UKC

Firstly, I don't agree with the death penalty.

Having said that, why does the US seem to choose such bizarre methods?

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-68085513

Any A level chemist, pharmacist, doctor, smackhead etc, could list a number of substances that would kill you pretty quickly. For example, there's a problem with fentanyl, being a major killer of young people. I wonder why they don't use that?

I suppose firing squad is pretty quick.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-56810207

If you're curious about the 3 drug method mentioned:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-67150566

I'm surprised the US doesn't go for the firing squad with their affinity for guns. It's arguably the best way to go in terms of suffering (isn't it usually like 9 bullets in an instant to the heart?). I guess it sounds more brutal but I'd take that over gasping for hours as I slowly die in pain. 

What about carbon monoxide as a suitable gas. Generally sends people to sleep as they doze in front of a faulty heater/fire etc.

I am in favour of the death penalty for white collar/financial crime. 

Sam Bankman-Fried would be a suitable candidate over there.  The Post Office and Fujitsu management, responsible for the scamming of the many post masters, candidates over here.

It seems most pharmaceutical companies would rather not be associated with supplying drugs used to kill people (despite the obvious irony of the opioid producers)

I find it particularly bizzare that the guy in this article fully supports the death penalty but doesn't like to see people dying. Surely the fact that he still sees them as people and doesn't want to watch them die should negate any feeling of being pro death penalty?! Very odd stance to me.

EU companies (think UK with legacy laws) are banned from selling the drugs for use in executions.

I’ve often suspected that they don’t want it to be painless/without suffering.

Firing Squad has the potential for PTSD for those behind the guns.

Nitrogen is supposed to the same. Our bodies are wired to react to high co2 levels as opposed to low oxygen.

In the days of actual firing squads, guns were pre loaded for the firers, some had blanks. So none of those firing would actually know who killed them. The same can't be said for lethal injection and electric chair. 

Given that he had been on death row since the 80s or 90s, they could have cheeseburgered him into a fatal heart attack long before now.

I seem to recall a documentary fronted by Michael Portillo where he explored some execution methods, including trying a spell himself in a nitrogen chamber. If memory serves he mentioned a certain euphoria as the O2 became scarcer.
Of course, he didn't go to completion, and the description of the the fatal Alabama case doesn't sound very similar

I thought they had the same sort of mechanism. Several people pressing a button with only one wired up.

It doesnt seem overly helpful though. Whilst there is some uncertainty you are still certain you pressed the button/fired the rifle so were trying to kill them.

Firing Squad has the potential for PTSD for those behind the guns.

Tiniest violin. As much sympathy for them as I have for contract killers - wait they would be contract killers.  A lot of the methods above are not considered suitable for these barbaric perverts who want to see suffering - too quick.

Most people don’t like to see animals suffering abuse and being killed, but are pretty sanguine about getting their meat from factory farmed sources. It’s not unusual for humans to hold seemingly contradictory positions. 

I believe in this case they had spent several hours trying to kill him by lethal injection a couple of years ago and failed.

Are you serious? Executing people for their part in a failure to manage a businesses in correct and ethical way? Or SBF - who had given loads of his profits away to charity anyway?

That seems a bizarrely populist list. 

Although Utah had plenty of volunteers from among prison staff when they last shot someone to death. One gets a blank, but you don't know who, as is tradition it seems.

Sam Bankman-Fried

Philip Green

Bernard Madoff

Michelle Mone

If they were on fire and I had a glass of water, I'd glass them.

Jokes of course  😉

Leaving aside the death penalty, white collar crime does seem "under punished" . The effects on people can individually be as serious or worse than violence  and normally many are affected rather than just one or two.

But surely the one with a blank doesn't experience the same recoil? Or if they do, what's causing it when there's no bullet leaving at high speed?

They must be making it more scary on purpose.'Dignitas' would not use a firing squad.

Yes, I am serious.  The list is not exhaustive, there are many, many more.

The fact that SBF gave away a tiny portion of what he stole is irrelevant.  The philanthropist bull was just a ruse.

Lives destroyed.  

https://www.bbc.co.uk/sn/tvradio/programmes/horizon/broadband/tx/executions...
 

