Let’s say someone is incapacitated. Perhaps he’s seriously intoxicated, or stoned, or just plain exhausted. He’s sitting, and slumped over forward. For example, sit cross-legged on the floor and slump as far forward as you can in a resting position. (I can’t sit that way because of my knees, but I think most people can.) ISTM that it would be hard to breathe that way. Assuming the person doesn’t keel over one way or the other, and that he doesn’t pitch forward far enough to topple, is it possible it would be so hard to breathe that he’d stop breathing and die?
Yes.
Side note: I know someone who fell asleep cross-legged on the floor, passed out drunk after New Years Eve 35 years ago. His leg fell asleep, but he was too unconscious to reposition it. By morningtime, his leg was paralyzed. At the time I knew him, a year later, he could walk again, but with a very stiff-legged gait, rocking from side to side.
Yes, you can die that way. I have moderately severe sleep apnea that I have had radical surgery for and didn’t work completely. It is the CNS type that isn’t very dependent on weight but sleeping position is important. I sleep with a CPAP machine at home to force air into my lungs but I sometimes fall asleep on lounge chairs and airplanes and simply stop breathing only to wake up violently when my oxygen level becomes critical but that may not always happen and all it takes is once. The thought of falling asleep in that position while under the influence of drugs or alcohol gives me chills because I know it could kill me.
All I know is I did not die after passing out that way on more than one occasion in my wasted youth.
I have been a sleepwalker since I was a toddler…i frequently wake up in that position…i may be in living room floor. Or in the kitchen chairs…i don’t think the reason I awaken is lack of breathing…usually I am cold…i of course have no clue how long I may have been there…my husband never knows when I get up…but I know it ain’t killed me …yet!