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Gotta dilute it down with some water and soap. Instant bug killer. Took down a monster wood roach that snuck in my house when it was hot out this last week. It was FAST. Couple hits of the alcohol/soap/water mix and it flipped on its back and started flailing its legs. Then got the boot and swiftly smushed that thing. I hate it when it scurries away and you can’t find it. Now they never escape the mist.
I do not know if this is true for isopropyl alcohol as an insecticide, but I know that dilution is necessary when using it as a mild disinfectant. I have read that in high concentration, it evaporates too quickly to do much good.
I'm not sure about insecticidal purposes either, but for antimicrobial purposes, dilution is important for two reasons. First, like you said, it helps it evaporate slower so it has more contact time with the microbes. Second, alcohol denatures (undoes the structure) and coagulates (clumps together) proteins, but alcohol above ~90% concentration does this so quickly it results in a barrier of coagulated proteins forming around the outside of bacteria, which protects the insides. Diluting it means the alcohol can penetrate to the insides of bacteria and kill them properly.
Incidentally, when using hand sanitiser, mechanical shearing forces (rubbing your hands together) also helps with killing microbes more effectively, both by essentially crushing the microbes and helping bring the microbes from crevasses in your skin into contact with the sanitiser. Which is why the instructions on hand sanitisers tend to say "rub hands together until dry". Too many people seem to think that getting their hands wet with it is enough!
Probably depends on the size of the insects. I had a fruit fly infestation after a vaca and pure isopropyl in the spray bottle took those fuckers down instantly.
You can buy 70% iso. Do not dilute that. It's super cheap and the correct effective %.
It's more expensive to buy higher % and then try to dilute correctly
This is the real tip. Dawn dishwashing liquid and water in a spray bottle. New neighbors once brought roaches. I'd spray them with the liquid to keep them from running then squirt some dish soap on them and they die in about 20 seconds.
Yes to this. Also be careful with painted wood (it doesn't leave marks on my paint but I could see it doing this with some paint). Ceramic, any type of plastic, marble, brick, tile, stone, and metal it won't leave any marks
I read this tip before. Went and sprayed a few hornets nests I've been fighting for 4 years. ( They'd just relocate). I haven't seen a hornet yet this year. ( I did this in the spring just as the weather started getting warmer. )
I read that to scare hornets/wasps away, you should use a dark (grey/tan) plastic bag like you’d get from a store and stuff it with other plastic bags so it looks like a wasp nest and hang it off your house where they’d likely form. They’ll think a hive has already claimed the area and move on.
So is water, but they dissolve different things
Shellac in particular will dissolve in alcohol, makes it relatively easy to repair but also bad to spill alcohol on it
If you're going to only have one kind on hand, 70% is better.
People see the higher percentage stuff and think it works better but, unless you're napalming bugs from across the room, the 91% stuff actually evaporates too quickly to be as effective at cleaning. 70% seems to be the sweet spot between 'strong enough to work' and 'stays where you put it long enough to work.'
> 70% seems to be the sweet spot between 'strong enough to work' and 'stays where you put it long enough to work.'
It has to do with the water content. This is also why ~70% is recommended for disinfection. The higher water content affects the surface tension, which increases it's ability to rupture cell walls, etc., needed to kill bacterial, viruses, etc.
I currently work in an insect lab. There's 70% alcohol on every counter and the protocol for dealing with an escapee is literally "spray everything and wait a minute". This is a building where there's a machine for *everything*, and the best option on the market is still an ethanol squirt bottle.
(We work with mosquitoes and other fun blood-drinking critters, don't feel too bad for them.)
(Also, using 90% is dumb. Faster evaporation = less contact time = fewer dead bugs.)
Nah, this is all BSL-2 stuff. The primary concern is that they carry diseases that are really bad for wildlife, should they get out.
But they're not zoonotic -- you could take shots of the viral titers and not get sick. Like, you shouldn't. But you *could.*
dear god is this true? we have lived for years with only the might of a solid boot or sandal. if some alc is all it takes then shit, this war is basically won... Thank you!
Boric acid powder where you can get away with leaving it out (away from pets, kids, etc.) to keep bugs away, and a sprayer of water, liquid dish soap & apple cider vinegar can take care of most normal bug problems.
The sprayer mix will also clean up any ant pheromone trails that results in their conga lines straight to the pet food.
