It was a slow day at work so I wandered down the flight line. They have better coffee. We were talking about Saddam’s execution. (The big objection from the Saudis was doing it on a holiday.)
Someone asked how hanging killed. I replied it severed the spinal cord, it was not a strangulation thing at all. One of the guys said but, if you sever the cord, that just disables the body below the cut, like Christopher Reave.
OK, so how does kill you so suddenly? Why wasn’t Saddam just paralyzed until the lack of breathing got him?
I was led to believe you can hang someone with the intention of letting them die of asphyxiation (favoured in the past for hanging, drawing and quartering so they’d still be alive enough to enjoy the rest of the show), or you can do a swift job which results in instant neck-breakage and that’s what kills you.
The effect of a broken neck depends on a number of factors, including how severe the spinal cord damage is and how high up on the cord the nerves are severed. An extremely sudden total break very close to the brainstem results in almost instant death. This is the goal of a ‘humane’ hanging; success relies a lot on the skill of the hangman in tying the noose correctly & setting the right length of drop, and a screw up in this department can result in a slow death by strangulation by the victim. This is why hanging is no longer used for executions in most civilized countries.
That is a slow death. Hanging (if done by a qualified professional) is darn fast. (I printed out the Wiki article and will read it at the office tomorrow.)
Well, signals go in both directions. The theory is that the sudden jolt that high up shuts the nervous system down entirely. Another theory is that the shutdown is high enough up in the chain that all body responses are eliminated, but that death doesn’t occur until oxygen starvation shuts down the brain processes. So, the hangee may look dead, but he’s actually alive and conscious for several minutes, and merely completely inert.
Interviews with hanging victims have been inconclusive as to which of these theories is correct.
The old-fashioned hangman’s noose will tend to strangle them (the Nuremberg Tribunal executions are rumoured to have been botched in this fashion). The running noose, which the British hangman used, will break his neck if the drop is sufficient (too much and it will pull his head off)
It’s an interesting and plausible idea that the shock of the break makes the person black out. If all that was happening was that the spinal cord was being severed then, as Paul pointed out, death actually takes several minutes, as the body starves for oxygen. The question is, why isn’t that person rolling eyes, opening mouth, and doing other things that the cranial nerves do during that time. Blacking out from the shock would explain it.
If true, this was probably because the Nazis were notorious for always making sure hanging victims died a slow, agonizing death via strangulation by always using thin cords and very small (or no) drops.
Its not exactly what the OP is looking for, but thought I’d post this from Unca Cecil:
True, when the neck is broken ‘death’ doesn’t instantly follow. But for all practical purposes the death is as ‘instant’ as decapitation…at least wrt the effect on the hangee. Completely severing the spinal cord is going to cause the effect of complete loss of feeling in the rest of the body…and probably shock induced blackout. The heart is going to stop, the lungs are going to sieze up and the person is essentially dead. True, it might take a few minutes before the body technically is dead, but for all practical purposes the effect on the person being hanged is instant death…provided the hanging was done correctly (big if there).
No, Pierrepoint was present (I think as an official observer), but I’m quite sure the major Nazi war criminals were executed by the then-current US Army methods, which I suspect may have been the “standard drop”. You can clearly see in photos that the “hangman’s noose” was used, which Pierrepoint would have had nothing to do with.
According to this cite, different methods of execution were used depending upon who was carrying them out. The British used long drop in private, the Polish and Russians used slow hanging in private or public and the Americans used the long drop in private and public.
It also mentions chowder’s claim that Pierrepont hanged the youngest (21!) Belsen guard first.