He made a pretty convincing argument that nitrogen was by far the most painless and stress-free method fir both humans and animals.  He experienced unconsciousness from hypoxia himself and showed that animals would repeatedly reach into a nitrogen atmosphere to reach food despite repeatedly being made unconscious by doing so.

There are sensible objections to doing it via a mask, however, because of the risk of oxygen leaking past the seal, perhaps prolonging the procedure or even producing hypoxic brain damage rather than killing outright.

Or does the lack of round in chamber allow the expanding gases to exit unrestricted? In essence most recoil belongs in hollywood, it's generally not the exiting round or gases that cause it, but a much heavier block being pushed back, ejecting the spent case, which then springs forward picking up the next round. (Semi/Automatic). Single or bolt action even of bigger calibres don't have vast recoil. 

Yes, it seems bizarre they chose to strap a mask to someone rather than just building a sealed chamber. 

It's interesting that humans don't use slaughterhouse methods of killing in executions when so much of the world considers these practices to be 'humane'. Why not just take them to the local abbatoir for a bolt in the skull, to be gassed, or ground up alive? 

Barbaric and medieval whatever method you use. Cold bloodedly forcing a sealed mask over a guys face, then  suffocating him - thats pretty sick stuff and i dont believe it makes either the executioner or anyone else involved on the killing apparatus any better than their victims. At best it can be described as vengeance killing, because it certainly doesnt deter anyone. And then theres the gross inequalities in the numbers of people judicially slaughtered by ethnicity, oh and lets not forget the significant number who were mentally ill at the time of their offences, or had severe learning difficulties. 

It gets called Judicial Murder for a good reason.

Thank goodness it didn’t stop the British entrepreneur selling UK made gallows…

https://www.theguardian.com/uk/2006/may/29/world.patrickbarkham

Bizarre if they were a serious governmental body making a good-faith effort to accomplish the goal in the most humane way possible. In reality, they're a bunch of amateurs flailing around in the dark because serious medical professionals want nothing to do with them and they're just trying to get the job done at any cost by any method they can get hold of that might just about get past a court that's motivated to wave it through.

Other people than the convict might be damaged. Nitrogen itself is inert and not poisonous. This method should be called asphyxiation, because what killed the unfortunate man was deprivation of oxygen. He wasn’t poisoned.

Oh, I totally agree. Funnily enough I've been teaching the potential reasons that white collar criminals and corporate criminals get away with it as it's part of the crime and deviance section of A level sociology just recently. 

But it was the death penalty bit, and the specificity of who lowersharpnose wanted dead, that surprised me.

I suppose though there is a bit of old lefty schadenfreude when people who invest in super high reward schemes find out that actually, yeah, it was a pyramid scheme afterall. Crypto and quasi crypto scandals/swindles/frauds like FTX often feel a bit like that. Yeah, people got conned, but why was it that they were putting their money into crypto in the first place? Even if in the long term it turns out to be the best thing since sliced bread, people have been investing in it recently because they think they can make loads of money. 

Who was the shyster in the UK who conned a load of people out of all their savings with a 'new crypto coin' a few years back? The BBC did a podcast series on it. The stories were sad, but at the same time you worry that people are that gullible. 

I did wonder that too, but Exiled Scot is perhaps ex military so seems to have a fair idea. I've never fired anything heavier than a .22 air rifle, so don't claim to know!

Arguably they’re desperate rather than gullible?

Fired a live AR15 recently. Heavy but very little recoil. Although a Glock 9mm def had more kick than the .22 pistol I tried.

Maybe. Or maybe both. But plenty of people get grifted who are bankrupted by it, they just liked the idea of easy money. Madoff did take money from people who couldn't afford it, but he conned plenty of rich people who wanted to be richer 

I suppose I should add these two to the list-

Joe Lewis

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-68025903

Bernie Ecclestone

https://www.cps.gov.uk/cps/news/bernie-ecclestone-convicted-fraud

Do you really mean that? If the Post-Office scandal teaches us anything it's that miscarriages of justice are all too common. You can, and should, generously compensate the victims of false convictions, but you can't reverse an execution.

Martin

I don't agree with the death penalty either. If it is carried out surely it would most humane if they be offered a routine general anaesthetic first.