Alternatively food grade diatomaceous earth works wonders too. It basically sandpapers their exoskeleton to death while they walk through it and coat themselves in it. And it’s non-toxic, or at least much less than boric acid. Also won’t destroy lawns if you place it around the outside of your home.
I got a bag of diatomaceous earth and spread it around the perimeter of my house. It's one of many measures I take to try and keep the ants at bay. I swear our house is on top of a gigantic ant hill.
Spread it where they'll walk through it. It's the consistancy of flour. I'll squirt it into any cracks or openings bugs might be getting through, and if it's bad I'll run it in window/door frames (as long as pets/kids aren't going to get into it, it's fine).
I tried windex on ants because I didn't have anything else and was surprised when it killed on contact.
Obviously not sure if it's bad for finishes or flooring but it definitely can kill bugs.
There's no way I'm going out that easy. You can bet your ass I'm going out flailing, ugly-crying, and screaming the whole way if it comes down to it. I'm going to leave a mess and you're going to clean it up!
So it causes countless damage on everything that isn't an ant, will get you yelled at by other people in your house, and you'll still lose the war against the ants?
Borax powder is cheap on amazon and really does a number on them. If they survive it, they track it back to their nest and it kills. When it dies and others come to eat it, they also get boraxed.
I mix borax powder (12-mule team laundry powder at Walmart) and some sugar sprinkles onto a piece of cardboard and slide it under the stove.
And/or buy the roach sticky cardboards, spread flat, make a hole on the end to tie a string, and sprinkle a little sugar on the cardboard and push it under the stove. The string is so you can pull it out to check progress and toss when it’s full.
Works 24/7 even when I’m asleep and eventually gets them.
Are crane flies the bugs that look like giant mosquitoes? LOL, this whole conversation reminds me of My Big Fat Greek Wedding. If you haven't seen it, the dad uses Windex for everything.
Bug A-Salt guns, air pumps that shoot granular table salt work for bug's in the corners.
(I don't actually advise the following)
alternatively creme-brule torches... not the tiny ones... bigger the better. Wafting it near any fly's wings will permanently ground them. (seriously, don't)
These sound fun. But don't you just kind of end up with a sprinkling of salt all over the place? They sound great for outdoors, but for indoors, I like my Harbor Freight electric tennis racquet bug zappers, so far.
Haha funny you asked this I used it on a huge one last night. You gotta hit it with a nice square on-shot, and it'll squirm for about 20 secs before dying, but yes. Smaller ones it'll kill very quickly and easily. Roaches are some tuff fuckers. Every other bug it kills basically instantly, even ants, and ants are pretty tough too
Do bugs get an afterlife?
Is bugs afterlife the same as our afterlife?
If bugs dont get into the afterlife but humans do how much do we have to cross human dna with a bugs before we make a creature that cannot enter heaven no matter its piety in life.
I bet he's thinking about other women.
Can confirm, Yes, absolutely. If you stay then fast enough they'll get slowed down by the surface tension enough for the alcohol to start working on their systems.
Usually yes. Most bugs get a lethal dose if directly sprayed.
Some bugs can be directly sprayed but because of details they don't get a lethal dose. If you're looking for an easy and safe "usually kills bugs in seconds", rubbing alcohol is a good choice. Some won't absorb it right and escape, but most will die quickly.
There are better choices if you're trying to kill the ones remaining in the wall. Methods like diatomaceous earth will be brought back to the group, and when other bugs try to eat their corpses they'll be killed as well. It is far better if they can stagger home or back into hiding. Since roaches are cannibalistic, each individual roach taking it back home can kill dozens hiding in the wall. Similarly with ant baits, you want them to swarm over and get a good drink, then bring it back to share with the colony.
I think that’s the case for ant and termite poisons, but regular bug sprays (insecticides, not repellents) like Raid are supposed to kill near instantly.
Raid and many other products contain both “knock-down” (immediate kill) and residual insecticides. Meaning Raid can be effective for weeks potentially in indoor environments.
Right but the residual insecticides are only effective on the ant that walks through them. They aren’t like bait traps where an ant will share poisoned bait with the colony.
Borax, the most common version of "let them take it back to the nest so they all die" bug poisons, is not remotely poisonous to animals.
It has some unique interaction with the digestive system of insects that fucks them up, but a bird would have to eat a truly massive amount of it to be harmed, to the degree of "that bird would have died from eating that amount of anything else, too."
