Ive had kidney stones, several times. The problem with them is you know they’re just kidney stones, ie you are only going to wish you’d die, you arent actually going to.
Torture, they can do anything. I would feel ethically compelled to try and avoid giving correct information as long as I could on the assumption that a delay would be useful to those in danger, but I suspect it wouldnt be long enough to be much use.
Yeah, it’s hard to extrapolate pain from one situation to another. I think I have a fairly high pain tolerance, based on my past experience with broken bones and more recently having Crohn’s disease. Fun fact: I read an article that said the screenwriter for the movie Alien got the idea for the gut-busting alien from what his abdominal pain from Crohn’s felt like. When I read that, I totally agreed. Having said that, although it’s ongoing/chronic pain, you still know it’s not going to kill you - so it’s hard to say if it would make you better able to resist torture.
I said second or third because I would hold out as long I could. If I knew for a fact that the torturer didn’t know who or where my loved ones were, I could see bearing far pain to prevent harm to my family. The fact that he is also doing to me what he plans to do to them would give me motivation to hold out as long as I could to spare them if possible.
I have fairly high pain tolerance, but how long I actually last depends entirely on what is being done. Realistically it may not be as long as I would hope.
In fact, I thought the average was more like 14 seconds 
You also have to take into consideration the different types of pain - someone may be able to endure throbbing pain for hours, but some sharp sudden pain would do them in and they’d break just like that. Likewise pain in one area of the body doesn’t equate to another. Some people are more sensitive in different places and in different ways. Lastly, some people are emotionally attached to their bodies in different ways - one person may be fine with pain, but cave when their ability to reproduce is threatened, another may tolerate bones being broken for hours but then break when their jaw or nose is broken, because they’re attached more to their facial appearance than their body.
More importantly, there’s the psychological/mental difference between torture and pain.
If I’m in pain from something in normal life, I know what I can do to fix it - take medicine, go to the doctor, whatever. As a viable adult person usually in populated areas, I am in control of my life to a large extent, so pain/damage isn’t so bad, because I can always think “when it gets bad enough, I’ll do x, or if I’m trapped or pinned, eventually *someone *will come by and then x will happen.”
If I’m being held by someone, and that someone is purposefully inflicting pain, there’s also panic/distress from being captive, and then the added loss of control over your physical situation.
So it isn’t just pain tolerance, or even experience with regular non-purposefully-inflicted-pain. There’s the psychological angle also. Some people with very high pain tolerance don’t have an equally good tolerance of being out of control of their situation.
I fall into that category - for me, he wouldn’t even have to do more than threaten me with potential harm. I feel enough distress and “pain” from having been caught in the first place, and now being held captive and unable to escape thus far that I would capitulate instantly while I still had my mind in good enough working order that I could at least try and control what information I passed on.
It isn’t an issue of avoiding pain (not that I don’t want to avoid pain - I do, a lot.) so much as an issue of retaining what little control I have of the situation (which to me is psychologically more important).
I think that I have a fairly high pain tolerance but torture isn’t going to be the kind of pain you would feel in your daily life. It’s not just a broken bone, it’s a broken bone with the broken ends being ground together. C-clamps on testicles, needles to eyes, there’s so much horrible shit a person could do to you that I think, even if you can imagine it, you can’t really understand what it would be like unless you actually experience it. Throw in waterboarding, which triggers an unavoidable lizard-brain response, and I’m pretty sure I wouldn’t hold tough for too long.
I might try to feed them false information along with the true stuff, maybe hinder their efforts a bit, but I’m guessing I would break sooner rather than later.
This is true. But at the same time, when I had kidney stones and was lying on the bed in the emergency room, I have no doubt that I would have sold my mother into slavery to get the morphine shots a half hour faster. A little part of me knew it really wasn’t a big deal, but the rest of me would have done anything to relieve the agony. It wasn’t even pain anymore; the sensation was almost unearthly. I don’t think I would have had the capacity to tell a coherent lie under those circumstances to save my own life.
Without a lot of preparation and training, I’d fold like a cheap suit. Even with preparation, I would just delay the inevitable.
Gentlemen, the truth lies in that they cut off one of your testicles, and ask you the questions for for second.
That’s why I give myself 30 seconds.
Hell, when getting my spinal I screamed and cried and actually offered my doctor a check to just knock me out. I couldn’t handle the freaking anesthesia, I sure couldn’t handle torture!
“I was not in your room,” which apparently was the wrong answer, as I found myself being lifted out my bed by my hair and shaken so violently that the scalp was torn in places. Limbs fly, not on your accord. Something happens and your mind is taken over.
It’s not the pain. It’s never the pain. I had bones broken and the pain is nothing. You get over that. My sister couldn’t have anesthesia for a cavity once, and when I asked her about it, she just laughed and said we’ve seen worse. And we did, but not because of the injuries or the pain.