A guy gets drunk, punches someone, and that someone falls backwards smashing their head off the concrete and dies. Utterly tragic.

First time offender with no history of violence.

It's obvious that alcohol was the main contributor, but we won't go blaming alcohol because that would spoil everyone's fun on cheese and wine night, right!

Anyway, prison awaits the wine-fuelled warrior.

And then you have rats like Philip Green- a shady shite who knowingly and maliciously stole the pensions from thousands of low paid staff and who, to this day, has served no prison time at all, and has even been allowed to keep his knighthood!!!! 😲

Philip Green is more deserving of capital punishment than the guy in the USA.

But I don't agree with capital punishmengt so we'll just give this lesser-than-a-humn a public tharshing and lock it up in solitary confinement for the rest of it's life.

I don't think confiscation of all assets is enough of a deterrent. 

(not that we are very good at this and our sentences are light for white collar corporate thievery)

As a gambling man, I’d bet my house that the vast majority of post masters that have suffered wouldn’t want the guilty people executed. Interesting that nearly 30% of UCKers would like to see them executed. Wow. 

Couple of problems with that,. Legally obtaining drugs for execution, what you propose is basically US lethal injection done right, which they're struggling with for want of reliable drugs.

The other is if someone is going to fight and thrash for their life, they'll do it while they can, it hardly matters that clinical death occurs later or that the loss of consciousness, and or life is technically painless, someone who doesn't want to die will resist one way or another and suffer in the process.

There are plenty of ways ritual killing could be done humanely but it isn't, it's supposed to be a spectacle.

Gradual oxygen depletion should be about as clean and easy a way out as it gets execution wise but strapped down in a mask... we're back to spectacle and ritual.

Jk

Indeed. Plenty of research on how to reasonably swiftly and humanely kill clever mammals. A mask seems horrible.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7759821/

Death or a prison sentence, is a let off for these bastards. As one of the victims said, strip them of all their cash, for ever, and let them live the rest of their lives in abject poverty that's what will make them suffer.

Scum, the lot of them. 

Finally we agree on something

‘Death is a let off’ is a boring cliche. Your last sentence - I wouldn’t argue with that. 

Or because having a tight mask fixed to your face is claustrophobically horrific and terror inducing for some, even when they know the intent is to help. Just look at people who need BiPAP ventilation to survive when unwell with chronic lung disease, who decline it and chose not to take life saving intervention. 

He didn't sit comfortably in a room and slowly slip off in a hypoxic fug. He was tortured to death. By a bastion of liberal western democracy. It's f***king horrific 

Back to the original OP, one of my cats, he that was known as Maggot, we had to put to sleep a couple of years ago, the vet saw him off in seconds with a quick injection. No messing, quick & painless. Don't what they used.

I think you are confusing Alabama with Norway (chosen means of execution Aquavit and then choking on pickled herring)

Crikey! 

Hope you understand no offence is ever intended.

Regarding the OP, surely the Germans during WW2 figured out many different ways of inducing a pain-free death. 

Now, that's a way I'd choose to go...

Are you sure? The bolt carrier in semi autos being pushed back is due to the gas pressure in the barrel being used to operate the piston that drives the working parts back. Cycling a semi auto isn't a function of the recoil.

There wasn't (to my mind) much difference between L1A1 (7.62mm SLR -semi auto) and a bolt action 7.62. Both had significant recoil.

Firing blank ammunition (even with a BFA) theres very little recoil as all you're doing is venting gas (and a lot of flame) down the barrel, rather than putting 2,500 foot-pounds of energy into a projectile with an equal and opposite reaction against your shoulder.

It's much less noticable in 5.56 though.

Back on thread, if I was looking to top myself, nitrogen narcosis followed by peaceful death would be my preference (and I have given this some thought).

The Germans during WW2 had zero interest in providing a pain free death, they were interested in the cheapest and most efficient way of killing. For example Zyklon B contained an eye irritant, because of its use as pesticide, which was never removed and caused intense suffering for its victims. I don't expect the millions of captured Soviets found dying of starvation and exposure particularly pleasant either.

That's true.

The Germans apparently got us to the moon, split the atom, gave us jet engines etc. Their medical experiments must have been wide-ranging; after all they had sick or injured Germans to treat who we all assume were treated more favourably than the millions of Russians, European Jews, Polish etc.