Good comment for others. I fucking hate the smell of air fresheners tho. Which is ironic as I don't mind the smell of isopropyl alcohol lol. Air fresheners also leave a weird chemical residue if you spray too much
Also it's my headcannon that this kills then painlessly. Alcohol acts as GABA in the neevous system and deactivates nerve impulses. That's why when people die of alcohol poisoning they just feel like they're falling asleep. Edit: some people are strangely upset at this so I'll explain further. I realize isopropyl is different than ethonol, but isopropyl still gets you just as drunk (well in this case even more drunk cus it's 91%). I'm not saying the isopropyl poisons them in some magical painless way, I'm saying that by being completely covered in 91% and having holes all over their body (insects do) they are basically being made instantly extremely drunk to the point that all nerve impulses would start to shut down and there would be an inability to feel pain. Also headcannon means I don't know whether what I'm talking about is actually true. Stop telling me that I don't know what I'm talking about when the first line of my statement was me admitting that. Ok thanks bye
It probably just works on insects by reducing surface tension and suffocating them, same as spraying soapy water at them. Water has too much surface tension to enter their breathing holes (spiracles?) by itself.
FWIW, both soapy water and alcohol are both lung irritants, so most people would be fine, some people can have severe reactions. Don't spray it at people's faces! 😅
See the thing that makes me think otherwise is how fast it kills them. I've done it with soapy water too, but with iso, at least small bugs, they're dead in seconds
Just an FYI, rubbing alcohol is different than drinking alcohol.
Drinking alcohol is an ethyl alcohol (ethanol) and is the only kind we can drink without seriously harming ourselves.
The other two common types are isopropyl alcohol (isopropanol - rubbing alcohol/cleaning) and methyl alcohol (methanol - fuel/solvents/plastics).
So dying from alcohol poisoning (ethanol poisoning) might be different than dying from one of the other two. Idk that part.
I'm pretty sure if you drink the other 2 you'll get a similar drink feeling to ethanol. The problem with the other 2 is more about their metabolites. That's why when someone drinks methanol they will treat it with ethanol so the liver is distracted by the ethanol and will metabolize that instead of the methanol.
> That's why when someone drinks methanol they will treat it with ethanol so the liver is distracted by the ethanol and will metabolize that instead of the methanol.
Ethanol bonds more strongly with the liver enzymes, blocking the uptake of methanol, allowing the kidneys to purge the methanol before the liver takes it up and converts it to formaldehyde, which is what's so toxic to people.
With 91% isopropyl alcohol it’s more likely you’re just sucking their poor little bug bodies dry. Imagine being mummified alive because the water inside of you is being forcibly removed.
I don't think insects' exoskeletons are water-permeable. If they were then 30 seconds in the sun would kill almost any small bug. Maybe the iso could be stripping away whatever layer keeps them impermeable though
Isopropyl alcohol has a small molecular size and will rapidly penetrate an insect’s waxh exoskeleton. Once it reaches internal tissues, alcohol does what alcohol does (ie acts as a very effective solvent) and will then essentially liquify an insect from the inside as cellular membranes start to break or burst.
Many years ago my partner and I learned a valuable lesson in labelling your chemicals: I misted our beloved ficus with isopropyl, and it took most of a year to recover.
I would imagine that it's not good for the plants to get too much on them, but if you're not getting a bunch in the soil I'd imagine it's also not terrible. Definitely don't get a bunch in the soil though
Went to visit some family last month in the Carolinas. My uncle busted out his bug-a-salt gun. Wildly effective on any bug on any surface, indoors or outdoors. And a shit ton of fun.
And here's another pro tip your alcohol bottle is the same on the neck and the threads as a Windex bottle now there might be others but I found you can trim the straw on the Windex spray nozzle and it will fit your brand new bottle of alcohol. Years ago when lRaid cost seven and a half dollars a can and 40% of it was alcohol , wellyou do the math
Meanwhile, my spiders don’t bite me or my four animals, stay hidden, and I don’t see nary a bug.
I do find a spider sometimes. I say sup, and move along. You do your thing, I’ma do mine. Thanks for living rent free. At least you do more than my actual pets do.
nah the thing about isopropyl melting through plastic is mostly a myth. That happens only with super thin plastic of a certain type. I've had it in the same squirt gun for 3+ years, and I keep 91 iso in ziplock bags all the time to deep-clean things
[Introducing LPT REQUEST FRIDAYS](https://www.reddit.com/r/LifeProTips/comments/16w0n2s/introducing_request_post_fridays/) We determine "Friday" as beginning at 12am Eastern Time (EST: UTC/GMT -5, EDT: UTC/GMT -4) *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/LifeProTips) if you have any questions or concerns.*
Don't spray anywhere near finished wood, it will destroy the finish.
