I’ve been wondering for years why they don’t just use nitrogen gas. Well, apparently, Oklahoma wants to start doing it.
[Update a couple minutes later]
Here‘s a piece from Slate that I missed a year ago. No one seems to offer a single reason not to go this route, other than “it requires study.” It’s been obvious to me (as I said) for years.
My understanding is that carbon monoxide “tricks” the circulatory system into ‘thinking’ it found some oxygen, so it would also be a useful chemical.
Yes, but I think if you’re awake it will cause a headache first.
Just don’t use CO2; the warm mongers would surely have a field day with it. There would be no rational connection, but that’s never stopped them before.
No headache with nitrogen, and completely non-toxic (no hazmat disposal required). The person inhaling it simply becomes unconscious, then dies shortly thereafter.
http://www.baen.com/columbia.asp
Quite the deterrent… painlessly go to sleep… instead of… do the crime, be eaten alive by animals that are just barely up to the job… until done.
Anyone who goes through altitude chamber training will be put through the exercise of taking of their mask, then trying to do a puzzle for as long as they can before having to don the mask again. I didn’t make it through writing my initials, and it wasn’t because I was in pain. I wasn’t. It was delightful, and I would have no problem going that way myself. There’s always one person who goes too long, and the instructor spots him or her immediately, and stands by until they are just about to pass out. It’s a lesson in how easy it is to die this way, and a warning to get that mask on. (The guy who freaks out in An Officer and a Gentleman was a myth. That not only doesn’t happen, it’s not possible.)
Oh, yes, and when the mask goes on, recovery is instantaneous. It’s quite remarkable.
I think it was an episode of Wings back when the Discovery channel actually showed documentaries. A fighter said that he no longer feared the pain of death after having blacked out several times due to over G. You get tunnel vision, little spots appear before your eyes and then you just go to sleep.
I haven’t formed a strong opinion one way or the other on what I think about the death penalty, but it seems that the easir you make it on the executionee, the less of a deterrent it becomes. And I mean “less of a deterrent” both in the sense of the punishment deterrence as well as the moral deterrence of using the government and its agents to punish offenders by killing them.
I was quite taken/affected by the execution scene in Season 1 of Boston Legal, wherein James Spader’s character implores a character (wrongfully convicted, etc.) not to be “brave” in the face of execution, but to be “human”. The way the character struggles against his attending nurses/executioners before and during his injection was a rather poignant reminder of the brutality of some of the methods we use to kill each other in a “controlled” manner.
Maybe if we didn’t have so many people overcrowding our prison system on ridiculous charges (War on Some Drugs), we wouldn’t need to lessen the burden by killing people off? It probably wouldn’t hurt to bring back Chain Gangs, send people to Rura Penthe, etc.