24 hours of purchasing it).

Long story short, I encourage you not to dismiss the little 380 semi-autos. Yes, you will hear this story and that story about some attacker who was shot fifty million times with a 380 and then ran a marathon. The favorite story, as far as I can tell, is the one in which the attacker, in the course of malfeasance in some deep winter month, was shot several times, opened his winter coat, and the bullets just fell out of his clothes. Those stories are a load of hooey: the "old wives' tales" of the gun shop. A 90-grain bullet travelling at 900 feet per second (about what you can expect from a pocket-size 380) is going to put a very dissuasive hole in an attacker, no matter how many layers of winter clothing he is wearing.

ncy54 said:

your firearm in a pocket holster in the chair seam.

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Excellent idea, but not one supported by the furniture I currently have. I'll definitely keep it in mind for future furniture purchases, however.

docpopster said:

weapon immediately in front of me at all times magnetically held in place and ready for use on the underside of my office desk.

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Thanks much for weighing in. Unfortunately for me, I'm next to a wood desk rather than behind a metal one. Your arrangement sounds very good from a defensive standpoint.

I set my office up way back when, thinking primarily about therapeutic environment, foot traffic patterns, and efficiency of work flow. The one safety consideration back at the design stage was having two possible exits, which I planned for and will always have. Other than that, I designed the space without defensive advantage in mind (since I didn't have to think much that way at the time), which comes back to haunt me now. It just shows again how differently you set your life up depending on what you prioritize.

vytoland said:

if you are going to use wasp spray at a close distance….4 feet or less…be careful that your shot does not ricochet off the attacker's body/head and strike you.

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That's a really important point I'd never have thought of; thank you for getting it on the radar.

Goffman said:

My wife carried a revolver off-and-on for years, but she had the same complaint that you raised about concealing it with the typical form-fitting female attire. Both the cylinder bulge and overall weight of the (stainless steel) revolver were a problem. Bottomline is that she and I both are unwilling to make drastic changes in our attire for concealment purposes. So, despite the frequent advice to the contrary, the gun really does have to fit the clothing, not the other way around. Being a man, I have the edge in that department, but a large pistol is out the question even for me because I simply won't dress around it.

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Thank you so much for letting me know I'm not the only one who feels this way. The search continues for the best no-gun-on-me option while working, but I will keep the little guys in mind as a last resort.

Goffman said:

Long story short, I encourage you not to dismiss the little 380 semi-autos.

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I consider .380acp marginal as a self-defense round. It would NEVER be my first choice as a self-defense round, and NEVER in a firearm the same size or larger than one that's available in 9x19mm.

That having been said, marginal is always better than nonexistent. A face full of .380 is ALWAYS going to be more effective than a face full of OC, mace OR wasp & hornet killer.

Unless you carry VX (and routinely wear a MOPP suit by Armani) NO chemical spray is going to be as effective as a firearm, ANY firearm.

I recently ordered a SmartCarry holster. SmartCarry - Concealed Gun Holsters

"To date, no human testing has been conducted on WASP spray and it’s a violation of federal law to use in self defense. WASP sprays’ labels state, “It’s a violation of federal law to use in any manner inconsistent with this label."

I suspect this ranks right up there with pulling that tag off a mattress that always says "Do not remove under penalty of law"

With pepper spray, or any spray used for self defense, be aware of wind currents. A desk fan might give you a face full rather than your attacker.

I sure don't know about the effectiveness of bugspray and it would look out of place in an office where theirs no bugs.

Now aerosol hair spray and a Bic lighter...