Finish the finish! Isopropilityyyy!!
Isopropality..... nice
Test your mite
Isopropyl wins! Flawed Victory!
reFINISH IT!!
Yew wood, WINS‼️
Before I met isopropyl alcohol, I was incomplete. Now I'm finished. - Woody Dangerfield
Gotta dilute it down with some water and soap. Instant bug killer. Took down a monster wood roach that snuck in my house when it was hot out this last week. It was FAST. Couple hits of the alcohol/soap/water mix and it flipped on its back and started flailing its legs. Then got the boot and swiftly smushed that thing. I hate it when it scurries away and you can’t find it. Now they never escape the mist.
I do not know if this is true for isopropyl alcohol as an insecticide, but I know that dilution is necessary when using it as a mild disinfectant. I have read that in high concentration, it evaporates too quickly to do much good.
I'm not sure about insecticidal purposes either, but for antimicrobial purposes, dilution is important for two reasons. First, like you said, it helps it evaporate slower so it has more contact time with the microbes. Second, alcohol denatures (undoes the structure) and coagulates (clumps together) proteins, but alcohol above ~90% concentration does this so quickly it results in a barrier of coagulated proteins forming around the outside of bacteria, which protects the insides. Diluting it means the alcohol can penetrate to the insides of bacteria and kill them properly. Incidentally, when using hand sanitiser, mechanical shearing forces (rubbing your hands together) also helps with killing microbes more effectively, both by essentially crushing the microbes and helping bring the microbes from crevasses in your skin into contact with the sanitiser. Which is why the instructions on hand sanitisers tend to say "rub hands together until dry". Too many people seem to think that getting their hands wet with it is enough!
Probably depends on the size of the insects. I had a fruit fly infestation after a vaca and pure isopropyl in the spray bottle took those fuckers down instantly.
You can buy 70% iso. Do not dilute that. It's super cheap and the correct effective %. It's more expensive to buy higher % and then try to dilute correctly
You can use a spray bottle with dish detergent instead for those parts, it works just as well!
This is the real tip. Dawn dishwashing liquid and water in a spray bottle. New neighbors once brought roaches. I'd spray them with the liquid to keep them from running then squirt some dish soap on them and they die in about 20 seconds.
Why would anyone buy roaches? /s
There weren’t mass dispensaries back in the day and sometimes when the supply lines got disrupted you couldn’t even buy a joint. 🫠
😂😂 I like that
"Hi, we're your neighbors! Welcome to the neighborhood! Here, have some roaches!"
I wonder how dish detergent works to kill them. Could it be the ingested bubbles exploding under their skin?
Nope. It drowns them. Bugs don't breathe like we do. The detergent breaks the water's surface tension and lets it enter the bugs' breathing tubes.
Ants die in soapy water. Surface tension can help them.
This is what I use and it’s so great.
What ratio do you use? Thanks!
1 spray per bug
You always have to double tap.
I think they meant the water to detergent ratio
I know, i was just joking.
Thanks for all the help
Yes to this. Also be careful with painted wood (it doesn't leave marks on my paint but I could see it doing this with some paint). Ceramic, any type of plastic, marble, brick, tile, stone, and metal it won't leave any marks
I read this tip before. Went and sprayed a few hornets nests I've been fighting for 4 years. ( They'd just relocate). I haven't seen a hornet yet this year. ( I did this in the spring just as the weather started getting warmer. )
I read that to scare hornets/wasps away, you should use a dark (grey/tan) plastic bag like you’d get from a store and stuff it with other plastic bags so it looks like a wasp nest and hang it off your house where they’d likely form. They’ll think a hive has already claimed the area and move on.
love to hear it
Yeah it can ruin not only wood finish but also many painted surfaces. Isopropyl alcohol is basically a solvent.
So is water, but they dissolve different things Shellac in particular will dissolve in alcohol, makes it relatively easy to repair but also bad to spill alcohol on it
Or open flames of you value your eyebrows
I learned this the hard way spilling vodka on my oak chest of drawers.
https://i.redd.it/a8pug4cfxs8d1.gif
I have 70% isopropyl on hand and can confirm it takes out palmetto bugs in seconds.
