Homemade Pepper Spray

The active ingredient in law-enforcement and self-defense pepper spray is an organic compound called oleoresin capsicum. (Some contain other ingedients such as CS “tear gas”, but I digress) For all the mystique around this stuff, it’s basically the oil - that would be the “oleoresin” part - of a type of hot chile pepper - capsicums. Add in a carrier, a binder, perhaps a dye or two, and some propellant, and you’ve got pepper spray.

Of course, if you’re an inmate in an Indonesian prison, you might not have access to a chemical laboratory. Never fear, because a poor-man’s pepper spray is simple enough to make, and effective enough to break out of prison with.

I admit, it’s not quite as geeky as the salsa trick shown on Mythbusters a while back, but I still have to feel that MacGuyver would approve.