This is gruesome but events of the last several years and particularly several days have me wondering.
Cecil twice addressed the issue of severed heads remaining conscious after guillotining, but from what I’ve seen from the bottom 1/8 of a screen with the audio turned off, more modern beheadings aren’t a smooth, all-in-one-go affair.
Given that these guys tend to go in from the front where all the blood is, just how much useful consciousness might Nick Berg, Eugene Armstrong, James Foley, or any of those Russians in Dagestan had once the cutting started? That’s a lot of blood to lose in a short time. But then, from what I’ve read (couldn’t even bring myself to watch the bottom 1/8 of the screen in this case, sound or no) of Armstrong’s beheading, he was making a lot of noise for quite a while.
In general consciousness is lost within a very few seconds of cranial blood pressure going to zero. Which it will do more or less immediately once the carotid arteries are opened. So blood loss isn’t the driver for time-of-consciousness (TOC) during a well-executed beheading.
But … those arteries are located well back in your neck, not right up front near the adam’s apple or trachea.
So a good strong chop from the front side with a well-aimed broad axe might get the carotids on one swing.
Conversely, hacking away with a sword might take several strokes to get through the skin, muscles, trachea and supporting cartilage, then back to the spine & finally the carotids running along or just in front of the spine.
During each of those strokes a lot of blood is going to be produced as more and more structure is damaged. And if the chopper never got as far as the carotids and quit with the choppee’s head half-off, the choppee will lose consciousness from blood loss eventually, but it may take a couple minutes.
By going at it from the side instead the chopper would be assured of severing one of the choppee’s carotids on the first swing. I don’t know how the brain reacts to total blood pressure loss on only one side. Clearly there’d be some disturbance of consciousness, and there’s probably a “better” side to take out first from the POV of lessening the choppee’s pain. Not that that’s a goal of the chopper.
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All in all a messy business for sure.
In the beheading videos being discussed, the murderer is holding a short bladed knife. Not a sword. And he seems to start sawing from the front. This appears to be about the most gruesome and painful way to do it.
Ahh, that changes everything. I’ve assumed from the term “behead”, they were using a chopping block & axe or broadsword a la the Dark Ages.
One could still kill very quickly & relatively humanely by a throat-slitting maneuver that was really a carotid-slitting stroke on each side in rapid succession. IIRC that’s how Kosher cattle slaughter is done.
Just hacking away with a sheath knife at somebody’s trachea and keeping at it until their head falls off is gruesome, cruel, & amateur. Not to mention slow; really slow.