### Author:  [@Jim\_B](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jim_B)
#### Post date: [October 6, 2007, 7:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/should-nitrogen-asphyxiation-be-used-for-capital-punishment/421784/1 "2007-10-06T19:54:16Z")
I already saw this issue raised on the History Channel. The general tendency for capital punishment, in the U.S. at least, is for the methods to become more humane. And lethal injection sometimes doesn’t go as planned.
Nitrogen asphyxiation. It is very humane (the death is similiar to carbon monoxide poisoning). It is virtually foolproof. And unlike cyanide gas, it can be simply released harmlessly back into the environment.
[Here](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nitrogen_asphyxiation) is an interesting article on it. BTW, although I do not like to politically label myself, I am for the most part a liberal. But I do approve of capital punishment, which I actually see as simply a form of euthanasia. (Yeah, I am a liberal for the most part. But for individual issues, I am probably all over the political spectrum.)
So should nitrogen asphyxiation be used as a form of capital punishment? And what can we do to get it established now?
Thank you all in advance to all who reply 🙂
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### Author:  [@Phlosphr](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Phlosphr)
#### Post date: [October 6, 2007, 8:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/should-nitrogen-asphyxiation-be-used-for-capital-punishment/421784/2 "2007-10-06T20:09:09Z")
[QUOTE=Jim B.]
\ And what can we do to get it established now?
Thank you all in advance to all who reply 🙂
[/QUOTE]
What can we do to get it established now? I would think establishing a new capital punnishment would not be an easy task…
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### Author:  [@Malodorous](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Malodorous)
#### Post date: [October 6, 2007, 8:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/should-nitrogen-asphyxiation-be-used-for-capital-punishment/421784/3 "2007-10-06T20:36:03Z")
[QUOTE=Phlosphr]
What can we do to get it established now? I would think establishing a new capital punnishment would not be an easy task…
[/QUOTE]
Well, the constitutionality of lethal injection is currently being challenged, so it’s conceivable that a lot of states may be shopping around for new methods of capital punishment in the near future, preferably ones that are as close to inarguably painless as possible so that they don’t run afowl of the same legal challenges as injection. Using N[sub]2[/sub] seems, at least on first glance, a decent alternative.
I actually used to wonder sometimes why they don’t use Carbon Monoxide, as one usually hears that victims of poisoning by that gas are unaware that they’re in danger before they loose consciousness, and it’s obviously easy to produce. N[sub]2[/sub] seems like it would have similar advantages.
[morbid humor] And unlike Carbon Monoxide, it would be carbon neutral! We could kill large numbers of people without any guilt about the effect on the environment![/morbid humor]
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### Author:  [@Bosda\_Di\_Chi\_of\_Tricor](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bosda_Di_Chi_of_Tricor)
#### Post date: [October 6, 2007, 11:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/should-nitrogen-asphyxiation-be-used-for-capital-punishment/421784/4 "2007-10-06T23:53:12Z")
Execution by plastic explosive.
Wrap a 25 pound mass of C4 around a football helmet, in 5 separately fused & wired sections. Hook it all to 5 differnt power sources, each capable of detonating all 5 blocks.
One switch.
Instant, utterly painless, & completely certain.
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### Author:  [@elucidator](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/elucidator)
#### Post date: [October 6, 2007, 11:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/should-nitrogen-asphyxiation-be-used-for-capital-punishment/421784/5 "2007-10-06T23:59:09Z")
You cannot kill people “humanely”. Don’t kill people. Pretty simple, really.
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### Author:  [@Malodorous](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Malodorous)
#### Post date: [October 7, 2007, 12:07am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/should-nitrogen-asphyxiation-be-used-for-capital-punishment/421784/6 "2007-10-07T00:07:20Z")
[QUOTE=elucidator]
You cannot kill people “humanely”. Don’t kill people. Pretty simple, really.
[/QUOTE]
Well, I agree. But if we are going to kill them, I’d certainly like it to be in the most painless way possible. So it makes sense to discuss what method that might be, even if our first choice would be to not do it at all.
If I were on death row, I’d certainly appreciate that I was to be killed in the most humane way rather then, say, going out like the main character at the end of a Mel Gibson’s movie, even if my first choice would be to skip the killing all together.