 It is unimaginably crass to suggest that anyone should look to the Holocaust for more effective ways of killing people.

You make a fuss about a house which a paedophile once lived in that gets a bit of graffiti, but then suggest that people look at the techniques used in the most well known war crime in history to learn how to kill people more effectively. Your moral compass is well and truly knackered.

The breach block / working parts going back is the rearwards driven mass or energy. It's less with L1A1/SA80 than say a SLR as most newer weapons moved the springs to above or in front of the working parts, rather than a rats tail off the breach block driving into a spring in the stock. That's what i was advised by an armourer once and makes sense, but then armourers aren't always the sharpest! 

Wasn't the L1A1 the same thing as the SLR?

Whoa, steady on! This is a topic on killing people, right. No need for any gaslighting here.

Same applies. Cheers.

Hey, why are you so upset by a comment linking medical trials into killing people 80 years ago when you could be leading a charge against this mob-

https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/bayer

In summary, the US authorities in charge of this new method of execution could ask the German pharmaceutical company Bayer for their input.

You are correct i meant L85

Glad it went as well as possible.

That will have been with a strong barbiturate. Would work well in humans if the drug companies allowed the sale for this use. I believe that barbiturates used to be used in the US as part of most judicial killings.

But the experience of a condemned man, knowing he is about to be killed, being restrained, having an IV placed will be very different - a well performed euthanasia minimises the stress to the animal (and owner) and can take a lot of skill and effort to achieve. Ideally the animal just does drift off. Similarity in an abattoir quite a lot of effort is made to minimise stress before slaughter - a captive bolt is humane as long as you are not worrying about it in advance and fighting it’s application.

I think the different types of execution that the US is experimenting with represents a huge moral confusion there. On the one hand they want the barbaric option of ending life, as a deterrent (yeah, right), as punishment, as a prop to their national identity; on the other hand they want to be insulated from how barbaric it is, and pretend that it is some sort of technical, clinical - ahem - final solution.

The obvious foolproof and humane solution would be the guillotine. Long drop hanging and firing squads are pretty reliable as well (though the US don't have a good record with hanging - John C Woods, for example.) But the outcomes - bloody, broken and soiled bodies - are just too real, make the barbarity clear.

What a wacky place the US is. A country that can provide haven to Einstein, nurture the likes of Chouinard, Gates, Buffet, Dylan and Springsteen is basically overwhelmed by nut jobs. I'm glad I'll never go there again.

I meant no offence to anyone.

As uncomfortable as some may find it- linkning the most prolific testing of executions to this post makes real sense.

Unfortunately the thought-police are always on duty. 

Apparently the head still functions for a few seconds after the guillotine is used.

Why not induce the subject into a coma on a slab of granite. Then drop another slab onto them.

Rinse. And repeat.

Heartless? Absolutely.

None of this is my cup of tea (including the holocaust).

When I was a kid I fired an Enfield 303 using both live rounds and blanks. From what I remember there was pretty big recoil with the live rounds but nothing much from the blanks. I can’t work out the physics as to why though because I assume that roughly the same energy is released in each case.

Conservation of momentum innit.  The blank just make a noise. 

.303 bullet 14g, Muzzle velocity 744m/s.

Momentum 10.4Ns.

(equivalent to pushing a 1Kg mass from rest to 10m/s)

Firing a blank just pushes out air.  Air is 1000 times less dense than a bullet.

The problem is that the US wants to do something reprehensible (death penalty) and anyone capable of making the drugs to do it in a "humane" and none grisly way wants nothing to do with it. The solution is to stop using the death penalty, not to take a look in the Nazis box of tricks.

A box of tricks which was partially built up by murdering people like me (autistic people), and almost entirely built up on the murder of innocent people over their heritage, appearance, disability or having enough braincells to identify the lack of mortality in what the Nazis were doing.

So yes, I do feel pretty strongly that value should not be derived from those murders as every thing which can be done to disincentivize such reprehensible acts from being repeated should be done. 

I also don't agree with the death penalty but I'm puzzled by how difficult it appears to be to get a method that is quick and works well.

