Comments on: So, now we know

By: Patrick

Patrick — Fri, 24 Oct 2008 02:53:51 +0000

The Portillo analysis was interesting. More correctly, the method of death he found to be painless was not ‘exposure to inert gases’ but ‘anoxia’. By placing a subject in a low pressure chamber and letting the partial pressure of oxygen drop to a fatally low level the subject feels at first light headed and then euphoria and then lapses into unconsciousness leading to death.

By: JuliaM

JuliaM — Thu, 23 Oct 2008 21:36:46 +0000

“The body doesn’t react as though it is being suffocated, you breathe in normally and can’t tell that it isn’t air. The lack of oxygen then produces a feeling of euphoria and then you die.”

Gosh!

And that reminds me, we’re out of bacon…

By: Eva

Eva — Thu, 23 Oct 2008 18:41:17 +0000

@cardiac death

…and of course if the chaps can manage it a la Nelson Rockefeller, so much the better!

By: David Gillies

David Gillies — Thu, 23 Oct 2008 16:36:12 +0000

I imagine being in close proximity (i.e. feet) to an exploding nuclear weapon is pretty painless too. You’d be a rapidly expanding cloud of plasma before your brain registered anything. Bit impractical though, unless you had a lot of miscreants you wanted to execute all at once.

Bear in mind, though, that pretty much all modern ‘humane’ forms of execution are vastly better ends than most of us are likely to experience. Doctors, who know better than most of us, were queried about how they would wish to die (of natural causes). They almost unanimously chose sudden, massive, unanticipated cardiac death. There’s 15 seconds of acute pain, followed by a rapid slide into unconsciousness, with brain death a few minutes later.

So basically everyone who is saved from fatal heart disease by modern medicine is going to die of something worse. Yippee!

By: Ross

Ross — Thu, 23 Oct 2008 13:55:40 +0000

“Does that kill by some other means than suffocation then?”

The body doesn’t react as though it is being suffocated, you breathe in normally and can’t tell that it isn’t air. The lack of oxygen then produces a feeling of euphoria and then you die. The documentary is here, go to around 42 minutes and see how it works on pigs:
http://video.google.co.uk/videoplay?docid=-8068091823725414405&ei=OYIASeWxHY-o2wKs8p2mDQ&q=Portillo+Execution&hl=en

By: JuliaM

JuliaM — Thu, 23 Oct 2008 13:13:12 +0000

“CO poisoning?”

I’d have thought any method that resulted in (effectively) suffocation couldn’t be considered painless.

The guillotine was a pretty humane invention, so long as the blade was weighted correctly.

By: Eva

Eva — Thu, 23 Oct 2008 11:32:26 +0000

Wasn’t the guillotine invented to make execution more humane? Speaking from a position of complete ignorance, how can pain be felt for more than a split second if the brain/head is detached from the body?

By: Zorro

Zorro — Thu, 23 Oct 2008 10:22:38 +0000

Err CO poisoning?

By: JuliaM

JuliaM — Thu, 23 Oct 2008 09:33:39 +0000

“exposure to inert gases. “

Does that kill by some other means than suffocation then?

By: Ross

Ross — Thu, 23 Oct 2008 08:54:00 +0000

“There is no method of execution without pain,”

There probably is, exposure to inert gases. Michael Portillo did a documentary on the subject a while ago.

Personally with the Bali bombers I prefer the “sawing them in two with a blunt saw” approach, but that’s just me.