I’ve always wondered… today I’ll ask…
Are army personnel (any country / your country) equipped with suicide devices or pills ? What kind ?
If so, can they be self-administered in the event of capture and/or the inability to use hands ?
If not, why not ?
A search on the board didn’t turn up an answer… other than a reference to an auto-deploying injection to be used in defense against chemical warfare.
Other than their own weapons, no.
Why would they?
Gosh, I highly doubt it. You hear this kind of thing in reference to spies, but I don’t know if that’s just an urban myth. Many religions consider suicide a grave sin - including Christianity and Islam. I don’t think most military personnel are non-religious, at least not in the U.S. Witness the prevalence of military chaplains.
Besides, most of the time POWs are released…eventually. What would be the point of committing suicide?
I’m sure a military person will come along and enlighten us.
Nope. I am a former MI Sergeant and we were never given anything for suicide.
If captured, we were encouraged to resist interrogation “to the best of your ability” and that’s all. Giving away classified information under torture is no longer considered treason.
Torture is, BTW, one of the least effective methods of interrogation.
I haven’t been in the military for over 40 years, but my reaction to this question is to say the least negative. There is never any question that you are to keep on fighting and if captured to follow the guidelines set out by the Code of Conduct.
I’ve heard of things like the cyanide pill. That could just be in the movies though.
Why wouldn’t they. Sure nobody want’s to think about it, but there could be a time when there are no options left. (Ex. half your abdomen blown off, and for some reason your still alive)
If torture is not the most effective method of interrogation, then what is?
A few years ago a history prof told me that Francis Gary Powers, who was shot down in a U2 of USSR in 1960(?), had been given a cyanide capsule. He did not take it, however.
My suspicion is that any personel who would be given such measures would be on missions of sufficient secrecy that it would largely not be public knowedge.
“of USSR” ??
Dang nab it
read that as “over the USSR”
:smack:
The Geneva Convention, when adhered to, provides that capturing armies are to provide medical attention as necessary.
Given your example, everyone should have a poison pill. One never knows when one is going to run into a ditch on a lonely mountain road and be fatally injured, left to die a slow, lingering death.
Short, history professors are not immune to urban legends. I’m not stating his assertion is or is not an urban legend, but I would take it with a grain of salt.
I can think of lots of reasons why poison pills are a bad idea.
What if someone lost their poison pill? Accidently took it home with them? Used it to poison someone they didn’t like? Decided to poison themselves because they were depressed?
I can see the lawsuit now. Some soldier slips through the cracks and brings his pill home with him to poison his wife.
Tortuting someone to get information is not very effective. You will either strengthen the person’s resolve or they will tell you anything just to stop the pain. Either way, you don’t get reliable information. Plus, it’s just plain wrong.
A more effective way to interrogate someon is simply to ask them lots of questions. They may be willing to cooperate, or not clever enough to consistently tell the same lies.
If they are resistant, you have to weaken them. Sleep deprivation and malnutrition are effective but you have to be careful that you aren’t violating the Law of Land Warfare.
It’s best to weaken them psychologically. Play head games with them. Good-cop bad-cop stuff. Brainwashing. Etc. Look at what happened to US POW’s during the Korean War. The brainwashing was so effective many refused to come home when the war ended.
Irrelevant. If dude is gonna kill his wife, he’ll find a way, pill or no pill. Even if he did poison his wife, i’m sure the pill would show up on some kinda of a tox-screen (Spelling?). He’d be nailed anyway.
He might try to kill his wife anyway. There is a danger when such a “quick-and-easy” pill is available that someone would do something in the heat of the moment that they wouldn’t do if they had to plan more.
Besides, I was pointing out the law suit potential. The Army would be sued by the family of the murdered women if murder weapon was an Army issued suicide pill. That is one (of many reasons) why it would be a bad idea for the Army to issue suicide pills. I listed several above and can think of many more if you need help.
(SOE - Special Operations Executive - was a British organization that trained agents to be airdropped into occupied Europe to link up with, train and coordinate resistance groups. An extremely dangerous undertaking, as can be imagined.)
This link http://clutch.open.ac.uk/schools/emerson00/soe_agents_equip2.html lists some of the gear an SOE agent would carry, among the items one finds:
A captured SOE agent’s survival chances were pretty much zero anyway.
In the book Skunk Works*, Ben Rich** and Leo Janos state that F.G. Powers, and all other U2 pilots did in fact have a poison needle that they were able to take in the event of capture. According to the book, the CIA and some others in Gov’t were actually quite pissed off that Powers didn’t take his. I believe, however, that at the time, the pilots were technically no longer Air Force, but CIA.
*Skunk Works is the legendary division of Lockheed that created the U2, SR-71, F117, among other black projects
**Ben Rich was head of Skunk Works from 1975-1991
I agree that spies and persons on missions like Gary Powers was on have a means to commit suicide. The OP however asked:
If a soldier with his guts shot out can take a pill, why not a person with terminal cancer?
I can’t speak for Gary Powers era, but in my era, Air Force pilots were still Air Force, but have a different reporting structure than standard Air Force. The reporting structure goes through NSA, not CIA, before looping back at the top of the Dept. of Defense food chain. That was a dozen years ago, so it may have changed.