Animals larger than a human seem to be able to be put down quickly by injection, so why is it so difficult to do the same for those facing the death penalty, or am I missing something?

Dave

What about conservation of energy? The momentum of the bullet and of the rifle recoiling are both caused by the energy released by the round going off. So where does that energy go with a blank round? I think the noise is similar. Is the charge much smaller for a blank?

Anaesthetic would not be the cause of death. It could prevent physical and mental suffering. Killing would be by another means. Admittedly it would be legally challenged, including by those who think someone should suffer.

That's why I thought anaesthesia should be Offered to anyone, as they might be frightened enough to prefer it.

I think the charge is similar for a blank, sometimes greater, because the case may be filled with more powder and/padding.  Maybe the gun gets hotter with a blank.  I don't know, you raise  a good point.

We're on the same page. 

From others here questioning the nitrogen facemask method, and whether an alternative method could be found. A suggestion to look at the industrial scale human testing carried out by Germany in this field is legitimate as well as uncomfortable. When would a discussion on executing people ever be comfortable.

There are plenty of people kicking about who are descendants of the victims of the highland clearances and cultural genocide etc etc. Anyways, it's 2024. A peoples claims of injustice from acts carried out by regimes decades in the past, leads only to the problems the world is facing at this very minute. It's all a bit vindictive, and ultimately self defeating.

On the suggestion of guillotine- possibly one of the most visually horrifying methods of execution. Does the mind continue to live with some control over the face, for a few moments after decapitation?

Could the force be over a longer time, ie the peak force is lower, but energy is dissapated over more time?

If someone has chronic respiratory disease they might be driven by hypoxia rather than carbon dioxide, which would have quite a different subjective impact when deprived of oxygen.

It’s all about the exchange of momentum, conservation of momentum and conservation of energy.  It’s not as trivial or intuitive a piece of physics as it first seems…

I haven’t commented on the OP’s topic because every time I wrote a reply it was miserable.  Sounds like the event was a disgraceful and tortuous spectacle.  Ghouls. Demented ghouls who have lost any sight of true justice or humanity.

Possibly it's more a case of expression police than thought police?

At the risk of being condescending, perhaps casual reference to Nazi methods of mass killing, on Holocaust Memorial Day, is not necessarily the most tactful approach

You're not being condascending at all.

My sincere apologies.

I wasn't even aware that the other day was Burns Night! (I'm Scottish)

Not sure of that, I seem to remember a significant difference between firing a scaled down .22 Lee Enfield and the real thing - was a beast compared to the Bren which was so gentle to shoot.

Blanks don't kick noticeably.  You often see old war films where the artillery has no recoil.

my grandad met Albert Pierrepoint

In order to administer anaesthetic safely, you need a trained anaesthetist, and the medical establishment is not in the habit of colluding with state killings. 

The people carrying out executions would undoubtedly kill some people with the anesthetic before they got round to the proposed killing method. 

So there's also the same "problem" that the pharmaceutical companies would not want to supply the drugs to be used in executions. Even if you could guarantee that they would be administered by trained professionals, I doubt "we're making it less traumatic" and "is not our drugs doing the killing" would be sufficient PR to be worth getting involved in a controversial and very niche market of state killings.

If the US wanted to kill inmates "humanely", they would have to set up their own pharmaceutical manufacturing and supply chain, which would be an awful lot of cost and infrastructure for a handful of killings a year.

There's also the issue that a large percentage of the people they want to kill being long term intravenous drug users, which can make it very difficult to find a vein.

There's quite a large range of punishments between confiscation of assets and execution! I'd be in favour of prison sentences for any post office executives found to have deliberately misled the courts which convicted the sub-postmasters - eg claiming the Horizon software was bug-free when knowing it wasn't.

Martin

That's a enormous jump from simply counting the up and down votes to lowersharpnose's original post. It's 12 up to 36 down when I checked. So that's only 25%, anyway, but the percentage is irrelevant. People were, I presume, just agreeing that the post office managers, if found guilty, should face a serious punishment.

Martin

If we assume that is what the 12 up votes are for, I make it ~0.007% (12/177,000*100). 

Do you have much success with your gambling?

I've always wondered why they don't just chop off their heads or whatever under a well proven general anaesthetic.

