I saw a documentary about a guy trying to find a “humane” execution method, he came to the conclusion that suffocation with nitrogen gas probably was the least bad.
It doesn’t trigger a feeling of panic as CO2 poisoning does, you simply drift away in a hypoxic high filled with mild confusion without the dread.
People on both sides of the death penalty issue thought is was barbaric, proponents of the death penalty thought it was wrong to remove the suffering from the person, they felt it would be wrong to let say a serial killer just drift away in a high, while opponents of the death penalty felt it was barbaric as it would lessen the felt impact of taking a life and might cause governments to reinstate the death penalty.
It was an interesting documentary…
That was one of Louis Theroux’s phenomenal docos.
He was super confused at the end when he was met with “but we want to hurt them” it was a bit funny how jarring it was, but also really sad.
Pretty sure I know which one you’re talking about. Was British… BBC or something… But is on YouTube.
I remember the scene where he is in a hypoxic state himself in a chamber and he needs to press a big red button or he dies. They kept telling him “press the button or you die” and he was just so high and goofy laughing about it and not pressing the button.
Very interesting show as you say.
Man if I were the guy this was first being tested on I would probably try and fuck it up in the worst way possible just to screw with the people executing me.
Like as soon as the gas turns on start screaming my ass off like they mixed up nitrogen gas with acid gas instead and produced the worst pain ever until I finally passed out.
If done right, sure.
Alabama tried to kill the person first in line already with lethal injection and failed, so the odds of them doing nitrogen gas right is pretty fucking slim.
They’d have to fuck it up to a truly astonishing degree for it to be anywhere near as bad as a failed execution using the other methods currently in use. Like maybe use chlorine gas instead of nitrogen.
Yes, nitrogen hypoxia is untried as a method of intentional execution.
But it’s well-understood as a method of suicide, and as a way of accidentally dying.
It’s just about the most pleasant, least awful way to die. Your body is wired to detect dangerously high blood levels of CO2, not dangerously low blood levels of O2. So you breathe out CO2, breathe in pure nitrogen, and you get none of that panic feeling that you would normally get if your airway was cut off. It’s like breathing in helium from a balloon; you feel short of breath and get light headed. If it continues, you quickly pass out. IIRC, this was the method of suicide advocated by the former Hemlock Society, back in the bad old days before even Dr. Jack Kevorkian.
I ain’t sayin’ that Alabama uses the death penalty appropriately. (Yes, I support the death penalty, but not in the overwhelming majority of the cases where it’s used now.) But if you’re going to execute people, this is probably one of the most humane ways to do it.