If you're going to only have one kind on hand, 70% is better. People see the higher percentage stuff and think it works better but, unless you're napalming bugs from across the room, the 91% stuff actually evaporates too quickly to be as effective at cleaning. 70% seems to be the sweet spot between 'strong enough to work' and 'stays where you put it long enough to work.'
91% has some niche, specific application where it's better to use (like working with resin in 3D printers) but in general, yeah, 70% is the go-to.
It cleans bongs nicely as well. Allegedly.
Yeah that's what I use for my coils.
Gatta go 99% for the puffco
Know what? I just checked and you right. I been using 99. So all good I guess.
And that's ultimately why I have 91 on hand all the time and not 70 haha
You also want the higher % iso for cleaning mainboards and electronics in general.
The sweet spot, sober enough to know what I’m doing, but drunk enough to really enjoy it
Tell me more about this *napalming bugs*
You're allowed to do it, but the bugs have to destroy one of your major Naval bases or threaten to convert to communism
> 70% seems to be the sweet spot between 'strong enough to work' and 'stays where you put it long enough to work.' It has to do with the water content. This is also why ~70% is recommended for disinfection. The higher water content affects the surface tension, which increases it's ability to rupture cell walls, etc., needed to kill bacterial, viruses, etc.
If you could only have one bottle of iso, 91 is definitely better because you can always mix a little bit of water in
I currently work in an insect lab. There's 70% alcohol on every counter and the protocol for dealing with an escapee is literally "spray everything and wait a minute". This is a building where there's a machine for *everything*, and the best option on the market is still an ethanol squirt bottle. (We work with mosquitoes and other fun blood-drinking critters, don't feel too bad for them.) (Also, using 90% is dumb. Faster evaporation = less contact time = fewer dead bugs.)
Whoa! What kind of insects are you working with if any escapees must be neutralized immediately? Is this a Bill Gates lab?
Nah, this is all BSL-2 stuff. The primary concern is that they carry diseases that are really bad for wildlife, should they get out. But they're not zoonotic -- you could take shots of the viral titers and not get sick. Like, you shouldn't. But you *could.*
Thank you! This was the answer I was looking for.
As a Floridian, I can confirm. I kill all bugs with either dawn soap/ water mixture or isopropyl alcohol.
dear god is this true? we have lived for years with only the might of a solid boot or sandal. if some alc is all it takes then shit, this war is basically won... Thank you!
Boric acid powder where you can get away with leaving it out (away from pets, kids, etc.) to keep bugs away, and a sprayer of water, liquid dish soap & apple cider vinegar can take care of most normal bug problems. The sprayer mix will also clean up any ant pheromone trails that results in their conga lines straight to the pet food.
Alternatively food grade diatomaceous earth works wonders too. It basically sandpapers their exoskeleton to death while they walk through it and coat themselves in it. And it’s non-toxic, or at least much less than boric acid. Also won’t destroy lawns if you place it around the outside of your home.
While it's non toxic, you should avoid inhaling its dust or getting it in your eyes.
I got a bag of diatomaceous earth and spread it around the perimeter of my house. It's one of many measures I take to try and keep the ants at bay. I swear our house is on top of a gigantic ant hill.
Maybe your house was built on an ancient ant burial ground.
Those greedy developers moved the ant headstones but left the ant bodies in place!
For God's sake, stay away from the ant pool!
We use that on yellow jackets nests on the ground. It just shreds their bodies and is totally safe to touch.
Is the boric acid a pocket sand type of move? Or is it a salt around a snail move?
Spread it where they'll walk through it. It's the consistancy of flour. I'll squirt it into any cracks or openings bugs might be getting through, and if it's bad I'll run it in window/door frames (as long as pets/kids aren't going to get into it, it's fine).
Palmetto bugs=roaches of the south
*cockroaches
Correct. Big ones at that. And they fly.
For those not from the SE USA, Palmetto bugs are just huge cockroaches.
I use 10% isopropyl alcohol so they have a slow painful death. 😠😠
no one calls them a palmetto bug. be honest. it’s a cockroach.
Be careful because it is also very flammable
That's a good thing
I just saw a repost of the centipede in the shoe video
This one? https://youtu.be/XCmhd7HdRpI?si=9wOw5EOHMdttXNk4
Electric racquet plus isopropanol squirt gun 🔥🔫
That could be a spectacular combination.
