Which is generally considered more efficient, or, which one has a more substantial history of not performing to 100%?
Also, if you were forced to choose between one of the two to seal your fate, which one would you settle with?
And finally, which films/books/etc portrayed either of these methods in a way you found engaging, illuminating, authentic, or objectionable?
Not a capital punishment freak or anything, so I hope we can steer clear, here, of any for/against debates about CP, itself.
Possibly more suited for IMHO, but if I had to choose for myself, I’d go for hanging with a short drop.
I once knew a person who had suffered permanent brain damage from arcing while working on a power line. Ironically, he died from exposure when lost in the forest in a winter night several years later…
Brave man. The short drop is where you die slowly and painfully. It’s the measured or long drop that brings the quick death.
Actually, probably not instant death. It brings instant unconsciousness, if done correctly. And then you die a few minutes later. Still, probably more painless than the electric chair.
If I really had to die, and could choose the method, I’d ask for the guillotine.
Since this thread will gather opinions as well as factual information, I’ve moved it to IMHO from General Questions.
samclem, moderator
I’ve always been partial to skull pulverisation, either from a firing squad aiming at the head, or perhaps just crushing the skull beneath a high-velocity pile driver.
The ideal (as I see it) is to destroy the brain faster than the speed of nerve impulses inside the brain, being “dead before you know it.”
If electrocution lived up to its promise, it would flash-fry the brain faster than the speed of nerve impulses, and would, thus, be painless. With hanging, there’s that short, sharp shock.
(Although I’ve heard people say that hanging produces an overpressure wave up the neck which shuts the brain down. The same is said to be true of a firing squad aiming at the heart: a shock-wave of blood pressure rushes through the body, stopping all brain function.)
ETA: I’ve been knocked out by a heavy blow to the head. Remarkably painless…at the time. Hurt like heck later, during recovery. But the actual knock-out was remarkably benign. So maybe a heavy clubbing to the skull, followed by whatever they want. Throat slitting, perhaps.
Yeah, a Soviet-style bullet to the back of the head (“unerwarteter Nahschuss in das Hinterhaupt”, “unexpected close shot in the back of the head” as the East Germans called it) is probably about as fast and certain as it gets. Though inert gas asphyxiation would also be a contender.
Not so sure it is a lot quicker. You’ll die from asphyxiation anyhow; lack of oxygen to the brain. The thing is, I just can’t stand the thought of feeling my spine snap…
Of the two, hanging and a long drop for me but I’m betting someone can find stats that the chair really is more humane and effective. Maybe it was the conditions way back when but from people not actually getting properly dead to having their heads pop off I would say it has some issues. Electrocution does to but --------- overall?
Nitrous Oxide. I don’t see why this isn’t obvious. You can try to hold your breath with cyanide or some other noxious gas and end up writhing in pain. (Or however it works, never been there.) But Nitrous Oxide has immediate anesthetic qualities that makes it as smooth as it could ever be.
Head first into a wood chipper probably works too.
Nine common execution includes hanging, shooting by firing squad, shooting, beheading, lethal injection, stoning, gas chamber, electrocution, and falling from an unknown height.
I’d go for lethal injection.
Better than death by Ugu. 
Between electrocution and hanging, I’d take a properly done hanging where the spinal cord is snapped instantly.
Saddam Hussein had a well-deserved bad reputation, but the method of execution of taping a plastic explosive in the shirt pocket and then setting it off by a signal looks to me to be pretty painless. LiveLeak has a video which I probably shouldn’t link to lest you find it too disturbing, but it’s easily found.
Why can’t they just use the method they use to euthanize animals? Pink stuff, instant end. I’d prefer that.
Some people have studied methods to painlessly kill animals, and cervical dislocation (aka long drop hanging) is highly favored for most species, but with humans it has the problem that the person knows what is going on during the preparation and suffers mental anguish, unlike a mouse who was happily eating and then wham.
That sounds a bit reminiscent of the old Mughal (and later British colonial) practice of having people blown from the mouths of cannons.
Not quite fast enough; scalp wounds are GRISLY painful, and it would take a few tenths of a second to grind through the skull, so you’d have one nasty split-second of meningitis (not the disease, just the pain.)
