No. It sits between those two extremes of lethality. I used to work as a chemical engineer, so here's the math. Feel free to ask about any particular calculation.
You need about 400 parts per million of HCN to kill someone in 5 minutes. (Don't believe me - look it up and see for yourself. Search for "HCN lethal level").
The time needed to kill someone goes up something like proportionally as concentration drops and vice versa. Beneath 50 or 100 ppm its lethality tails off faster. 10 is "safe" for a working day.
If you make a 2000 ppm (0.2%) HCN mix, everyone inside dies very quickly. 1 minute, tops.
Lets say the room has 900 m3 of volume, being a shed 10m long, 30m wide and 3m tall.
The volume flow that escapes through cracks and so on is small. Even at a huge 1% air leakage per second, the volume inside stays at 1000 - 2000 for the 1 minute required (0.99^60 = 54%), so average is just over 1500 ppm. The volume of gas that escapes at 1% over that minute is 540 m3 with average concentration 1500 ppm.
Imagine a "box" extending 10m from the building on all sides. It is 30m long, 50m wide and 13m tall. That's a volume of 19500 m3.
The concentration outside is 540 / 19500 * 1500 = 41 ppm, i.e. a level that would take hours or at least many minutes to kill you.
In reality, the concentration right next to e.g. a wooden door might be quite dangerous, but at 10m away it would actually be much lower than the level I've calculated as the atmosphere acts as a more or less infinite resevoir.
I'm afraid you got lied to.
Note that 1% turnover per second rate is REALLY leaky.
If HCN were CO2, the wooden doors would probably ventilate the place enough.
If it were sarin gas or V2, everyone in the vicinity would be dead.
But HCN kills until diluted, which is why it's a practical choice for gassing people. It's still used regularly today to fumigate ships and fruit.
I bet the people who "expose the truth" never felt like telling you that and I'm damn sure they never told you the math. Why is that?
No. It sits between those two extremes of lethality. I used to work as a chemical engineer, so here's the math. Feel free to ask about any particular calculation. You need about 400 parts per million of HCN to kill someone in 5 minutes. (Don't believe me - look it up and see for yourself. Search for "HCN lethal level").
The time needed to kill someone goes up something like proportionally as concentration drops and vice versa. Beneath 50 or 100 ppm its lethality tails off faster. 10 is "safe" for a working day.
If you make a 2000 ppm (0.2%) HCN mix, everyone inside dies very quickly. 1 minute, tops.
Lets say the room has 900 m3 of volume, being a shed 10m long, 30m wide and 3m tall.
The volume flow that escapes through cracks and so on is small. Even at a huge 1% air leakage per second, the volume inside stays at 1000 - 2000 for the 1 minute required (0.99^60 = 54%), so average is just over 1500 ppm. The volume of gas that escapes at 1% over that minute is 540 m3 with average concentration 1500 ppm.
Imagine a "box" extending 10m from the building on all sides. It is 30m long, 50m wide and 13m tall. That's a volume of 19500 m3. The concentration outside is 540 / 19500 * 1500 = 41 ppm, i.e. a level that would take hours or at least many minutes to kill you.
In reality, the concentration right next to e.g. a wooden door might be quite dangerous, but at 10m away it would actually be much lower than the level I've calculated as the atmosphere acts as a more or less infinite resevoir.
I'm afraid you got lied to. Note that 1% turnover per second rate is REALLY leaky.
If HCN were CO2, the wooden doors would probably ventilate the place enough. If it were sarin gas or V2, everyone in the vicinity would be dead. But HCN kills until diluted, which is why it's a practical choice for gassing people. It's still used regularly today to fumigate ships and fruit.
I bet the people who "expose the truth" never felt like telling you that and I'm damn sure they never told you the math. Why is that?