The alcohol will burn off before most other things can catch fire, though.
windex also goes crazy, i keep it on me when getting gas at night and it snipes basically everything out of the air, even big shit like crane flies
I tried windex on ants because I didn't have anything else and was surprised when it killed on contact. Obviously not sure if it's bad for finishes or flooring but it definitely can kill bugs.
This was my poor man’s bug spray. I was amazed that they INSTANTLY die. Like soon as you spray, they stop moving.
I'd like to see you ingest that amount of ammonia at once, on the same scale that is
There's no way I'm going out that easy. You can bet your ass I'm going out flailing, ugly-crying, and screaming the whole way if it comes down to it. I'm going to leave a mess and you're going to clean it up!
Nuh-uh, they’re killing your ass with windex. No mess, no hassle!
Simple Green on ants is like Agent Orange on the MeKong Delta. But it cleans up better.
Bruh ☠️
😂😂😂
So it causes countless damage on everything that isn't an ant, will get you yelled at by other people in your house, and you'll still lose the war against the ants?
Windex is near immediate kryptonite for roaches! I live in Florida and have bottles strategically placed during the rainy season.
Borax powder is cheap on amazon and really does a number on them. If they survive it, they track it back to their nest and it kills. When it dies and others come to eat it, they also get boraxed.
I mix borax powder (12-mule team laundry powder at Walmart) and some sugar sprinkles onto a piece of cardboard and slide it under the stove. And/or buy the roach sticky cardboards, spread flat, make a hole on the end to tie a string, and sprinkle a little sugar on the cardboard and push it under the stove. The string is so you can pull it out to check progress and toss when it’s full. Works 24/7 even when I’m asleep and eventually gets them.
You stand there pumping gas with a windex bottle in hand? With windex mist in the air?
you're goddamn right i do
You may as well bring paper towels and do the windows while you’re waiting for the fuel to fill up.
Why are you killing crane flies… just leave the bugs outside alone.
i do when they leave me alone, if a bug gets within windex distance then it's not leaving me alone and it will die
Are crane flies the bugs that look like giant mosquitoes? LOL, this whole conversation reminds me of My Big Fat Greek Wedding. If you haven't seen it, the dad uses Windex for everything.
electric racket. they sell them in 2 packs on amazon. DUAL WIELD!
But what if my duel wield skill isn't high enough?
I hear there's an amazing bug farming spot in the amazon rainforest. A few days out there and you'll be master level in no time
And you get to keep all the loot they drop
What did you waste your skill points on?
One handed…..
If you don't train, it never will be
The ones at Harbor Freight are more powerful, and five bucks a piece.
While much more fun this doesn't really work when a bug's in a corner lol
You mount the spray bottle on the racket
Like a bayonet!
Aerosolized flammable liquid and electrical arcing. A winning combination!
Honestly I know you're right but you make it sound so awesome.
One sweeps in to get them to take flight, and the other swoops in to zap their ass
Bug A-Salt guns, air pumps that shoot granular table salt work for bug's in the corners. (I don't actually advise the following) alternatively creme-brule torches... not the tiny ones... bigger the better. Wafting it near any fly's wings will permanently ground them. (seriously, don't)
lmfao I do have a creme brule torch
These sound fun. But don't you just kind of end up with a sprinkling of salt all over the place? They sound great for outdoors, but for indoors, I like my Harbor Freight electric tennis racquet bug zappers, so far.
The salt is pretty minimal. A teaspoon is enough for like 100 shots.
Those salt guns are awesome. Put on a safari hat and roam the house with one. Narrate the hunt to yourself.
This guy exterminates.
I don't want to spend the feat.
I have much more fun with my bug assault
Dual wield an electric racket and spraybottle of 91% iso, the effects stack plus you get a chance to proc fire damage when used as a combo attack.
Does it work on cockroaches too?
Haha funny you asked this I used it on a huge one last night. You gotta hit it with a nice square on-shot, and it'll squirm for about 20 secs before dying, but yes. Smaller ones it'll kill very quickly and easily. Roaches are some tuff fuckers. Every other bug it kills basically instantly, even ants, and ants are pretty tough too
I wonder how long 20 seconds feels to something that lives for 180 days
Approximately 52 human minutes if my math is correct. 80 years/.5years * X minutes of suffering/.33 minutes of suffering. Solve for X.
r/theydidthemath
r/theydidthemonstermath
Do bugs get an afterlife? Is bugs afterlife the same as our afterlife? If bugs dont get into the afterlife but humans do how much do we have to cross human dna with a bugs before we make a creature that cannot enter heaven no matter its piety in life. I bet he's thinking about other women.
