Reprogram the simulator. 
That’s just silly. There are plenty of situations where the odds against you are unbeatable and there is no reasonable hope. But if it makes you feel better, consider going to your death with dignity a “plan” to impress the firing squad so much that you convert them to your side and they refuse to kill you and help you to escape.
No need to condescend to me, I don’t rely on you for ways to make me feel better.
As I said, its a mentality. IMO there are very few situations where the penalty for fighting to the end will be worse than the certain execution. Using your own words for example, surely an unreasonable hope is still better odds than certain death through inaction. Wheres the downside?
No doubt you will have some contrived scenario where puppies will die because I tried to grab a gun from one of the firing squad, but I don’t think this thread is about specifics. My mentality would be to fight till the end, yours would be to give up. Each to their own.
If you fight, the benefit is:
Your Life: Odds of success: Net benefit:
A bajillion points x 1/a jillion bajillion = 0.000...0001 (a very low number)
If you go to your death with dignity, the benefit is the totally intangible Walter Mittyesque satisfaction of showing those bastards how a real man (or woman) dies; and perhaps contributing to your ideology or cause living on to fight another day (even if that ideology or cause is no more than personal devotion to you and your offspring or nephew or some other successor in blood or philosophy) because at least people don’t remember you as that pathetic guy who had to be dragged kicking and screaming to the gallows.
Now, you might argue that “your life” is worth enormously more than any such intangible benefit, and I would agree; but if the odds of success are small enough, I can see the net benefit (however abstract and unsatisfying) of not giving them the satisfaction of seeing you break could outweigh the (unlikely to the point of being essentially nonexistant) benefit of your unarmed ass overpowering your armed guards, breaking out of a maximum security prison’s Death Row, eluding the resultant manhunt, and staging your own triumphant return to power or at least assuming a new identity as a beachcomber in Tahiti.
Of course, this only applies to a situation where you’re being executed by some competant nation-state or reasonable facsimile thereof. If you’re about to be beheaded by an Al Qaeda cell, it would make total sense to bite, scream, and try to gouge out their eyes, because hell, they’re just some random fanatic guys with guns and a big knife and a video camera. You might actually pull it off. Plus for all you know Jack Bauer is personally leading SEAL Team Six to storm the place, and–dammit!–he just needs for your death to be delayed for another seven minutes until after the next commercial break.
Or, if you have some actual plan (involving your still-loyal henchmen dropping in to the prison yard with a helicopter or something like that), and they just need you to delay the execution for a few more minutes–even if it’s a far-fetched plan, it’s probably better odds than you just spontaneously busting out all by yourself, and raises the net benefit of resistance to the point where it outweighs the net benefit of going out with dignity. Or if you have superpowers, go for it.
With those caveats, I’d have to go with “Shoot straight, you bastards! Don’t make a mess of it!”; “Take a step or two forward, lads. It will be easier that way”; or “Soldiers, when I give the command to fire, fire straight at my heart. Wait for the order. It will be my last to you. I protest against my condemnation. I have fought a hundred battles for France, and not one against her … Soldiers, Fire!”
No contrived scenario. I think I’m going to die. It’s also the premise of the OP. So what contrived scenario do you imagine will be accomplished by fighting?
The likeliest scenario is both us die, you with resistance and me with dignity. The extremely remote chances of either of us surviving are independent of our actions. If a miracle is going to happen it’s as likely to be a result of my dignity as it is of your resistance.
So take survival out of the equation, whose response is better? Dying with dignity or dying with a struggle? You end up dead either way. With death a virtual certainty, all you have left is the choice of how you die. And I prefer to do it with style.
Fight the motherfuckers. That is all. I almost get into a fight every day, not because I’m such a tough guy, but I couldn’t take someone spilling on me and me not taking the gravest exception.
I opened this not realizing the the starting condition of the OP is that I am in fact evil and guilty. So I chose, kill me well, as I would rather die than spend the rest of my life in a box. I also believe in the right of suicide, and I believe prosoners facing a life sentence should be offered assisted suicide if they want it.
I would give a totally different answer if I were innocent. (I expect if I was ever facing a death sentence, it is because I was wrongly convicted. I would fight like hell to escape, I would kill my guards in the process if necessary, and I would rather die in the attempt than cooperate in my own unjust execution.
