(Disclaimer: I am not going to try this at home, and I am not going to commit suicide in any way, shape, or form. I’m just curious.)
Factually, do you suppose this is a valid method? Let’s say I was in a prison cell, and I wanted to off myself. One night, in my bunk, I use my index finger to gouge out one of my eyes. I am determined, and I get it out. If I were to jam my index finger into the opening, could I reach/pierce my brain? If I could, would that kill me?
If that didn’t work, and I ran my finger inside the toilet bowl, picking up some nasty microbes and bacteria, then jammed my finger into my eyeless socket, might I cause some kind of brain infection that would kill me?
Curious, is all. Happy Halloween.
If you’re just soliciting the simplest way to kill yourself in prison using an index finger, you could use your index finger to point at the biggest, baddest convict in the place, followed by giggling and a refusal to answer his subsequent enquiries.
I think in the first case, you’ll only manage to give yourself a frontal lobotomy. In the second case you’d get medical treatment. In the Riemann case you’d just become Bubba’s bitch.
If you check images of human skulls, you’ll see that there is only a small opening at the back of the eye socket, which allows the optic nerve to pass through. It’s not a big entry to the brain cavity.
I was kind of thinking that evolution might be ahead of me on this. Limiting the geometry of things. I can hear evolution laughing at me: Hah! Your finger will never reach your brain!
Even if you could get through the orbital fissure (which is quite narrow) and reach your brain, poking a small hole in your frontal lobe probably wouldn’t kill you.
It has been reported people have died from nose bleeds after excessive nose picking.
Less reliably it has been reported a Japanese man died while picking his nose in his car while waiting at traffic lights. A light rear end crash impact from the car behind supposedly speared the finger far enough up his nostril he had a heavy bleed although (if my memory serves me well) that triggered a fatal heart attack.
I shudder to imagine the number of times this would have to (accidentally?) happen for it to be a significant selection event in the length of a finger…
My mother told me she knew a woman who pulled a hair out of her nose (granted, using her thumb as an auxiliary to her index finger) and it got infected and she died. In those days there were no antibiotics/
Not a reliable method, but it worked at least once. I’ve toyed with that kind of death many times, with no ill effects.
An infection from a hair follicle is called furunculosis, and yes, an infection in the nasal cavity from such a cause can spread into the base of the brain and be lethal.