Electric Chair
Firing Squad
Gas Chamber
Guillotine
Hanging
Self-Inflicted gunshot wound to the head
Provided the act is not botched, but is performed swiftly and successfully, how much physical pain might be experienced during these various methods of termination?
In theory, the electric chair should be painless, since, according to this site with electric chair specifications:
By contrast, here’s what they have to say about hanging:
>unconsciousness occurs in 4.16 milliseconds,
>which is 1/240 part of a second.
>This is twenty-four (24) times as fast as
>the subjects conscious nervous system can record pain.
I had no idea. Hanging sounds a lot worse.
Well, of course another persons experience of pain is pretty hard to quantify; but, if I was going to go from least to most painful (physically) my list would look a bit like this:
Self-Inflicted gunshot
firing squad
guillotine
gas chamber
electric chair
hanging
gas chamber and electric chair seem pretty close to me.
I’m pretty sure it takes longer than 4.16 ms to die in a gas chamber.
From Charles Panati’s Extraordinary Endings Of Practically Everything And Everybody
Lethal execution would seem to be the most painless.
[Pink Floyd] Just a little pinprick. . .[/Pink Floyd]
Well, it probably depends on what kind of hanging - a drop with a short stop, with a properly tied knot, should break the neck etc, but without both those things, it’d probably be an agonizing death from suffocation. I’ve also read (I can’t recall where, so no cite) that electrocutions are occasionally screwed up, for example with improper placement/attachment of the electrodes. That was supposed to be a pretty horrible death also.
And self-inflicted gunshot wounds to the head sometimes miss enough so that the person doesn’t die, but is generally left severely handicapped.
And I was feeling pretty cheerful and non-morbit today, too.
I still say there’s no better way to hit the ‘off’ button on a human than near instant decapitation (i.e. guillotine). I mean, as long as it slices right thru you quickly there is just no way there could be any sensation. You’re severing your pain ‘generators’ from the ‘receiver’ (your brain). Plus the moment blood stops being pumped thru your brain you black out in a few seconds.
Incedible gruesome for spectators, but probably utterly painless for the subject.
They tried to do a study on this once, but none of the participants responded.
Panati’s book, quoted above by Doc discusses hanging, the guillotine, lethal injection and electric chair, too.
Probably available at your local library.
Re: Hanging
In our forensic medicine course, the prof told us we wouldn’t pass the exam should we mention “neck breaking” as a common consequence of hanging. He said that even in judicial executions, a fracture of the spine would be quite rare.
The main cause of death - according to him - is acute hypoxia of the brain by strangulation of the carotid arteries.
This page says that in judicial hangings, injury of the spinal cord would in fact be common, so I’m not so sure about this.
However:
As a proof, our prof showed us a video of a man who filmed himself committing suicide:
The noose was made in a way it wouldn’t tighten around his neck, so neck-breaking could be ruled out. Nevertheless, the guy became unconsious in about two seconds after he let himself drop into the noose. His body continued to perform some bizarre movements for some time, like he was trying to breath, but he was clearly unconscious. According to our prof, these movements could go on for quite some time and it could take half an hour until the heart eventually stopped beating.
(And yes, this video has been the most disturbing thing I’ve ever seen.)
Thus, hanging, while certainly a “slow” death, should actually be quite “humane”, no matter wheter the spinal cord gets injured or not.
“Provided the act is not botched” is a big if. Here is a link to a list of botched executions.
Where, exactly, would self inflicted “gunshots to the head” be used for executions?
I imagine, though, that having someone else shooting you in the back of the head (like in China) would be very fast indeed…once the brain is destroyed, whatever inner essence that made up a “person” is dead.
From all accounts, even ones in the United States, the Gas Chamber is the most agonizing method of execution. From what I remember, the Cyanide gas used for the execution blocks the lungs’ ability to absorb oxygen from the air, so that executee is left gulping for air that his body can’t use anymore. Oddly enough, it was California that used it for the longest time.
Not sure how long a “firing squad” execution would take…but, a half-dozen odd 30-06 rifle bullets hitting you square in in the heart? It can’t take very long.
The Guillotine shouldn’t take that long, if at all…even if the head was capable of staying alive for a few seconds after decapitation, the shock and force of the blade’s impact would probably knock the executee unconscious anyway.
Define “gunshot”. I can see that shooting yourself with a .22 could be survivable, but a shotgun would certainly do the trick. It seems to me that a head-box and a single shotgun shell should be the preferred method of execution; it might not be pretty, and the cleanup might be hard, but it could never be painful…
Hell, a Colt .45 against the back of the skull would probably do the trick, Phage. Maybe a Desert Eagle, just to be safe.
Or…I think some modern slaughterhouses use a pneumatic (hydraulic?) system, basically a narrow piston that is “fired” into the brain at high speeds. Death is still instantaneous, but with the added bonus of not having the skull explode.
I thought that, in a firing squad execution, only one of the rifleman actually has a live round. The rest have blanks. The live round is assigned randomly, so nobody knows for sure who will fire the deadly shot. I imagine that the shooters would know after the fact, due to recoil differences.
I’ve heard the same thing about other methods of execution - there are multiple switches to turn on the electric chair or open the trap door on the gallows, and the switches are pulled simultaneously by different people - again, so that nobody knows who specifically killed the condemned man.
I’m open to correction, of course.
It’s the other way round. One rifleman has a blank, the rest are live.
Actually, cyanide blocks the cell’s ability to use the oxygen. So, the cells “suffocte” even though the blood is normally oxygenated.
http://www.emedicine.com/emerg/topic118.htm
Depends on whether you have resigned yourself to your fate or not… If you don’t want to die, I imagine hearing the release of the guillotine and hearing it rumble down towards you would be pretty “painful” from a pychological standpoint.