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### Author:  [@Sam\_Stone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sam_Stone)
#### Post date: [October 7, 2007, 12:07am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/should-nitrogen-asphyxiation-be-used-for-capital-punishment/421784/7 "2007-10-07T00:07:32Z")
Semantics about ‘humane’ aside, I just don’t get what’s so hard about killing someone painlessly. We put people under anaesthetic all the time. They just put the person under, then do whatever they want to stop the heart. It should be foolproof., and aside from the IV insertion, completely painless.
For that matter, is lethal injection really that problematic? Or is that hype built up by anti-death penalty people? I watched our dog get euthanized by lethal injection, and it was fast and totally painless. My understanding is that the technique is pretty foolproof - they give the person a drug that knocks them unconscious ( Pentathol or something like it ), and once they are unconscious they pump something like potassium into their blood which stops the heart pretty quickly and they die.
If there are screwups with this, my guess is that the problem isn’t with the nature of the chemical cocktail used to kill the person, but the complex timers and automation used so that no one has to be the ‘executioner’. Which is just stupid. Find a damned volunteer and do it right, if you must do it.
BTW, I’m against the death penalty in almost all cases. So I’d rather we not kill them at all. The exception I would make would be in the case of terrorists who have committed multiple murders, on purely practical grounds - dead terrorists don’t have their buddies kidnapping people in attempts to get them freed. But other than that, I’m against the death penalty.
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### Author:  [@Der\_Trihs](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Der_Trihs)
#### Post date: [October 7, 2007, 12:29am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/should-nitrogen-asphyxiation-be-used-for-capital-punishment/421784/8 "2007-10-07T00:29:55Z")
[QUOTE=Sam Stone]
Semantics about ‘humane’ aside, I just don’t get what’s so hard about killing someone painlessly. We put people under anaesthetic all the time. They just put the person under, then do whatever they want to stop the heart. It should be foolproof., and aside from the IV insertion, completely painless.
[/quote]
Hardly foolproof, if they insert the needle wrong or get the dosage wrong. It’s not hard to do it painlessly, but the real point is to make it look “civilized”. We could just shoot them in the head with a high powered gun, but that would make us look like all the dictatorships that we like to pretend moral superiority over.
[QUOTE=Sam Stone]
For that matter, is lethal injection really that problematic? Or is that hype built up by anti-death penalty people? I watched our dog get euthanized by lethal injection, and it was fast and totally painless. My understanding is that the technique is pretty foolproof - they give the person a drug that knocks them unconscious ( Pentathol or something like it ), and once they are unconscious they pump something like potassium into their blood which stops the heart pretty quickly and they die.
[/quote]
From what I’ve read ( not an expert ), there are drugs that paralyze, drugs that knock unconscious, and drugs that kill. The claim is that the unconsciousness-inducing drug is short lived, and that the victim is often parayzed and unconscious. Also, that the whole procedure is poorly done. And that the lethal drug involved is agonizing painful to anything conscious.
[QUOTE=Sam Stone]
If there are screwups with this, my guess is that the problem isn’t with the nature of the chemical cocktail used to kill the person, but the complex timers and automation used so that no one has to be the ‘executioner’. Which is just stupid. Find a damned volunteer and do it right, if you must do it.
[/quote]
As I understand it, they have problems finding people who know how to do it properly who are willing.
[QUOTE=Sam Stone]
BTW, I’m against the death penalty in almost all cases. So I’d rather we not kill them at all. The exception I would make would be in the case of terrorists who have committed multiple murders, on purely practical grounds - dead terrorists don’t have their buddies kidnapping people in attempts to get them freed.
[/QUOTE]
Bad idea; that produces martyrs.
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### Author:  [@Slithy\_Tove](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Slithy_Tove)
#### Post date: [October 7, 2007, 12:31am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/should-nitrogen-asphyxiation-be-used-for-capital-punishment/421784/9 "2007-10-07T00:31:42Z")
What was so painfull about being guillitioned" “A slight chill on the neck,” and it was all over.
Or if you were hanged by someone who knew what he was doing, your neck was snapped, your brain was dead and the next few minutes was dumb follow-through for the circulatory system.
Or the electric chair. Of course you know that electricity travels faster than neurotransmissions. You were literaly dead before you knew it.
What we really want isn’t painless execution. We’ve had that option for thousands of years. We want it to not outrage the sensibilites of those doing the executing, who don’t like all that goopy blood all over the place (either venous dark and evil, or arterial and shockingly brilliant), or the hanging victim shitting and obscenely tumescent, or the burnt corpse smell from electrocution stuck in our nostril hairs.
