Archived at https://ghostarchive.org/archive/oKbqc
It’s fucking barbaric however you do it.
Because executions are things you want to “experiment” with.
Goddamn fucking ghouls.
They’re fucking it up on purpose, the issue they’ve been having is the mask is a closed loop so there’s a build up of CO2 and it ends up more being a nitrogen augmented smothering than death by true nitrogen asphixiation. Its a very basic issue and I think cruelty is the point, either directly or by falsely discrediting an otherwise humane method of execution (not that any execution is good)
At this point I’m really wondering if that’s the real intent. This should be so simple and so hard to fuck up. Grab an oxygen mask from the medical bay, and hook it up to a nitrogen tank at 50l/min. Prisoner will breathe in 100% N2 and whatever they exhale will just go into the room.
The human body does not react to that. There is no feeling of suffocation or panic. People who go into low oxygen environments have passed out and died without realizing they were even threatened.
The feeling of suffocation is caused by CO2 build up. If you don’t waste his exhaled air, if you make him rebreathe it, you’re going to create that reaction and a very painful execution.
Anyway there’s one of two situations happening. One is the intentionally want to create an unpleasant execution, or two they are all idiots who don’t know how to use Google, and nobody who isn’t an idiot wants to help.
That second one is I think equally possible. I know I could write a completely bulletproof execution protocol that would be 100% painless, but I wouldn’t do it even if they offered me a million dollars. I don’t believe in the death penalty, and I certainly don’t believe in the way it is often applied in the US, with people being put to death even when there is serious doubt of their guilt. I have no desire to legitimize that in any way shape or form. As such, I have no desire to remove the defense that the state cannot guarantee a painless execution.
Nitrogen asphyxiation should be effective and painless, but not if the person fights it. Which means it’ll be hard to use as an execution method (unless you surprise them with it somehow)
Hell, regular suffocation isn’t that bad if you stay calm and relaxed and accept it. It’s all about the state of mind, and someone being murdered isn’t exactly going to be meditative about it.
My understanding is that we can’t detect oxygen deprivation, but we can detect CO² buildup which is the idea behind nitrogen asphyxiation. Wouldn’t regular suffocation (like, something obstructing your airflow) be quite agonizing then in comparison due to CO² buildup?
Complete tangent, but I don’t think superscript numbers are a good choice in chemical notation. You’re trying to use them here to stand-in for subscript numbers, but superscript numbers have a meaning in chemistry as well. They denote ions.
So, I think CO2 is more accurate than CO², since it could be confused as carbon monoxide with some sort of ion of charge 2 (unclear of positive or negative).
It’s certainly not pleasant, but not outright painful. The bad part of it is you feel like you should be panicking and struggling and fighting to breathe. If you’re rebreathing your air, so you’re not prevented from inhaling, and you take long, slow, breaths and keep calm and relaxed, it’s not nearly as unpleasant. I had a near suicide attempt where I gave it a try to see how bad it would actually be and it was scarily not as bad as I thought it would be. Granted I didn’t take it to unconsciousness or I wouldn’t be here to talk about it, but I got to the point my vision was getting fuzzy so I think it’s far enough to draw this conclusion.
You could give them a sedative. They pass out and can’t hold their breath, then you administer nitrogen. You could probably even find an acceptable oral medication so you wouldn’t require a doctor to administer it. I’m in no way saying this is acceptable, but it isn’t that difficult.
But if they don’t suffer, why would they kill them?
The whole thing is just some barbaric revenge cult.
Thought experiment:
Put them in a small sealed room with airflow you control. Using a randomly generated number to pick the start time (within some maximum that’s deemed appropriate), you then throttle up the nitrogen and throttle down the oxygen.
The time spent in the room would still be pretty terrifying so I doubt it’d be much better than the mask… Maybe the room is their cell and it’s a randomly chosen day within an execution “week” where you make sure they’re asleep first?
Probably best just to not kill people of course, but if you’re gonna do it, do it the most humane way possible.
if you’re gonna do it, do it the most humane way possible.
M O R T A L C O M B A A A A A A A A T ! ! !
That would be colossal.
You know there’s a simple and humane way to do it.
Heroine executions.
I realize now the spelling error I made, but I’m keeping it this way.
I wouldn’t be too mad depending on which heroine kills me. I think someone like Jean Gray would take a lot longer than Batgirl or even Ladybug.
It’s both cruel and unusual. -Until states keep “trying” it. Then it becomes just cruel, and that will make it constitutional.
Cruel as usual.
