Imagine that you’ve aroused the ire of a ruthless bad guy and are currently in his dungeon. Said villain wants you to not only publicly renounce whatever it is you believe in most passionately, but also to give him the names and contact information of other persons–friends, family, random neighbors, whatever–upon whom he will practice his monstrous arts. He has at his disposal the same sorts of devices used during the Inquisition. Do what he wants and he’ll let you go immediately (or so he says); refuse and you guarantee yourself his undivided attention for six hours or so, at which point he’ll stop and allow you to reconsider?
if it was just public renouncing, no time at all. I’d like to think I’d last a good long while before giving up my wife nad kiddies and parents etc for torture. How would I know though?
I’m not naming my wife or most of my siblings without being broken myself, and Athena only knows how long that’ll take. (And I’ll try to escape, commit suicide-by-minion, or kill myself first.) But the OP doesn’t say that you have to give him the names/locations of your loved ones, just other potential victims.
I’m not deceived about my own strength. I’d not start naming names immediately, but I know a single session would break me. I’m not really much of one for constant pain.
Yeah, renouncing stuff, no problem, I’ll do that with a threat of uncomfortable silence. Giving up others, I’ll set my jaw and take all he has, until I break, whenever that is. And that is what you are asking about, so basically my answer is, I don’t know. Hopefully I’ll hold out long enough to die, or at least go completely insane and not have to live with the guilt of sacrificing my family, or stop living because of it. It does present a useful scenario for testing whether or not I’m able to will my own heart to stop.
I would think carefully about it for about two nanoseconds befoe cheerfully renouncing anything he wants me to renounce - it’s under duress, so any potential godlike beings would know that I didn’t mean it, and any reputable government wouldn’t bind me to it either.
As for the other people, I can think of some people who live pretty far away - if he’s sincere in the ‘name names and then go free myself’ bit, I have a cellphone and can warn people he’s coming, and if he’s a lying bastard I will simply be careful to pick people that I don’t particularly care for anyway, just in case he keeps me around despite promises.
I really have no idea. I do know that I have a high threshold for pain. However, while I know I can handle a beating and worse, I’ve never been subject to very directed, focused torture for a specific purpose. In other words, it hasn’t been cold blooded and designed to maximize my pain until I broke. So I couldn’t say. I hope I’d be able to clam up and check out, but I don’t think I should give myself that much credit.
But by prolonging the torture I’m just postponing the inevitable, right? I didn’t quite understand if at the end of these sessions, he’ll let me off free if I have endured enough. If the torture is never going to stop, I’ll do whatever he wants me to right away, duh.
Otherwise, I’d give it a shot in not telling him squat. But I don’t think I could last long with physical torture.
Wimp here. I’m not good with pain, sad to say. I wish I could claim I’d be Batman, but one look at the apparatus would probably do it for me. I might last longer if there weren’t any blood involved.
Larry: How did they finally get to you?
Sam: They gave me a grasshopper.
Larry: What’s a grasshopper?
Sam: Lessee, two parts gin, one part brandy, one part Creme de Menthe…
I will tell him anything he wants to hear. It’s his problem whether to believe me or not. Once I’ve told him what he wants I will either be let go, then I’m free to do my worst to him, or he won’t, in which case there is no point in giving him more information.