We claim that we kill people to make life more sacred, but we want to do it in a way that it won’t desecrate the flesh or make us feel like savages. We want it boring so we won’t enjoy it.
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### Author:  [@Patty\_O\_Furniture](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Patty_O_Furniture)
#### Post date: [October 7, 2007, 2:11am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/should-nitrogen-asphyxiation-be-used-for-capital-punishment/421784/10 "2007-10-07T02:11:13Z")
Hollywood has done a good job of putting the terror in execution. And even without Hollywood’s help, being walked up to the gallows or a guillotine has got to be pretty damned terrifying. And knowing that your head is going to be imploded in a **Bosda Helmet** ™ has got to be right up there as well.
If we induce terror before death, what does that make us?
I think this is where the fanaitcal anti-death-penalty crowd is often coming from, and I can empathize. In order to take the terror out of being put to death - if that’s even possible - we have to keep assuring the public that those being put to death remain more or less calm and the act is painless.
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### Author:  [@msmith537](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/msmith537)
#### Post date: [October 7, 2007, 6:14am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/should-nitrogen-asphyxiation-be-used-for-capital-punishment/421784/11 "2007-10-07T06:14:41Z")
[QUOTE=Patty O’Furniture]
Hollywood has done a good job of putting the terror in execution. And even without Hollywood’s help, being walked up to the gallows or a guillotine has got to be pretty damned terrifying. And knowing that your head is going to be imploded in a **Bosda Helmet** ™ has got to be right up there as well.
[/QUOTE]
I was just thinking about something like a Bosda Helmet. Weird.
The problem with gallows, guillotine, electric chair, firing squad, Bosda Helmet, Running Man Collar, or wrecking ball is that while they are quick and painless, they are incredibly gruesome.
I suppose the most humane method would be to fill an inmates cell with N2 or CO gas randomly.
Or we could go the opposite route and give inmates the “Hollywood” option for spectacular death sentences - lit on fire and tossed from an airplane, sprayed with liquid nitrogen and smashed with a hammer, thrown off a building onto a sharp object, smashed by a shipping container, etc.
“They say being eaten by crocodiles is just like going to sleep…in a giant blender.”
-Homer Simpson
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### Author:  [@Siam\_Sam](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Siam_Sam)
#### Post date: [October 7, 2007, 6:31am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/should-nitrogen-asphyxiation-be-used-for-capital-punishment/421784/12 "2007-10-07T06:31:11Z")
I’ve always been a fan of the guillotine myself. Fast and efficient, plus a real crowd-pleaser in the days when executions were public. I’ve read expert opinions that it really was the most humane form; over quick as a flash and no chance of a screw-up.
As for the carbon monoxide suggestion, I’ve read that that results in a blinding headache before you lose consciousness, but if that’s true, that brings up the question about how people can succumb to it unknowlingly.
As for lethal injection, I’ve never been able to figure out why they can’t just put the person into a very deep sleep before administering the fatal drugs. If they can do it for surgery, why can’t they just go ahead and do it for the person being executed?
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### Author:  [@Siam\_Sam](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Siam_Sam)
#### Post date: [October 7, 2007, 6:32am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/should-nitrogen-asphyxiation-be-used-for-capital-punishment/421784/13 "2007-10-07T06:32:35Z")
[QUOTE=Patty O’Furniture]
If we induce terror before death, what does that make us?
[/QUOTE]
Playful like a cat.
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### Author:  [@Koxinga](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Koxinga)
#### Post date: [October 7, 2007, 6:41am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/should-nitrogen-asphyxiation-be-used-for-capital-punishment/421784/14 "2007-10-07T06:41:12Z")
[QUOTE=msmith537]
Or we could go the opposite route and give inmates the “Hollywood” option for spectacular death sentences - lit on fire and tossed from an airplane, sprayed with liquid nitrogen and smashed with a hammer, thrown off a building onto a sharp object, smashed by a shipping container, etc.
[/QUOTE]
How about being given cyanide-laced cakes to eat, then shot, then stabbed, then having one’s privates cut off? Surely that would be enough–not like one would have to be thrown into a freezing lake just to make sure, or anything.
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### Author:  [@Koxinga](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Koxinga)
#### Post date: [October 7, 2007, 6:43am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/should-nitrogen-asphyxiation-be-used-for-capital-punishment/421784/15 "2007-10-07T06:43:53Z")
[QUOTE=Siam Sam]
As for lethal injection, I’ve never been able to figure out why they can’t just put the person into a very deep sleep before administering the fatal drugs. If they can do it for surgery, why can’t they just go ahead and do it for the person being executed?
