Death By
Snoo-Snoo.
You are exaggerating the distances needed, I think. Here is a handy link for the drop table. Of course, the form of noose is an important part of the equation.
For myself, I’d choose a firing squad; for Saddam, I’d choose a blunt spoon. But I’m against the death penalty being applied by courts, so I’d opt to imprison him somewhere unpleasant.
It appears that the OP is in favour of Capital Punishment.
Can I get shot in the head? If yes, that’s definitely the way to go. I don’t think anything could be less painless, since the bullet will blow my brain apart faster than the pain receptors sensing the impact could transmit that signal to it.
If it must be the heart, that’s a toughie.
If done right, high cervical dislocation induces almost immediate unconsciousness, for reasons I’ve yet to see explained to my full understanding, and brain death follows obliviously within a couple minutes from ischemia. But at least two things can, and sometimes do, go wrong. The rope can be too long, in which case the force on the rope from rapid deceleration might rip my body clean from my head. I’m honestly not sure if this would lead to the same sort of rapid lapse into unconsciousness that hanging does. Unca Cecil’s lovely little article on decapitation makes me wonder. The other, probably much more nasty, thing that can happen, is the rope is too short, in which case my neck isn’t broken (or, at least, not broken sufficiently), and I might experience some considerable pain and anxiety before blacking out.
Getting shot in the heart has gotta hurt like Hell, but maybe unsconsciousness would descend more rapidly than a botched hanging. It’s difficult, probably impossible, to say for certain, as these things likely vary considerably from person to person.
blahgh, “less painfull”
It’s tough to argue with an SDSAB, but sometimes, you just gotta.
Boss, have you seen those videos of suicide?
Nowhere near eight to fifteen seconds. Lights out, head drops. There’s not even time to do the famous scratching-self-at-the-neck that the forensic literature says hanging suicides sometimes do.
Hanging is very different from the choking game. How is it different? How fast the choke is applied, and how firmly, and how long it’s held. The judo player who choked me out told me that if you do it verrrry slowly, first the chokee loses peripheral vision, developing tunnel vision; then loses color vision; then consciousness. And we know the people who choke themselves in autoerotic asphyxia get euphoric from it. But they aren’t choking themselves hard enough to knock themselves out, unless they screw up. The line can be crossed easily.
Okay, probably mileage varies. Maybe you can hang yourself so slowly that you have eight to fifteen seconds, during which you can scratch at your own throat. However, I don’t believe the great majority do, for the following reason; suicide videos entirely aside.
A lot depends on what you use to choke or hang yourself, and how you apply it. How do I know? If you only apply the three pounds of pressure or so that you need to flatten the jugular vein, it leaves very visible marks on your face. The whites of your eyes and the insides of your eyelids fill with petechiae (miniscule blood blisters). The same petechiae can be found in your mouth on the insides of your cheeks, and frequently across your skin particularly behind your ears. Your face turns purple. Your tongue protrudes.
However, everyone who begins with a neck pressure so delicate that it only flattens the jugular veins, rapidly knocks himself out. His head lolls, and it falls by chance to one side or the other. The side towards which his head hangs gets complete carotid occlusion, because his head weighs ten pounds. That side has paler sclera and conjunctiva, fewer petechiae, and less congestion.
When a man hangs himself from his garage roof beam with a dog collar, he has no petechiae. His face is pale. He has hardly any tongue protrusion. He got bilateral complete carotid collapse from the moment the dog collar pulled tight.
So why don’t we agree to disagree. When a judo nidan chokes you out, it takes so short an interval that you cannot experience conscious thought; unless he takes great effort to choke you slowly, in which case you might have those eight to fifteen seconds. When you hang yourself with a bedsheet from a doorknob in prison, kneeling to bring on the hanging, maybe you’ve got those eight to fifteen seconds - though I haven’t yet had a jailhouse hanging with self-neck-scratches. When you hang yourself with a dog collar, you are instantly unconscious. And when you hang yourself with a rope, you have less than eight seconds. The video looks like two seconds.
Thanks, I appreciate that.
What does it say about me that I wanted to read gabriela’s opinion before I decided?
Firing squad.
Compiled by people with a professional interest.
Anyway, I once saw somebody break up part of a really nasty fight by doing a “Vulcan Death Grip” type thing. I’d imagine that was a move to restrict blood flow via the carotid artery? The offender just seemed to wilt and was flung aside. The bouncer who did this had more immediate concerns with broken bottes. Is this even a plausible interpretation of what he did?
A point to consider.
My father was a member of a firing squad during WW2. The soldier being shot was a deserter. My father used to wake up in the middle of the night with bad memories of this incident in his life but that’s not the point. He didn’t talk openly about the mechanics of a firing squad but I got the distinct impression that, of the twelve or so soldiers in the squad, only one had a live bullet loaded in his rifle.
Is this still the case or was it ever the case?
Um…Chez? You, or at least your misspelled namesake didn’t have a choice. They had the firing squad.
So…um…how was it?
I dunno what it says about you, but it makes me feel good.
In a sick kind of way, granted.
Paging Shodan. Shodan, please come in. MPSIMS to Shodan, please come in.
It’s the other way around - one rifle has a blank, the rest are live rounds.
I’m no expert on firing squads, but I’ve heard that only one rifle had a blank, so that it gave each member a psychological escape. If this is true, it would require that the members not load or unload their weapons.
Not necessarily.
I should have looked around before asking the question but the number of live bullets used seems to vary. In Indonesia for example:
Rules for executions are outlined in Law No.2/PNPS/1964 on the Procedures of Implementing the Death Penalty. They include:
.
.
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To carry out the death sentence, the provincial police chief will form a firing squad comprising a sergeant and 12 corporals led by a senior officer. [the 12 to 14 members are generally from the police’s Mobile Brigade - Brimob]
Not all of the guns will be loaded with live ammunition [generally, only one to six of the guns contain live ammunition]. Some of the guns [at least half or most of them] will contain blanks so that members of the firing squad will be spared from certainty and emotional stress that they have killed.
I guess it depends where and when the execution took place.
The circumstances surrounding the execution of Ernesto ‘Che’ Guevara are unclear but the consensus of opinion suggests that he was shot by one man alone and not by firing squad.
‘How was it’ is anybody’s guess.
Firing squad. Last choice would be the guillotine. Holy crap.
Firing squad, but I think I’d prefer the Soviet method. When I’m being led out of my cell one day for exercise, hidden behind the door is a man with a pistol. As I turn down the hall, one bullet behind the ear. Quick, efficient and no chance to tense up.