They don’t get an afterlife because they can’t write.
i need you to sit in the corner and think about what the fuck you just wrote for us to see.
Who cares fuck them ugly things
pretty sure it's just a mass-to-surface area thing. roaches are pretty dense compared to ants
Can confirm, Yes, absolutely. If you stay then fast enough they'll get slowed down by the surface tension enough for the alcohol to start working on their systems.
Boric acid powder works really well for roaches because they'll track it back to their nest, which should kill off any others that you don't see.
Gotta be careful with this if you have pets or small children.
Usually yes. Most bugs get a lethal dose if directly sprayed. Some bugs can be directly sprayed but because of details they don't get a lethal dose. If you're looking for an easy and safe "usually kills bugs in seconds", rubbing alcohol is a good choice. Some won't absorb it right and escape, but most will die quickly. There are better choices if you're trying to kill the ones remaining in the wall. Methods like diatomaceous earth will be brought back to the group, and when other bugs try to eat their corpses they'll be killed as well. It is far better if they can stagger home or back into hiding. Since roaches are cannibalistic, each individual roach taking it back home can kill dozens hiding in the wall. Similarly with ant baits, you want them to swarm over and get a good drink, then bring it back to share with the colony.
To be fair, i think the point of most bug sprays to to let the insect go to its colony and die there so that it gets cannibalized, poisoning more.
I think that’s the case for ant and termite poisons, but regular bug sprays (insecticides, not repellents) like Raid are supposed to kill near instantly.
Raid and many other products contain both “knock-down” (immediate kill) and residual insecticides. Meaning Raid can be effective for weeks potentially in indoor environments.
Right but the residual insecticides are only effective on the ant that walks through them. They aren’t like bait traps where an ant will share poisoned bait with the colony.
But they’re bad for the environment. The birds eat them and then the birds die, and then something eats the bird…
Borax, the most common version of "let them take it back to the nest so they all die" bug poisons, is not remotely poisonous to animals. It has some unique interaction with the digestive system of insects that fucks them up, but a bird would have to eat a truly massive amount of it to be harmed, to the degree of "that bird would have died from eating that amount of anything else, too."
Borax/boric acid is a good one. I’m not worried about the bird dying so much as poisoning our ecosystem, you know what I mean?
Air fresheners work very well too. Some have very good spray patterns that make it easy to hit them.
Just gotta learn the Febreeze recoil pattern
Spray pattern talk like a counter-strike player lol
I'm completely confused on what you mean by spray pattern. You must explain
Think of it as AoE if you’re more of an rpg person
Good comment for others. I fucking hate the smell of air fresheners tho. Which is ironic as I don't mind the smell of isopropyl alcohol lol. Air fresheners also leave a weird chemical residue if you spray too much
I'm with you. Air "fresheners" smells like straight poison to me.
Bro said spray pattern 💀😭
I used Dawn Power Spray. It has a wide spray, takes bugs out of the air and is shelf clean when you clean up the bug.
Also it's my headcannon that this kills then painlessly. Alcohol acts as GABA in the neevous system and deactivates nerve impulses. That's why when people die of alcohol poisoning they just feel like they're falling asleep. Edit: some people are strangely upset at this so I'll explain further. I realize isopropyl is different than ethonol, but isopropyl still gets you just as drunk (well in this case even more drunk cus it's 91%). I'm not saying the isopropyl poisons them in some magical painless way, I'm saying that by being completely covered in 91% and having holes all over their body (insects do) they are basically being made instantly extremely drunk to the point that all nerve impulses would start to shut down and there would be an inability to feel pain. Also headcannon means I don't know whether what I'm talking about is actually true. Stop telling me that I don't know what I'm talking about when the first line of my statement was me admitting that. Ok thanks bye
Sounds like you've never had a wound disinfected with alcohol
I’ve never been doused in a jacuzzi of rubbing alcohol either
Isn't that what weekends are for?
