“Force-feeding” can sometimes refer to shoving food down an unconscious person’s throat, such as in a medical setting. Here, though, I’m talking about forcing a conscious person to eat something that they don’t want to. Usually, this means poison (if it wasn’t poisonous, why force it?).
The idea of being force-fed poison sounds like an absolutely horrible way to go. However, now that I really think about it, it seems that choking is just as likely a result of force-feeding as actual ingestion. I mean, if you’re shoving food down the throat of an unwilling (and probably resistant) person, it’s not going to just go down to the stomach smoothly, right? I get caught up on an improperly chewed cookie sometimes. If someone were going to try to stuff a poisonous something-or-other down my throat and I was resisting them, wouldn’t I be more likely to gagg to death?
I believe a tube is inserted into the patient’s oesophagus and the food is delivered far enough down it that it doesn’t go anyware near the trachea and therefore choking should not occur (unless the patient vomits it back up or something).
I was under the impression that in situations in which force-feeding was to cause unpleasantness or death, the victim’s mouth was just held open and food was jammed in manually. I was wrong, then?
Can you remind us of a specific situation where this has happened? I’ve only heard it as a threat, or carried out in a medical manner with an n/g tube.
But yes, theoretically, I’d imagine choking is a huge risk when force feeding someone without a tube.
The type of force feeding used by totalitarian agents on prisoners engaged in asymmetric warfare involves pain induced compliance to repetitive simple muscular tasks, such as open, swallow. The pain can be unrelated to the process, and choking is simply an additional pain element.
The use of medical equipment is often chosen to limit the evidence of repetitive pain inducers on the body of the victim. One can induce unconsciousness, use medical five point restraint equipment, and a naso-pharyngeal tube applied while the subject is unconscious. In a few days, all signs of the struggle will have moderated, while nutrition is supplied without additional physical trauma. Psychologically undesired stimuli can be used to assure that the subject is less likely to repeat the asymmetric mode of attack. Each such response to repetition of such attacks will build on this behavioral modification. Eventually, even the location where the humanitarian intervention to prevent starvation is accomplished will become a powerful motivator to comply with the totalitarian agent’s desires.
And as a big bonus, legally, it isn’t torture!
The hero accepts this, and attempts to inhale any fluid available in the esophagus, whether during food input, or regurgitation, in order to induce aspiration, suffocation, and death. Being a hero is no fun.
Thomas Ashe, an Irish Republican prisoner who had been on hunger strike, died as a result of force-feeding by prison authorities in 1917. Around the same time IIRC one or more suffragettes also died after being force-fed while on hunger strike.
Given a struggle between a conscious “This food, despite all outward appearances of being nutritious and palatable, is poisoned. I must not eat it.” versus all those sympathetic and parasympathetic reflexes associated with swallowing and not breathing food, the “I shouldn’t swallow this.” message is going to lose.
Anyway, given the choice between death by choking/aspiration/pulmonary edema or being poisoned… it would have to be some pretty unpleasant poison.