Breaking Bad's Scientific Consultant On Making Meth and More

sciencehabit (1205606) writes "Science sat down with Breaking Bad science consultant Donna Nelson, an organic chemist at the University of Oklahoma. Nelson was one of several expert advisers for the show who began consulting several episodes in on multiple topics, including how to make Walt a realistic chemist. She discusses the accuracy of the show, whether making meth is as straightforward as it seems on the series, and her favorite scene."

Comments

Brings back memories

[jtownatpunk.net]

Years and years ago, I worked for an environmental lab and some local law enforcement agency (Sheriff's department, I think) asked us to help determine whether they'd found the dump from a meth lab. Step one was to figure out how meth is made. So I found every recipe I could (using Steve's computer, of course) and ran them by the chemists. "Poison, poison, poison, death, that could work, poison, poison, that could work." Then they took the potentially valid recipes and worked out what the byproducts would be created at each phase and gave the cops a list of chemicals to test for.

Oh, and there are a lot of hoops to jump through to [legally] obtain a meth standard. Had to put in a lock box and access protocol to store an amount that was too small to give a rat a buzz.

Re:Brings back memories

[VortexCortex]

My regards to Steve. How is gitmo treating him these days?

Re:Brings back memories

[chihowa]

Oh, and there are a lot of hoops to jump through to [legally] obtain a meth standard.

Actually, it's a piece of cake. Here's one that you don't even need a DEA license to receive. You can get standards for analysis for most any drug easily. Of course, you're only getting g to mg, so there's no real avenue for abuse.

My baby blue

[Spy Handler]

One time I was out on a set visit and Vince said, "What do you think about making the meth blue?" I advised him not to do it. He said, "Is there not some way it could be blue?" And I said again, "No, don't do it."

So apparently, there is no actual chemistry basis for making Walt's meth blue... even the P2P/methylamine process does not yield a blue color. Vince Gilligan just really wanted the meth blue so he can use these cool 60's songs:

Crystal Blue Persuasion - from Gliding Over All, music playing over montage showing Walt's new meth operation with Todd and Lydia and DeClan. Parodied by the Simpsons.

My Baby Blue - from the last episode, final scene, when Walt gets what he deserved. The special love I had for you.

Re:My baby blue

[Electricity Likes Me]

I always assumed its possible it could be nanoparticulate aluminium contamination. Metals are a pretty good way to give things odd colors.

Re:My baby blue

[abhi_beckert]

Pure meth is white/clear. But you could explain the blue color as the result of some additive they put into it, as a "trademark" of sorts.

Yes but a key part of the show was nobody else could cook blue meth. Walt had power over the drug dealers because he could give them something unique.

If all it took was an additive, the story would not have worked.

Re:My baby blue

[Hortense Yaya]

The real cooks are trying to make it blue now and making their customers sick http://www.washingtontimes.com...

Re:Making meth is even easier

[Travis Mansbridge]

Joffrey is poisoned.

Hide the Knowledge

[Macrat]

They helped so that we wouldn’t be presenting a cookbook on how to make meth and told him what steps to leave out so that anyone mimicking the procedures would fail.

Yup. A TV show giving inaccurate information is going to prevent people from making meth.

Re:Hide the Knowledge

[Shados]

No, but a TV show giving accurate information certainly encourages people to try that would not normally. That happens all the time, with everything you see on TV.

Stereospecificity

[jeffb (2.718)]

“Now is catalytic hydrogenation, I forget, is that protic or aprotic?"

Man, if I had a dollar for every time someone asked me that...

Blue color was a plot device....

[Ellis D. Tripp]

It was necessary to have Walt's product be immediately distinguishable from everything else on the street. Otherwise, the DEA would need to run samples of every batch seized through the lab to check purity etc. to determine if a given product was cooked by "Heisenberg". While this might have been interesting to the science geeks here on /., it would have been boring to the average viewer.

I have a feeling that pinning the blue color on the P2P cook process was done by the writers before they had a scientific adviser onboard. By then, it was too late, and they were stuck with it.

The big scientific screwup on the show is exactly how Walt was managing to get nearly 100% purity from a process that in real life would result in 50% purity at best. Unlike starting from pseudoephedrine, the P2P process results in a racemic mixture of 2 different stereoisomers of methamphetamine, only one of which has any recreational value.

This bit of chemical magic could have been passed off as Walt's "secret process", but on the show both Gale and Declan's crew were also shown creating meth at significantly better than 50% purity using the P2P route, without benefit of Walt's knowledge.

Re:Blue color was a plot device....

[TapeCutter]

You can turn anything you like blue by reversing the polarities and fine tuning the sub-space frequencies. I think it's fantastic that popular shows such as BB/Simpsons/Futurama/BBT are not only doing a good job of getting the science right but are also making it a feature of the show. Fiction writers have poetic license and have always researched their work to some degree, particularly the historical and geographic bits. What the author is trying to do in a drama is make the characters real and for that to happen his audience must be willing to suspend disbelief.

The ability/willingness of the audience to suspend disbelief depends on their own experience and worldview. For example the infinitely zoom-able pictures on a detectives computer, most people groan when they see it today but 20yrs ago it was an acceptable plot device because the punters simply did not know what a "pixel" was..

Re:Making meth is even easier

[K. S. Kyosuke]

Soylent Green is Hannibal's dinner!

That was a key plot point of the 1st season...

[Ellis D. Tripp]

Once Walt and Jesse moved beyond making a few ounces at a time, they couldn't get enough OTC pseudoephedrine pills through their small network of "smurfs".

They had already committed to providing 4 pounds of product to a rather psychotic distributor, so Walt decided to use a different synthetic route (P2P from phenylacetic acid via high temperature catalyst, then reductive amination with methylamine and aluminum amalgam), rather than the standard pseudoephedrine reduction using red phosphorus and iodine that they started out with.

Re:That was a key plot point of the 1st season...

[Anonymous Coward]

Once Walt and Jesse moved beyond making a few ounces at a time, they couldn't get enough OTC pseudoephedrine pills through their small network of "smurfs".

Which is unfortunately historically accurate.

The War on Drugs fighting the smurfs means that the large-scale operations can bring it in by the 40-gallon barrel. Meth supply to the street is unaffected, and the only change in my quality of life is that I have to "voluntarily" enter myself into a DEA tracking database for pseudoephedrine if I get a cold and want a decongestant more than the (indistinguishable-from-fucking placebo) phenylephrine.

I hate meth cooks more than I hate meth heads, but neither of them has inconvenienced me in the way that the DEA does every fucking cold season. Legalize it and let the meth heads kill themselves off. Then the cooks will have no customers. At least I'll be able to limit the symptoms of my fucking cold without feeling like a criminal.

I'm looking for a recipe...

[Nova Express]

...of how to cook hard-to-obtain Sudafed by starting with readily available methamphetamine...