You don’t understand unless you’ve had it happen to you. It’s the terror. The fear of death, of being killed right there. Somewhere the animal part of your brain kicks in and you do what you need to in order to preserve your life. And then your life is changed because things get rewired, and they don’t actually have to come that close to killing you the second time to get you to break, and you will hate and loath yourself for it.
Think about the question of how long you would withstand torture to give up your toddler? Now how many people break down and cry just thinking about that because you know what your limits are?
I don’t know. I said in the poll I’d give up names just looking in the room, but that was because serious speculation on how long I could withstand would cause serious flashbacks. Your hands automatically come up from the keyboard in a defensive, but futile move. Your head moves down in a protective position while your eyes never leave. Your body shakes from the adrenaline, your breathing and heart rates increase.
You tell the person what they want to hear. Eventually I found a reason which satisfied a mentally disturbed man and I was allowed to return to the earth.
I really don’t know. I would hope that I could withstand the terror long enough for someone to save Beta-chan, but either way, I’d be a mess.
If you’re one of my friends and are looking for me to save you. I’m so sorry.
This just isn’t true. Quite a few people have refused to give up anything to the very end. Like Robert-François Damiens:
“He was tortured first with red-hot pincers; his hand, holding the knife used in the attempted assassination, was burned using sulphur; molten wax, lead, and boiling oil were poured into his wounds. After several hours of agony, he was remanded to the royal executioner, Charles Henri Sanson. Horses were harnessed to his arms and legs, but Damiens’ limbs did not separate easily: after several more hours, the officients were forced to have Sanson cut Damiens’ joints with an axe. Damiens was dismembered to the applause of the crowd, and his torso - reportedly still living - was burnt at the stake.”
To the very end he refused to name any accomplices. And then there’s Jean Moulin, French resistance leader who was captured and tortured by the Nazis. Wouldn’t give them anything and died from his injuries.
If the information is time sensitive - like if you were buying time for your fellow soldiers to escape or for your family to be rescued or something - I think I could hold out for a few hours. Maybe more. We’d all like to think we can call on an inner badass in the hypothetical, but actually facing it might change your mind. This is one of those sorts of things.
But if it’s not time sensitive, and you’re completely under their control so they can torture you indefinitely - why even bother to put up a fight? Just give it up in the first place, they’re going to get it eventually.
On second thought, I suppose under threat of extracting the location of your loved ones to be able to torture them, I would try to hold out until hopefully they killed me in the process of torture.
I voted “a single session” - I figure probably in the first 5-10 minutes or so - Medieval tortures weren’t known for being quick.
ETA: and I say this as someone with experience of being whipped, and of having molten metal splash on my arm, and being violently raped.
ETA2: Not all at the same time 
I’m pretty well certain there’s nothing you could do to make me betray Celtling. I’m not afraid of death or of pain. I’ve danced en pointe with a broken toe, and my own Mother couldn’t tell there was anything wrong.
The real question is “How long before I actually begin to see five lights?”*
I don’t know. I’m as tough as they come, but I’m a fallible human nonetheless. I can tell you that the person I am now would never do it; and the person you’d have to turn me into would probably never find her way back.
If the stakes were anythign less than harm to Celtling, I’d just avoid the torture and tell him what he wants. I’d try to outthink him and make it as useless aspossible, but I’m not going to volunteer it for anyone but her.
You are correct as usual.
I’m with the 50%. I figure when The New World Order comes, I just need to do something batshit crazy to get myself immediately killed & be a Martyr for the Resistance.
Geez. Realistically speaking, I’d probably break in a single session. I wouldn’t call myself a wimp, but I’ve never really suffered extreme pain. Nor do I think my willpower is anything special. In fact, in that regard, I’m probably worse than others.
If anything could get me to hang on, it would be the thought that if I broke, I’d be indirectly causing other people to go through exactly what I’m going through. Every crushed nut, every waterboarding, every ounce of pain I feel, would be brought upon somebody else. That somebody else is a human being and has people who love them too… they would feel the excrutiating pain too. I would rather die than cause somebody else to suffer so. That’s why I like to think I could hold out…
I probably, heck, almost definitely could not. But hey, who knows? I’m not very good under extreme anxiety. While I might break instantly, I’m probably just as likely to hyperventilate and pass-out repeatedly, go catatonic, or go insane. And, while this probably sounds silly, if my belief in myself that I could hold out for a while would improve my ‘performance’ in this dreadful hypothetical reality, then I’ll vote for many sessions. That is why my vote is a lie.
And TP, thank you for sharing. I really have no words…
I’d neither renounce my beliefs nor relinquish names. I’d withstand my torture and instead torture the torturer with my steadfast resolve to remain torture-proof—that’s just the kind of guy I am.