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Kenneth Smith ‘struggled for life’ for 22 minutes in Alabama nitrogen gas execution: Updates
(www.independent.co.uk)
this post was submitted on 26 Jan 2024
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Anyone still want to use the cool nitrogen based suicide pods from Austria?
Correct me if Im wrong but those pods are in Sweden, and also take steps to ensure what a person exhales is quickly removed from the system to prevent rebreathing. If this had been done with one of those pods, he would have lost consciousness in minutes, the fact that he lived to struggle for long suggests this setup was not using pure nitrogen, and not accounting for exhaling. Strangling him would have been quicker, meaning he was getting oxygen somehow.
Edit: I recommend watching the Smarter Every Day episode on Hypoxia. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=kUfF2MTnqAw the TL;DR is that if done right, dying from a proper nitrogen execution would be practically painless.
In this execution, the setup seems to have accidentally on purpose been setup to ensure maximum suffering, even disregarding the victim holding their breathe and seemingly hyperventilating themselves to saturate their co2 levels, something the body will respond to and trigger panic flight or fight responses.
Switzerland actually (but I was closer). I thought it was supposed to be instant not take minutes to lose consciousnesses. Struggling to breath for 10 seconds would be terrible. Minutes? No thank you. This definitely doesn't make it look any good.
In Spain they just let you drink a lot of pentobarbital at home. It's supervised by a doctor and hundredths of people already did it without issues. The pod is just a gimmick.
Thats the thing about hypoxia, you don't struggle and your body doesn't react to reduced or non existent oxygen, its only when co2 starts to build up that people gasp and struggle to breathe. Watch the video in my edit above and tell me at what point Destin looked like he was in pain. But he absolutely was at risk of dying and quite rapidly in a scenario they were not trying knock him unconscious.
Our bodies simply do not react to nitrogen because 79% of our atmosphere is nitrogen. Our body expects that every gulp of air we breathe will be mostly nitrogen. Normally the co2 we exhale is heavier and falls towards our feet, and why sleeping with a blanket over your head can feel like you're suffocating.
The execution itself was flawed by not ensuring the victims head was elevated above the rest of his body and there was no method implemented to extract or remove the co2 he was exhaling. If he was in a proper pod or sealed chamber sitting up right with oxygen being removed as in the video, he would have lost consciousness in minutes to potentially seconds depending how quickly they could lower the o2 concentrations. Using a mask and having him lay on his back gave the co2 no where to go, ontop of him holding his breath which only amplified how his body reacted to rising co2 levels and sent him into panic.
Afaik, when performed correctly one will not struggle for breath, the body would be alive for some time but no consciousness remains at that point
Reuters mentions the execution used a facial mask connected to a tank of nitrogen.
So yeah... No CO2 removal and probably not a perfect seal against outside atmosphere. This is a pretty half-assed implementation.
Half-assed executions are pretty on brand for Alabama. Apparently their last 3 attempts before this made the list.
Who, with sufficient expertise, is willing to participate in creating this? Maybe they're out there, but I think this incompetence is perhaps the best they could find.
Tragic on many levels.
To me it sounds like they read the old 4chan guides on how to kill yourself with a mask hooked up to a compressed air tank for filling balloons. It wouldn't surprise me.
78% of the air you breathe is nitrogen dummy.
It's not the nitrogen that kills you, it's the lack of oxygen.
This method of suffocating someone would work just as well with a gas like helium or argon. It's just that nitrogen is cheap and plentiful for reasons even someone as dimwitted as you can probably figure out.
Liquid nitrogen, yeas please.
Freeze me into an iceblock and shatter me like a T-1000
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