I’ve read Stieg Larsson’s series of books about Lisbeth Salander (The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, The Girl Who Played with Fire, The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest). In the second book (Played with Fire) there is a person who has congenital analgesia, meaning they don’t feel any pain. The book mentions how this is not a great thing to have because it makes you unaware of any bad injuries (sample article).
In the book, the person with congenital analgesia is shot with a Taser, but the Taser has no effect. Is this realistic? I would think that you would still lose control of your muscles.
It would probably depend on a litany of factors, such as the wattage of the taser, where they were hit, etc…, but yeah, even if no pain is felt, a taser could still easily cause muscle contractions, heart and breathing problems, and what not.
However, I’m not sure how tasers are designed to work. It’s possible they are made to incapacitate via pain and any other effects are mild enough (in most cases,) that if no pain is felt, they alone won’t be enough to incapacitate someone.
I’m going to say yes… and no (to the question as phrased).
Old-school Tasers were simple pain compliance tools. Nowadays, the Taser is designed to disrupt voluntary control of the muscles between the two probes. Obviously an old-school Taser would be worse than useless against a pain-free person.
Now a newer Taser would work in disabling voluntary control between the probes (assuming you got a clean hit with a nice wide spread to disable as many muscles as possible). But here’s the thing: if the Taseree cannot feel pain, he can easily reach down and pull out one of the probes discontinuing the current. A regular person cannot typicaly do that because they are in pain. So it’s not that the person would be immune, it’s just that the effect would be negligible and easily overcome.
The analgesic person would be temporarily incapacitated due to the Taser shock sending all the affected muscles into a contracted state, and leaving them unable to function for a brief time.
How incapacitated and for how long would depend on how much shock was delivered where, and for how long.
It’s not unusual for a tased person to fall to the ground due to muscle dysfunction.
And yes, I’ve seen and treated freshly tased patients, including having been (inadvertent) witness to said tasing.
I recall the scene in question from The Girl Who Played With Fire. The guy was zapped in the balls without apparent effect. But, as Qad just said, and as I thought during the movie, he should still have been knocked down by the effect of the shock on his muscles even in the absence of pain.
If you’ve seen videos of people being tased, I’m sure you’ve also then seen how they are unable to move for some time afterward. That’s not due to pain.
Thank you everybody, this seems to confirm what I thought.
I’m not sure if the person in the book is using an “old-school” Taser. The book was published in 2006 but the series was written before then, according to what I’ve read of the author, who wrote them for his own pleasure and then decided to publish them soon before his death. In the book she is always in close proximity to people she uses her Taser on, we never see a description of long insulated cables (which is what makes a Taser different from a stun gun, as far as I know).