Blue roaring when she gets tranquilized in the neck from Carfentanil
Carfentanil or carfentanyl is an analog of the synthetic opioid analgesic fentanyl. A unit of carfentanil is 100 times as potent as the same amount of fentanyl, 5,000 times as potent as a unit of heroin and 10,000 times as potent as a unit of morphine. Carfentanil was first synthesized in 1974 by a team of chemists at Janssen Pharmaceutica which included Paul Janssen. It is classified as Schedule II under the Controlled Substances Act in the United States with a DEA ACSCN of 9743 and a 2016 annual aggregate manufacturing quota of 19 grams (less than 0.7 oz.).
The Lost World: Jurassic Park[]
Carfentanil was the anesthetic of choice for the InGen Hunters. Dieter Stark shot a Parasaurolophus nicknamed "Elvis" with some during the hunters' roundup of the dinosaurs under Peter Ludlow's supervision.
Roland Tembo used a dart of carfentanil to subdue the Tyrannosaur buck after Nick Van Owen stole the ammunition for his rifle. When the first dose didn't have any effect, Roland, with the dinosaur bearing down on him, loaded and fired a second dart. This put the animal down.
Unfortunately, this caused it to go into respiratory arrest. The crew of S.S. Venture administered an amphetamine during the voyage from Isla Sorna to San Diego, causing the T. rex to awaken and kill everyone on board. The Venture then crashed into the InGen Waterfront Complex, causing the San Diego Incident. Later, Dr. Sarah Harding used a dose of carfentanil to subdue the dinosaur after both he and his offspring had been lured back to the Venture.
Jurassic World[]
Before the Jurassic World incident, a Pachycephalosaurus that had escaped its enclosure was recaptured and tranquilized, most likely with carfentanil. Lowery Cruthers later comments that "it's very stoned" after his colleague shows Claire Dearing why the Western Plains were momentarily closed.
Although never explicitly stated, it's possible that the Asset Containment Unit and Park Rangers, aided by Owen Grady, used carfentanil in their dart guns during the attack on Main Street by scores of angry Pteranodons and Dimorphodons. They succeeded in bringing several of the flying reptiles down, with even manager Claire Dearing grabbing a gun and shooting a particularly vicious Dimorphodon that was attacking Owen several times, likely overdosing and killing the animal.
Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom[]
When the mercenaries betrayed the Dinosaur Protection Group, one of them shot Blue with a dart of carfentanil. The drug didn't take effect quickly enough, and she was able to attack and kill one of the mercenaries before finally collapsing due to a combination of the tranquilizer and a gunshot wound. Ken Wheatley also shot Owen Grady with one. Dr. Zia Rodriguez pulled the dart out of Owen before it had a chance to fully inject its full dose, however, allowing Owen to recover and escape the lava flow after Wheatley and his men abandoned him to die. The mercenaries, like their predecessors, used carfentanil as their tranquilizer of choice, with Wheatley pulling teeth from drugged dinosaurs to add to his dinosaur teeth collection.
At Lockwood Manor, following the failure of the Lockwood Manor Auction, Wheatley shot the Indoraptor with two darts of the drug in the hopes of tranquilizing him so he could obtain one of his teeth. However, even two darts' worth of carfentanil failed to instantly knock the hybrid unconscious, and he proceeded to dismember and eat Wheatley before also slaughtering Gunnar Eversol and an entire elevator full of people.
Dr. Henry Wu ordered his team of scientists to gather everything up to evacuate as a result of the escape of the Indoraptor. He ordered one to get him 50 CCs of carfentanil to use to tranquilize the captive Blue so he could get a blood sample from her, rather than take the entire Velociraptor with him, little suspecting the "scientist" was in fact Franklin Webb in disguise. While Wu was arguing with a captive Zia about whether or not she would cooperate in helping him take a blood sample, Franklin sneaked up behind Wu and jammed a syringe full of the carfentanil he'd asked for into his neck, knocking the scientist out instantly.
Jurassic World: Dominion[]
While Alan Grant, Owen Grady, and Maisie Lockwood were at the Biosyn Sanctuary, they found Beta the juvenile Velociraptor, and managed to tranquilize her with carfentanil when she charged at them.
Gallery[]
Behind the scenes[]
- Multiple characters in Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom including Owen Grady and Henry Wu are sedated with this drug. Carfentanil is an extremely potent narcotic and has a lethal human dose in the micrograms, meaning any human injected with a dinosaur-sized dosage of it would experience fatal respiratory failure. Owen recovers fairly quickly without suffering any lingering side effects and Wu seemingly survives as well.
- Owen is tranquilized with a dart of carfentanil which is 10,000 times potent than morphine. The amount that would be needed to take down a 500 pound raptor (who also have an extremely fast metabolism) would be many times the fatal dosage for a human; the median lethal dosage of carfentanil for a human is 10 micrograms (equal to 0.01 milligrams). The dose used on Blue was one full milligram (1.0mg), so there would be no way Owen would have lived, let alone regain consciousness, without being given a opioid antagonist like naloxone (possibly in multiple back-to-back doses until the carfentanil was completely eliminated from his system). However, if paying attention closely, one can see the dart was only half-full when Zia removed it from Owen, so it's possible he only received half the dose Blue did.