I was thinking about a documentary I saw on TV a while ago. It featured a guy from the US who believed the Holocaust didn’t happen and rightly got a lot of grief for this. However the first bit of the documentary focused on his work for US prisons and his improvements on the execution equipment they use. He redesigned the equipment so that it actually worked more efficiently and did what you might call a proper job of killing people.
It made me think though just who in the US decides what constitutes cruel and unusual punishment? Newspapers feature articles on accidents where people were killed instantly through poisoning or shooting etc, why do prisons use such slow and seemingly archaic methods of execution such as the electric chair (they still use it don’t they?) or methods of poisoning that seem to take so long? Is it to make the executioner feel better about killing someone in a way that seems more civilised? (BTW I’m not trying to say whether or not capital punishment should or shouldn’t be used.)
I would think an IV heroin drip until you overdose might be a comparatively pleasant way to cash in your chips.
It’s not as pretty and considerably messier, but being next to a bomb when it detonates should be painless. Your body would be ripped to pieces long (relatively speaking) before any pain impulses could get to what’s left of your brain. You’d never feel a thing if it’s powerful enough.
If I had a choice, I’d want to go out the way Lenny does in Of Mice and Men. Gunshot to the back of the head satisfies the ‘quick’ part. To never see it coming and have it done by somebody who loves me for a good reason would satisfy both implications of ‘painless.’
Guess which side of the euthanasia debate I’m on.
There’ve been discussions about the guillotine in SD. It was also developed to be a quick, painless method of execution. Supposedly, the impact knocks the condemned unconscious. But there were naysayers that contended that they saw severed heads awake after the slice. UC then related a story from the Teeming Millions: A guy was in a car wreck with a friend. His friend’s head was ripped off his torso, and fell within view of the TM. He said he saw his friend’s face show emotions as he realized what had happened. Creepy!
Anything definately painless would be a long death: poisoning, asphyxiation. Anything very quick would be questionably painless, and usually messy: gunshot, guillotine.
I heard this one in a gas safety class:
A company was purging a silo with an inert gas (probably nitrogen, but I can’t remember.) A worker leaned into the access door at the top of the silo, took a breath, passed out and fell in. Another worker saw a guy fall into a silo, climbed the ladder, took a breath and fell in. A third worker did the same thing before the people on the site gained the common sense not to lean into a room full of inert gas and breathe.
Sounds quick and painless to me…
I live in Florida and a couple of years ago the retired “Old Sparky”. That was the playful name for Florida’s electric chair. I’m no 100% sure about this but I do believe that the method of execution in Florida is still by electric shock. I think the new chair is just aptly named “New Sparky”. I don’t know that for a fact though.
The point of my reply is to say that if you really think about the forms of execution that still currently being used in the U.S. that they are very quick and you usually don’t know what happened. For example, The electric chair is an extremely quick method of execution. Just think about being struck by lightning. Isn’t that relatively quick? Also California and it’s gas chamber. When you are in a gas chamber you aren’t running around the room screaming “Oh my God!!! I am slowly and painfully dying.” Hell no! You are strapped into a chair and you just fall asleep and don’t wake up. Utah I believe still uses the Firing Squad. Five sharp shooters aimed at your head would usually be a very accurate and effective means of dispatching someone.
I don’t know what other forms of execution they still use in the U.S. but the ones I listed, in my opinion, are very effective and non-painful methods of killing someone for the crime that he or she committed.
Omega007
- sedative
- muscle relaxant
- potassium chloride
- causes the heart to stop -
Your heart stops while you are asleep.
This is the easiest.
It beat being drawn and quartered by a mile.
I think nitrogen is one of the “ert” ones. It may not be as “ert” as hydrogen or fluorine, but think of all those nitrates…
I lived in western Colorado when the death penalty was reinstated in the 70’s. Utah’s first condemned actually wanted to be killed, and had to fight to get his date moved closer. I remember the coverage of the execution (cameras outside of the prison, not the actual execution), and the reporter mentioned that of the several shooters, only one’s rifle was loaded with a live round. Also, they aimed for the heart, not the head.
I heard that story in a training class where I work, but the inert gas was Argon, which is used to purge tanks or pipes prior to welding or brazing operations. Argon is heavier than air, so if you breathe it it just collects in the lungs and you die (at least, that’s what I was told). I guess that’s a common horror story they tell everyone who goes to one of those classes. I’m not sure how painless it would be but it’s definitely quick.
Nope. Pure nitorgen is definately inert. Only when combined with other elements does nithrogen become something that goes “Bang”.
Any asphixiant gas will do: All it has to do is be heavier than oxygen, and be in an enclosed space. Gas Free Engineers are important people anywhere you’ve got fully enclosed spaces: I’ve even heard of people going out in the ouwn homes, because the house was tightly caulked and weather sealed, then gas was introduced, usually through a faulty gas line, but sometimes just plain old CO[sub]2[/sub] will do you…
Ultimately, the Supreme Court.
