Try this thought experiment. Next time your are out at a mall or on the sidewalk, look at the person in front of you and convince yourself that you are going to punch them in the back of their head as hard as you can. Don't just tell yourself that--make yourself believe it. Make a fist. Clench your fist hard. Increase your pace to close on them. In your mind, keep telling yourself that you will strike as soon as you're close enough. Tense your arm. Imagine the impact. Even draw your fist back a little bit. Obviously, don't actually hit any strangers.

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Next time your are out at a mall or on the sidewalk, look at the person in front of you and convince yourself that you are going to punch them in the back of their head as hard as you can. Don't just tell yourself that--make yourself believe it. Make a fist. Clench your fist hard. Increase your pace to close on them. In your mind, keep telling yourself that you will strike as soon as you're close enough. Tense your arm. Imagine the impact. Even draw your fist back a little bit. Obviously, don't actually hit any strangers.

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Non-lethal doses of tranquilizer introduced through intramuscular or subcutaneous injection (the maximum level of precision possible for a dart) will take at least a minute or more to produce unconsciousness. Short of some kind of breakthrough new class of drugs or ultra precise delivery (best bet, a mini-dart in the carotid arteries), there isn't any way that would work fast enough.

Sneaking up with ether or chlorophorm won't work. Both take minutes to take effect when used safely. If used unsafely then you don't really care about not killing the target.

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a lungful of ether

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Good luck with that. Ether burns mucous membranes around the mouth and nose. Concentrated vapour will at the least cause severe irritation to the nose, throat and lungs and at worst will kill the target. At too high a concentration it is an asphyxiant.

BTW regardless of whether a wad of cloth muffles your yells, you can still stamp, struggle, knock things over, press alert buttons, smash stuff and generally thrash around. Not to mention draw your pistol.

Chloroform is no faster than ether BTW. It replaced ether simply because it is LESS flammable than ether but it is still unsafe to cauterise wounds when using either.

Both have a distinctive — can't sneak up on a trained guard — smell. And both evaporate too fast for you to apply to a cloth at a safe distance and then sneak up.

Unless you want your MC to be subject to the effects of contact with these chemicals, he will have to wear protective items such as gloves and mask at the least. Chloroform permeates the skin and causes irritation, it especially irritates the eyes.

ZERO, I think you will have to understand that there is no way to do what you describe without real risk to the target. Perhaps invent a new liquid that will do the job the way you want it too or just kill the target without angst.

Despite being popular in movies and stuff, the ether over the mouth thing is bunkum.

PS: Link to chlorophorm msds. Page 2 is a treat.

Extreme aggression is counterproductive in attempting a controlled attack. Committed is the right word. If you're a person who can't attack without driving yourself into a bloodthirsty frenzy, then your chances of carrying out a covert attack are nil no matter what method you use.

Ether does have a distinct smell, and a low molecular weight with high permeability. That can be overcome if you use a syringe or similar device to soak the cloth immediately before application (and while the target is exhaling, as per earlier instructions on the subject). You can also create a more sophisticated delivery system that is more like a glove/mask hybrid, even one where the ether will be injected into the mask only when you apply pressure. I think that's a bit...overinvolved. Specialized tools are a necessary risk point in any covert operation, over-specialized tools increase that risk without providing enough compensating benefit.

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It is immediately disabling.

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Can you point me to somewhere that will confirm that? Not just anecdotal but real information? It's one thing to say it but another thing to produce evidence for it. In fact everything I've read says otherwise.

This quote is from: (upper case is in original, bolds are mine)

ON THE INHALATION OF THE VAPOUR OF ETHER IN SURGICAL OPERATIONS:CONTAINING A DESCRIPTION OF THE VARIOUS STAGES OF ETHERIZATION, AND A STATEMENT OF THE RESULT OF NEARLY EIGHTY OPERATIONS IN WHICH ETHER HAS BEEN EMPLOYED IN ST. GEORGE'S AND UNIVERSITY COLLEGE HOSPITALS.
BY JOHN SNOW, M.D. UNIV. LOND.

FELLOW OF THE ROYAL MEDICAL AND CHIRURGICAL SOCIETY,
LECTURER ON FORENSIC MEDICINE.

LONDON: JOHN CHURCHILL, PRINCES STREET, SOHO.
1847.

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In the first degree of etherization I shall include the various changes of feeling that a person may experience, whilst he still retains a correct consciousness of where he is, and what is occurring around him, and a capacity to direct his voluntary movements. In what I call the second degree, mental functions may be exercised, and voluntary actions performed, but in a disordered manner. In the third degree, there is no evidence of any mental function being exercised, and consequently no voluntary motions occur; but muscular contractions, in addition to those concerned in respiration, may sometimes take place as the effect of the ether, or of external impressions.In the fourth degree, no movements are seen except those of respiration, and they are incapable of being influenced by external impressions. In the fifth degree, (not witnessed in the human being), the respiratory movements are more or less paralysed, and become difficult, feeble, or irregular.

If a middle-aged man, of about the average size, is supplied with air mixed with vapour of ether, in the proportion of 45 per cent. vapour to 55 per cent. air, and breathes it easily and without obstruction, he usually consumes about two drachms of ether per minute. It is not all absorbed, for a part is expired after passing no farther than the trachea. At the end of the first minute he is usually in the first degree of etherization; of the second minute, in the second degree; of the third minute, in the third degree; and at the end of four minutes, having inhaled an ounce of ether, in the fourth degree. If the inhalation is, now discontinued, he commonly remains in this degree of etherization for one or two minutes, passes gradually back into the third degree, which lasts for three or four minutes, at the end of which time he is in the second degree, which lasts about five minutes, to give place to a feeling of intoxication and exhilaration, which lasts for ten or fifteen minutes or longer before it entirely subsides.