Whip the woodchipper up into something like a jet aircraft turbine, and shove me into it at 600 mph, and… Lawdy, what a mess!
I’ve enjoyed the evolution of this thread so far.
Still can’t figure out between electro and hangin - why can’t they just execute people by OD’ing them on sleeping pills? That would be my choice, or getting stuck in either the Orgasmatron, or the Excessive Machine.
Sorta dumbass with Mr. Burroughs going off on hanging fantasies in “Naked Lunch”.
An early 80s(?) tv show called Tales of the Unexpected had an episode with a journalist investigating prison executions. Normally I’d never post a huge review, but this one’s quite awesome - couldn’t sum it up better: (from mrlimpet4u @ tv.com)
“The other episode that still gives me the willies featured Roy Thinnes as a reporter who is steadfastly opposed to the death penalty. A plan is hatched between Thinnes and a prison official to allow him to go undercover on death row as an inmate. While there though, a guard who knows who Thinnes really is (and bears a grudge against him) switches his prison uniform so that the reporter’s clothes now bear the number of an inmate set to be electrocuted. In what must be the performance of his career Thinnes is absolutely “electrifying” as he desperately tries to get everyone to realize the mistake that’s been made- but of course, who would believe the ravings of a death row inmate, right? So, he is dragged out of his cell kicking and screaming like an animal and strapped into the awaiting chair. Every single second of this heart pounding struggle is riveting to watch, right to the black cloth mask being placed over his face and the switch being thrown-((Spoiler Alert))-and then prison officials and the guard who set him up step out from behind the scenes. They inform Thinnes that this has all been concocted to show him what a condemned man really goes through. They’re all opposed to capital punishment and want him to continue in is crusade to end the death penalty. The conniving guard is even the one who unties the straps. But when he removes the death mask, in an absolutely bone chilling moment of revelation the guard finds himself looking into the staring, lifeless eyes of a corpse. Trauma has caused the reporter to die of fright.”
The close-up, at the end, of died-of-fright-buddy’s sweaty face, eyes open, was always a nice reminder of childhood tv viewing.
It didn’t exactly warm me up to electric chairs at the time.
The only scene I got a kick out of in the otherwise crummy “Gothic” was when buddy all sanctimoniously braces himself to hang himself in the barn but the noose came loose when he jumped off the back of a horse, and simply ended up on his ass on the ground.
“Puppet on a Chain” (featuring one of the creepiest creepy creeps of all time - Vladek Sheybal) had a crazy zoom shot of a doll hanging outside some building, and then the lovely Barbara Parkins unfortunately suffers the same fate a bit later.
The auto-erotic-hanging-gone-awry at the beginning of “The Ruling Class” was kinda funny.
Beheading for me. I’ve seen too many examples of a lethal injection not working as intended and ultimately causing great pain and suffering. Just rip the band aid off! Or the head, in this instance. 
Between hanging and electrocution, definitely hanging. I’ve had electrotherapy, and I know first hand when it accidentally gets turned up too high, it’s quite painful, it’s like an intense cramp. Imagine having that feeling all over. Hell, did Edison use electrocution as a way of demonstrating how terrifying AC current can be? Sure, I imagine if done correctly the brain is fried pretty quickly, it just doesn’t seem like a great way to go. Hanging with a long drop seems far faster and more assured success, and I think there’s a lot less that can go wrong.
As for a preferred method, I’ll take lethal injection or inert gas, with a preference for the latter. The former, we more or less use when we euthanize pets, and we’re trying to spare them pain. And inert gas, as I understand as long as there’s no CO2, we don’t even realize we’re suffocating and just pass out. So wouldn’t both be more or less like slowly passing out, one from a drug and one from lack of oxygen, and then just never waking up? Plus, it seems to me that this sort of method leaves the body more intact than many other methods. I don’t particularly care what happens to my body, or rather, I won’t be around to care, but if there are people left behind to grieve–and who knows if there actually are if I’m being executed–I think giving them an unmutilated corpse to do whatever rites will help them grieve is also the most humane for them.
But not better than death by snu snu. 