Yeh, that’s partly it, although it is the fact that the electric chair and lethel injections are considered fast which mean that they can seem ‘more civilised’. There are fashions in execution methods and usually the reason why a new method gets adopted is that its advocates claim that their method is more hi-tech than the old one. The guillotine replaced the axe because it seemed more technologically advanced. The new-fangled electric chair replaced the low-tech noose. Whether they were in any real sense ‘better’ was largely irrelevant - it was the image that mattered.
The Man was Garry Gilmore who was executed by a firing squad in 1977. For more info read Norman Mailer’s The Executioner’s Song.
The Urban Legends Archive has this on Utah Firing Squads. Only one of the firing squad is issued a blank. In theory each member can never be sure that they actually committed the execution.
Well, here’s the thing with the death penalty: you have your people who argue for “painless,” and your people who argue for “theatrical.”
• Gas chamber. Not painless—the gas paralyzes the breathing, so you gasp and gasp and finally suffocate. Relatively theatrical, though.
• Lethal injection. Quick, painless, extremely dull to watch.
• Electric chair. Pretty damn theatrical, but opinion is divided on “painless.”
• Firing squad. Highly theatrical, and (if done expertly) quick and painless. Ditto for beheading, which seems to have fallen out of favor for some reason in the U.S.
• Hanging. Also a great crowd-pleaser, but too often bungled.
If I were being executed (and really, it’s only a matter of time!), I would opt for the guillotine, complete with tumbril ride to the village square, jeering crowds and Last Words.
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As I learned to use the term, it doesn’t have to go “bang” to fail to be inert, it just has to be willing to combine with other elements. Nitrogen is rather standoffish but it does combine with other elements considerably more often and more readily than Neon, Argon, Xenon, Krypton, Helium, and Radon, which are the elements conventionall described as “inert”.
Nitrogen is more akin to gold, which is also rather snobbish about reacting with just any old trashy element that happens to come along (unlike, say, Sodium, that slut) but gold will form a few compounds and one does not normally hear of gold being referred to as an inert element.
Nevertheless, since chemical inertia is relative (I believe everything but Helium has been forced to combine under laboratory conditions so a category of absolutely inert elements would contain nothing but Helium), I suppose you are justified in using the word to refer to Nitrogen in a relative way.
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I recently saw a documentary called Mr. Death about the guy who designed electric chairs, lethal injection machines, and even gallows for various states. He stated that his preferred method, were he to be executed, would be the electric chair.
He explained the way the chair works to some extent. Two jolts are administered; after the first, the body floods itself with adrenaline, and there’s a possibility that the heart might start again. The second jolt, which comes after the body’s adrenaline supply is depleted, ensures that the heart stops.
But hey, why trust me, read the electric chair’s specs yourself here. An excerpt:
Incidentally, he’s the same Fred Leuchter who later became somewhat famous for claiming that the Holocaust didn’t occur because the areas he inspected in the camps could not have been used as gas chambers. So, he’s pretty flaky in some areas, but he sure knows what it takes to kill a guy.
Hmmm… Partly.
The Guillotine (And it’s predecessor, the Maiden) were only partly intended to be “Modern”. Execution by the axe or sword is a chancy business, frequently plagued by mis-aimed strokes, movement of the prisoner or other mistakes. The back ot the human neck is a remarkably small target, and many a prisoner was maimed before the execution was completed. The Maiden and the Guillotine were intended to remove the element of human movement from the execution. And to be fancy-new-modern. Strong circumstancial evidence suggests that the victim remained alert for some time afterwards in at least a few cases.
As for hanging, well that’s always been as much art as science, and many a hanging was turned from a grand public spectacle to a horror show by either decapitating the prisoner (too long a fall), or by slowly choking the victim to death as they flailed at the end of too short a rope (AKA: Dancing “Danny Deever”). At least once, the hangee actually fell to the ground; he was too heavy, and the line parted. So: Not always a clean death. The Electric chair was supposed to do-away with the uncertainties of the noose, and was also, as stated, endorsed by modernists. Note: Eddison championed the use of AC current in executions, as he could then use that as a maketing ploy against Tesla in the AC/DC wars (AC current is a killer… Use DC current instead: It’s safe… Harrumph.).
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AHumter3
Point taken.
My usage of inert is for N[sub]2[/sub], which, in the absence of external forces doesn’t readily combine or interact with other elements. Not purely true in the absolute scientific meaning, but for our purposes is close enough. This is why welders use it, and why it’s used to purge pipes, and in low-corrosion gas enviroments.
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As an RN student, I am not allowed to give any drugs by IV without an instructor present. The most important drug NOT to give by IV push is KCl. Never give potassium chloride IV push, my Med/Surg instructor says, because that is how we execute criminals in the great state of California.
I dont know about the other methods… but when we had to put my cat to sleep he was dead practicly before it was pushed in. It was very fast too. He got slightly groggy then BAM gone just within a couple seconds. You could see the instant he eyes went from alert to gone.