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Is this too much to quote here? The url is here.

You have to inhale something like an ounce of ether. How are you going to get someone to do that in one inhalation? Also, if you can manage to apply enough ether to immediately progress a person to the fourth stage, how will you ensure they do not immediately progress to the fifth stage? The stage at which, we now know, death is likely to occur? Just saying, 'well you gotta be properly trained' does not work when the chemical probably doesn't work in desired way in the first place.

PS: SNOPES website (debunking urban legends) comments on a rumour about thieves using ether to knockout people in carparks:

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No, the scenario described above isn't a real danger. No one has reported having been robbed in this manner, save for one woman in 1999 whose claim was suspect (for reasons we discuss below). This legend doesn't even really describe a plausible scenario because, despite what books and TV shows may depict, rendering a person unconscious from a mere sniff or two of some substance is not easy to do. Ether is nasty, volatile stuff that requires a great deal more than a few brief inhalations to knock a person out. In fact, it's hard to think of any substance that could produce the instant unconsciousness described here.

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and this comment:

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As Dr. Matthew Barnhill, a toxicologist with the Alabama Department of Forensic Sciences noted, it's difficult to imagine what substance could have been used to cause someone to pass out so quickly from a single sniff. Any drug or chemical that could immediately knock a victim out merely through his inhaling it (rather than ingesting or injecting it) would have to be quite potent indeed.

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You may be interested in taking a look at Wikipedia: Fictional applications of real materials and look at both chloroform and ether, if you're interested.

Still looking, trying to discover ANYTHING that indicates the ether thing is plausible. So far it is not looking good. Unless there is some secret brand of illegal ninja ether available only from the government.

If you cover the target's face with an ether soaked cloth, the ratio is more like 90-95% ether vapor to air. That first inhalation is disabling, even if you were using an inert gas the pulmonary shock of not getting any air would ensure the victim's loss of voluntary control over much of the upper body. After only a couple of inhalations, which the target cannot voluntarily control, the target will be reduced to level two. The target is also suffering a compounding effect of anoxia, which is deliberately avoided in the usual applications of anesthesia. Etherization and anoxia combine powerfully in effect, just as do some drug combinations.

Ether has an advantage over other knock-out agents because it has less long term toxicity, and it dissapates fairly rapidly. It also has an effect slope that is steeper in the range where unconsciousness is produced and more gentle where the danger of death is approached. As long as you don't keep applying it when life signs are becoming dangerously suppressed, there is very little danger of accidentally administering a fatal overdose. Once the target stops effective struggling, you allow some air to get past the cloth.

It's an important point that ether will not keep the target unconscious for very long unless it is continuously applied. And it does take skill, your usual criminal is not going to have any reason to go to the effort needed to use it effectively. But it is by no means impossible as a means of quickly and quietly knocking someone unconscious.

Right now the idea that a cloth full of ether pressed over a target's face at the precise moment he draws breath so that he inhales a lungful of 90-95% percent ether vapour enough to render him instantly unconcious but not dead or dying is a baseless assertion. Most literature appears to contradict it.

Just one line from a respectable source would settle it as far as I'm concerned.

Seriously, though, I want to get to the bottom of it.

First of all a little history.

"Ether was not used as an anesthetic agent in humans until 1842, and was not publicized till 1846, when William T.G. Morton conducted the first public demonstration of general anesthesia using ether. Even after the introduction of other anesthetics, ether remained the standard general anesthetic until the early 1960s".

"Clinical Anesthesiology" by Morgan, Mikhail and Murray.

Now more to your question:

"The discovery of ether and chloroform anesthesia in the 1840's demanded certain physical characteristics of these anesthetics. They had to be liquids with apreciable but not excessive saturated vapor pressures at room temperatures. The first vaporizers often were no more than gauze that might cover the mouth and nose. Ether or chloroform dropped onto this cloth mask provided the needed anesthetizing concentration, and the amount of anesthetic required was defined by the patient's response, by a clinical estimate of the "depth" of anesthesia. Anesthesia was less science than art, and so it continued for 100 years."

"The Pharmacology of Inhaled Anesthetics" by Eger, Eisenkraft and Weiskopf.

I'm not sure this exactly answers your question concerning precisely how many breaths would a person need to take to become unconscious (my personal guess is many and it would be a very nasty and uncomfortable process), or how long would they remain unconscious. The truth is, most information we do have is pretty historical since agents like ether and chloroform have been unavailable for medical use for quite some time. I'm sure that if you tried doing a google search you'd come up with all sorts of cool facts, but I'm afraid the only place you may find the detailed breakdown of pharmacokinetics of ether or chloroform in modern literature is in medicinal chemistry textbooks.

And lastly, you mentioned a "secret brand of illegal ninja ether available only from the government", which would be able to knock a person out in one or two breaths. It's not secret and isn't illegal and is used daily in modern anesthesia. It's called sevoflurane. When used in a combination with oxygen and nitrous oxide it can make a person unconscious after literally two or three breaths. Of course the equipment used to deliver it is slightly more sophisticated than a piece of cloth.