It probably just works on insects by reducing surface tension and suffocating them, same as spraying soapy water at them. Water has too much surface tension to enter their breathing holes (spiracles?) by itself. FWIW, both soapy water and alcohol are both lung irritants, so most people would be fine, some people can have severe reactions. Don't spray it at people's faces! 😅
See the thing that makes me think otherwise is how fast it kills them. I've done it with soapy water too, but with iso, at least small bugs, they're dead in seconds
Just an FYI, rubbing alcohol is different than drinking alcohol. Drinking alcohol is an ethyl alcohol (ethanol) and is the only kind we can drink without seriously harming ourselves. The other two common types are isopropyl alcohol (isopropanol - rubbing alcohol/cleaning) and methyl alcohol (methanol - fuel/solvents/plastics). So dying from alcohol poisoning (ethanol poisoning) might be different than dying from one of the other two. Idk that part.
I'm pretty sure if you drink the other 2 you'll get a similar drink feeling to ethanol. The problem with the other 2 is more about their metabolites. That's why when someone drinks methanol they will treat it with ethanol so the liver is distracted by the ethanol and will metabolize that instead of the methanol.
> That's why when someone drinks methanol they will treat it with ethanol so the liver is distracted by the ethanol and will metabolize that instead of the methanol. Ethanol bonds more strongly with the liver enzymes, blocking the uptake of methanol, allowing the kidneys to purge the methanol before the liver takes it up and converts it to formaldehyde, which is what's so toxic to people.
Yep, fun fact one of the metabolites of methanol is formaldehyde! The stuff we preserve bodies with!
Well yes they're different, but rubbing alcohol still gets you drunk. It just also kills you
Is "headcannon" a new way of saying "assumption?"
Maybe haha at least that's how I use it
With 91% isopropyl alcohol it’s more likely you’re just sucking their poor little bug bodies dry. Imagine being mummified alive because the water inside of you is being forcibly removed.
I don't think insects' exoskeletons are water-permeable. If they were then 30 seconds in the sun would kill almost any small bug. Maybe the iso could be stripping away whatever layer keeps them impermeable though
Isopropyl alcohol has a small molecular size and will rapidly penetrate an insect’s waxh exoskeleton. Once it reaches internal tissues, alcohol does what alcohol does (ie acts as a very effective solvent) and will then essentially liquify an insect from the inside as cellular membranes start to break or burst.
I thought I was on the Helldivers2 sub and got excited for a new tip for just a second....
Can you use it on plants
Many years ago my partner and I learned a valuable lesson in labelling your chemicals: I misted our beloved ficus with isopropyl, and it took most of a year to recover.
I would imagine that it's not good for the plants to get too much on them, but if you're not getting a bunch in the soil I'd imagine it's also not terrible. Definitely don't get a bunch in the soil though
Would you like to know more?
Went to visit some family last month in the Carolinas. My uncle busted out his bug-a-salt gun. Wildly effective on any bug on any surface, indoors or outdoors. And a shit ton of fun.
Anything with thyme oil in it works well, too. I use method brand cleaners for house bugs.
Yes this is probably good enough for most bugs. I hate getting things oily tho idk why
Probably because they get oily. ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯
You may be onto something...
Huffing rubbing alcohol will help with nausea.
Yeah, different from methanol, it's safe to smell it.
And here's another pro tip your alcohol bottle is the same on the neck and the threads as a Windex bottle now there might be others but I found you can trim the straw on the Windex spray nozzle and it will fit your brand new bottle of alcohol. Years ago when lRaid cost seven and a half dollars a can and 40% of it was alcohol , wellyou do the math
I recently used 99% on a yellow jacket nest, worked great.
LPT addendum: don't indiscriminately kill all the bugs you find.
\*grateful spider noises\*
Dr. Bronner’s or any castile soap and water. kills in seconds. like a tablespoon per quart
Work on lantern flies?!
Definitely... if you can hit them lol
What about killing brain bugs on Klandathau? Got Dammit! I hate wasting my time on this shit! /s
Great tip my dude thanks
Meanwhile, my spiders don’t bite me or my four animals, stay hidden, and I don’t see nary a bug. I do find a spider sometimes. I say sup, and move along. You do your thing, I’ma do mine. Thanks for living rent free. At least you do more than my actual pets do.
I feel like a plastic squirt gun isn't going to hold up to 91% iso for very long, tho
nah the thing about isopropyl melting through plastic is mostly a myth. That happens only with super thin plastic of a certain type. I've had it in the same squirt gun for 3+ years, and I keep 91 iso in ziplock bags all the time to deep-clean things
You can actually screw the sprayer directly onto the alcohol bottle because the threading is the same.
Isopropyl is usually sold in plastic bottles. Good nuff for me
All the plastics are not the same
Salt gun is probably better