[/QUOTE]
I thought that some people have asserted that you aren’t actually unconscious during surgery–all the drugs to is render you incapable of _remembering_ all that went on while you were on the table.
Food for thought, that.
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### Author:  [@Der\_Trihs](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Der_Trihs)
#### Post date: [October 7, 2007, 7:05am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/should-nitrogen-asphyxiation-be-used-for-capital-punishment/421784/16 "2007-10-07T07:05:45Z")
[QUOTE=Siam Sam]
As for lethal injection, I’ve never been able to figure out why they can’t just put the person into a very deep sleep before administering the fatal drugs. If they can do it for surgery, why can’t they just go ahead and do it for the person being executed?
[/QUOTE]
Probably because they have trouble getting people with the skill to do that to help, and because they really don’t care anyway.
[QUOTE=Koxinga]
I thought that some people have asserted that you aren’t actually unconscious during surgery–all the drugs to is render you incapable of _remembering_ all that went on while you were on the table.
Food for thought, that.
[/QUOTE]
From what I’ve read, being conscious but paralyzed can happen when the anesthesiologist screws up; they administer drugs that knock you out, and others that paralyze you so you don’t twitch by reflex. If they give too little of the knockout drugs but enough of the paralytic, you are in for a very bad time. Sometimes, unethical doctors have then administered a drug that has a fair chance of inducing short term amnesia; I don’t recall the name.
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### Author:  [@Paul\_in\_Qatar](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Paul_in_Qatar)
#### Post date: [October 7, 2007, 7:16am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/should-nitrogen-asphyxiation-be-used-for-capital-punishment/421784/17 "2007-10-07T07:16:01Z")
How could anything be more painless than a large firing squad? (OK, the barrel-full-of-explosives, maybe.)
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### Author:  [@Der\_Trihs](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Der_Trihs)
#### Post date: [October 7, 2007, 7:20am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/should-nitrogen-asphyxiation-be-used-for-capital-punishment/421784/18 "2007-10-07T07:20:01Z")
[QUOTE=Paul in Saudi]
How could anything be more painless than a large firing squad? (OK, the barrel-full-of-explosives, maybe.)
[/QUOTE]
What if they miss the head ? If painlessness is the goal, just shoot them in the head with something powerful enough to destroy the brain.
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### Author:  [@Siam\_Sam](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Siam_Sam)
#### Post date: [October 7, 2007, 7:25am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/should-nitrogen-asphyxiation-be-used-for-capital-punishment/421784/19 "2007-10-07T07:25:12Z")
[QUOTE=Koxinga]
I thought that some people have asserted that you aren’t actually unconscious during surgery–all the drugs to is render you incapable of _remembering_ all that went on while you were on the table.
Food for thought, that.
[/QUOTE]
I’ve gone under the knife a few times in my life, including once in Thailand, and so I hope that is not the case. If it is, I’m grateful for the drugs that don’t allow me to remember it! But I’m skeptical about such claims.
Still, I’ve read those stories about people who claim to have still been conscious or woken up during surgery but could not let the surgeon know, and those make my hair stand on end! :eek:
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### Author:  [@KGS](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/KGS)
#### Post date: [October 7, 2007, 8:09am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/should-nitrogen-asphyxiation-be-used-for-capital-punishment/421784/20 "2007-10-07T08:09:02Z")
Nitrogren asphyxiation would allow the condemned person’s organs to be harvested & transplanted, which is not possible with other execution methods (aside from hanging/guillotine, which are all but nonexistent in America today.) Lethal injection poisons the body, as does the gas chamber (is that method even used anymore?), and electrocution kinda fries 'em to a crisp.
Nitrogen also appears to be [very quick and painless:](http://www.satanservice.org/tokus/suicide/guide/#III.B.2.b)
> [@](#):
>
> Accidents in the industry that I have read about suggest that breathing pure nitrogen leads to extremely rapid unconsciousness. One or two breaths effectively purge all the oxygen out of the lungs, and the victim doesn’t have time to react. There are probably no warning symptoms, as nitrogen has no physiological effects of its own.
>
> One story is that a man entered a large nitrogen tank to clean it, not knowing that it had not been purged with air. He collapsed immediately, and his brother (a fellow worker) attempted to rescue him. Both were found dead of anoxia.
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