While most of your arguments have validity it is sad that preventing suffering as much as possible is not legal/acceptable. Some similarity to euthanasia which is acceptable for animals but often not for humans.

I'm not sure that dying due to anaesthetic while unconscious would matter in this case. Finding a vein in a drug user presumably must be often overcome in routine medicine.

If facing certain death and possible suffering while conscious I'd chose anaesthesia. In fact if it is possible, eg orally, I'd administer it to myself if facing execution.

The Ohio method

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lfsMMVgIToA&t=41s

Even anaesthesia isn't 100% effective, as I'm one of the small percentage of people where it induces paralysis but excepting one surgery, I'm still conscious. On an emergency hospital admission I met the surgeon pre-op and I expressed my fear at what was about to happen but was assured that I wouldn't feel a thing. So I get wheeled into pre-op room, he put me on a drip and asked me to count backwards from 100. Easy 100 to 20, then thinking got hard. When I was getting into single figures it was very difficult, so I closed my eyes in order to concentrate. Big mistake. I got to 0 and panicked as I couldn't open my eyes but managed after a great effort. He was doing something on a bench and had his back to me. When he turned around he saw me looking at him and said “you shouldn't still be awake”. Did something to the drip and the next thing I knew was someone trying to wake me up. When I was back on the ward he came to see me and said he remembered our talk and would put a note in my medical records. More recently I was having regular angiograms. They put something like a small funnel into a vein to put the camera in. Eventually when talking to my cardiologists he suggested that I have another and I asked if it was a really bad idea not to. We got to talking and I admitted that I really didn't like the pain when they put the funnel in and he said that the I shouldn't feel anything due to the aesthetic and I asked what aesthetic? He told me it was the swab they use before inserting the funnel. I had assumed that it was just to sterilise the site. So on my next angiogram we played a little game. They wiped the site and then tapped it with the needle and I was to tell them when I felt it. I probably felt it for about 6 times before the nurse informed me “there it's done”. So aesthetics do eventually work on me but not at the usual dose or as quickly as expected. Apparently somewhere between 0.017%–4% have intraoperative awareness and this isn't a historic issue as here is a link from a study 2022:

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10390120/

I think I'd choose hypothermia.  It's the only way of dying apart from in my sleep (and perhaps it amounts to the same thing) that doesn't frighten me

Someone prominent in RAF MRT in the 70s told us that he'd never seen a hypothermia victim that wasn't smiling

One problem is that general anaesthetics are given by specialist doctors and they dont tend to want to sign up to execute people (the American medical association bans it in their code of conduct for example).

Maybe just forget the anaesthetic then and go for straight head chopping. Must be pretty instant. Maybe design something to hold the neck still in case they try to wriggle, and perhaps some sort of vertical rail to guide the blade to prevent botches.

Having experienced just a couple of unexpected winter bivouacs I think the progress towards death would be fairly unpleasant.

I suppose the patent has now expired. Wasn't there an occasion when an agreeing participant signalled his head was still alive with three blinks following decapitation?

Legend has it Lavoisier demonstrating his dedication to science carried out a final experiment where he would keep blinking.

Given that in martial arts chokeholds which restrict blood supply to the brain takes several seconds I wouldnt want to test the theory personally.

Robert, if I was to give you a “well proven anaesthetic” (Which I can do), and you knew before hand that the outcome would be your death, how do you think you would react to my approach with the big syringe?

If they they gave them nitrous oxide, they'd die laughing

It wouldn't matter; I'd be strapped down on the gurney or chopping block.

And what would you be feeling at this point?

Impossible to say. Certainly not exactly happy. Same situation as anyone about to be executed though.

If offered the option of anaesthesia to avoid experiencing the trauma of execution I would accept it. Probably wouldn't be necessary to strap me down.

undeniably the time leading up to a hypothermic state would be uncomfortable but not agonising

Well, I don’t loose much

And it’s 27% now. Ie nearly 30%. 

27% of people who voted on the post. We’ve hit 0.009% of the ~177,000 UKCers.

In a professional capacity?

While this is not a laughing subject, the comments from the religious representative prior to the event did make me chuckle. He said he was ‘literally risking his life’ by being in the room during execution as the gas could escape into the air he was breathing. The lack of understanding about the world around us can be breathtaking sometimes.

