Trioxin (Return of the Living Dead)

Trioxin (AKA 2,4,5-Trioxin) is a fictional nerve agent from the "Return of the Living Dead" series of zombie horror films.

Fictional background

Trioxin is depicted as a yellowish or whitish vapor, typically stored under pressure in large steel drums. It was originally developed by the fictitous Darrow Chemical Company for the United States Army as a vapor herbicide to destroy marijuana plants; however, the Army was quite surprised when the gas also restored function to the nervous systems of cadavers, dismembered body parts, and even dead animals and insects. Moreover, trioxin appears to be toxic, and a single exposure to a concentrated amount can both kill a person "and" revive them again.

. They also crave human brains; one zombie explains that brains are required to stave off the pain of decomposition. Unlike other zombies, the only known ways to destroy zombies created by trioxin are by incineration or electrocution. Attempts to destroy the brain or even completely dismember a trioxin zombie have invariably failed.

Though a volatile gas, 2,4,5-Trioxin is fairly stable, and can withstand temperatures in the thousands of degrees. Attempts to cremate trioxin-spawned zombies typically release trioxin gas into the air, where it may contaminate rainclouds. The resulting rainfall is irritating to the skin which often leads victims to assume that it is acid rain when in fact the diluted Trioxin is causing their nerve ends to fire randomly. This "Trioxin shower" is no longer concentrated enough to kill a human but if the contaminated rainwater falls on a location housing corpses, such as a cemetery, it can potentially reanimate every corpse interred there.

According to the "Return of the Living Dead" series, trioxin was the cause of an incident on which the movie "Night of the Living Dead" was based. Since the zombies created by trioxin could not be killed with a shot to the head, unlike the zombies in the film, they were stored in sealed drums for two decades. In "Return of the Living Dead III", it is revealed that the U.S. military is deliberately experimenting with trioxin in an effort to create zombie supersoldiers. This is further explored in "", where most of the plot takes place in a lab for the very purpose.

In ' and ', the chemical is referred to simply as Trioxin 5. This is perhaps purposeful, as in the aforementioned films the reanimated act rather differently than in the first 3 parts, and are easily killed through the traditional headshot (a la George Romero zombies) possibly indicating that a new version of Trioxin was developed specifically in order to be able to destroy the zombies it creates in the event they get out of control.

Real world basis

The concept of 2-4-5 trioxin is basedFact|date=December 2007 in part on Agent Orange, a real-life defoliant used by the Army during the Vietnam War. The two chemicals share a number of similarities: both were used against plants by the United States Army during the 1960s, and both proved to have horrifying side effects. One of the two chemicals used to produce Agent Orange is called "2,4,5-Tri"chlorophenoxyacetic acid. Agent Orange also contained chemicals known as dioxins.

2,4,5-Trioxin should not be mistaken for the real chemical trioxane, which is used by morticians to repair cells and maintain a corpse's contours after postmortem tissue constriction.

Cultural References

2-4-5 trioxin is mentioned in Chapter 70 of as being one of the five demonic inventions of humankind.