Of course, if I was REALLY a wannabe Hitler trying to take over the world, I wouldn’t have the same personality, and I would probably be willing to kill my guards of their deoderant failed, so I can’t really be confident of my first answer.
I believe Saddam Hussein used that method. :rolleyes:
Whereas, if he’d had to be dragged kicking and screaming to the gallows, or crying like a little girl, his reputation would have been totally rehabilitated.
For some reason this question made me think of the movie The Naked Prey. Of course I’d put up a fight and run away if I could. The question remains, though: once you escape or outrun the first bunch of pursuers, what do you do next?
Yeah, but I’ll go for the one in a billion chance that I could escape.
I’ll take those odds.
This seems to be the disconnect. The fact is, I cannot take survival out of the equation, no matter what the odds. Death is never a virtual certainty, there is always hope. You can say here and now that this is the scenario, but that is the mentality I subscribe to, never to accept that hope is lost.
I remember having this conversation with a group of good friends in Edinburgh in 2003, drinking Stroh and talking shite. We were talking about the poor souls that chose to jump from the burning WTC, and would we have done the same? My reply was of course that I would not. I appreciate that the fires were raging on those floors, and all hope seemed lost. But to jump was to guarantee death, whereas if you stayed who knows what could happen. A floor caves in allowing you access to the floors below. Who knows, something, anything, no matter how unlikely. Thats my mentality. (with the obvious caveat that who knows how I would react should something like this happen in real life)
One other thing, when I say struggle to the last, I do not mean sobbing and weeping, or even begging for mercy like a little girl. I am talking grab the gun from the firing squad, or try to break the bonds holding me to the chair.
You’re missing my point. I would definitely follow whatever course I thought had the best chance for my survival. But the scenario described has no such obvious course. There’s no reason to think you will be able to successfully overpower your guards and escape. So my plan is just as good as your plan in terms of survival.
So maybe I’ll jump out of the building thinking “It’s a billion to one odds against me surviving the fall. But at least I tried to escape. Look at bucketybuck, staying inside a burning building and not even trying to save his life. He’s given up all hope.”
And here we differ; I would say that a real man dies fighting. Cooperation with your executioners is nothing more than surrender to those who mean you harm - I see no honor in that. I hope I wouldn’t go out screaming or crying, but I’d certainly hope to leave my killers in pain, even if escape were impossible.
While in theory I’d like to die like an Italian, I’d probably just go with whatever promised less pain before the end.
But you won’t die fighting. You’ll die futilely squirming. You’ll take a swing at one of your guards and they’ll all jump on you and overpower you. They’ll tie you up and gag you. Then they’ll prop you up in the execution chamber and kill you while you sit there wriggling in defiance. Your death will reinforce the image that you lost - your enemies were more powerful than you and they could do whatever they wanted to you.
Walk into the execution chamber on your own feet and you can at least project the illusion that it’s your choice. Your enemies may hold the advantage but you still have some control over what’s happening. Like I said, it’s an illusion - you don’t have any real choice. But at this point, maintaining a favorable illusion is all you can realistically choose. Anything beyond that is out of your hands.
Dead even poll - great hypothetical!
I’d make like a rabid wolverine and do my best to take some of the bastards with me.
However, if my jailors were professional and maybe showed a bit of compassion or empathy, I might not want to harm them if the chance of escape was infinitesimal.
I don’t think I have it in me to go quietly though. It’s not bravery, I’d just be terrified and have to struggle.
Ah, but what if that first punch lands? Even if the guards are the only living men to ever know it, they will know the day didn’t go as they wished; one of their number was bloodied, and all of them had at least a moment of “oh, fuck.” And so what if you’re bound and gagged in the death chamber? That sends a message too: That I’m too dangerous to even be allowed speech. That I’ve scared my executioners. No, put me down with Captain Ahab and Khan:
[QUOTE=admittedly flawed badasses]
To the last I grapple with thee; from Hell’s heart I stab at thee; for hate’s sake, I spit my last breath at thee.
[/QUOTE]
I need not worry, God will surely save me.
But those two men were likely beaten and tortured half to death before the execution. They looked dazed and shell-shocked. Or they might have been actual psychopaths with the usual dulled fear response. They were members of the Sinaloa cartel after all.
A question for the OP: have we been worked over prior to our execution?
I’d probably go quietly, hopefully with some dignity. No Michel Ney or Carl Panzram last words of defiance for me.