When I read that I assumed it was a ploy hoping the appeal.judges were breathtakingly (literally) ignorant.

More so than nitrogen asphyxiation?

It's a long time since I read a lot about the Holocaust, but are you sure they did lots of testing on ways of killing people? I don't think so. From memory, the Holocaust began obviously with mass shooting, the Einsatzgruppen and local auxiliaries, the horror of Babi Yar being perhaps the 'pinnacle' of that stage. Then there was gassing, which began with carbon monoxide from vehicle engines - both pumped into sealed rooms and then into vans made into mobile killing machines themselves, and finally at camps that became death camps with purpose built CO gas chambers. Finally the use of Zyklon B began at Auschwitz and was then used at other death camps when found to be more efficient than CO.

From what I remember the horrific experiments conducted by Mengele and his colleagues weren't generally aimed at killing people. Of course they did kill people, but normally not until having tortured them first to find out what the human body can withstand - e.g. immersing prisoners in freezing water and letting the die that way was to help provide better equipment for German pilots who had to ditch in the sea.

I think if you are going to invoke the Holocaust, you need to be pretty specific as to what you are talking about and why. If you know about execution experiments - their may well have been beyond the ones I've outlined above - please share your sources.

I don’t the details of how it went but I’m not sure I would go as far as ´tortured to death’ given what’s been inflicted on some unfortunate (and entirely innocent) people.  However, I agree, using a mask seems unnecessarily unpleasant and introduces a risk of failure.

That said, what I think does amount to torture is the practice of keeping prisoners on death row for decades with the threat of execution hanging over them and, to be clear, I’m opposed to the death penalty both on principle and because it clearly doesn’t act as much of a deterrent.

Hi Toby

The horrors of Germanys relationship with European Jews are truly unspeakable.

Here is a source as requested-

https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-319-97999-1_8#Sec3

It's likely that more info is out there. But has been hidden/protected for various horrifying and sensitive reasons.

It needs to be mentioned (though it really shouldn't have to as free speech and free thinking are cornerstones of UK society regardless of anyones race or religion) that open discussion on this topic is likely to offend.

People offended by an open discussion on matters relating to holocaust and genocide, such as this one- state executions, have the choice to sit this one out.

Death by .22 air rifle might take a long time, now THAT would be suitable for Fujitsu and members of "project sparrow" at the post office 

Freedom of speech doesn't mean that you should be free from criticism...

Was he roped into the meeting?

Absolutely! 🙂

fortunately not!

Is it? We have pretty restrictive rules compared to say the US, for which it is a key feature

A few bumps here and there but yeah, it's along those lines at least-

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/king-charles-heckler-protes...

To answer a couple of points in this tread.

I believe the blanks is not a true blank, as in having no projectile but actually the bullet is made of wax and metal oxide. This has a similar weight to the real bullet so gives a similar recoil but breaks up on exiting the barrel so is considered to probably not be lethal to the condemned.

As for putting people under general anaesthesia before killing them my understanding is that it takes a fair bit of work to keep a patient alive while anaesthetised. Therefore given the current level of competence I suspect they would accidentally die before they got round to “killing them”. Again to me the 3 drug protocol looks similar to some general anaesthetics just with out the opioid for pain relief and a with an additional drug that stops the heart. So in effect they are offered a general anaesthetic just preformed by someone who doesn’t know what they are doing.

I found this podcast interesting/disturbing.

https://www.globalplayer.com/podcasts/episodes/7DrhkE2/

I take your point, but does it really matter? If the outcome is death, the first of third injection is moot. I doubt there is a risk assessment from the prisoners perspective.

I mentioned Fentanyl above. There are other similar drugs (nitazines etc) that can be found in quantity in police and customs evidence rooms. If it takes a tiny fraction of a gram to kill a person, I wonder why these are not used. Perhaps the idea of a last high might not sit well with some of the god fearing, proponents of the death penalty.

My point was more that you are unlikely to find a competent anaesthetist to perform the pre-execution anaesthetic as with all likelihood it would be the anaesthetic that kills them not what happens next and so would violate their hippocratic oath.

My understanding is that nitrogen would be painless. I've seen a few programmes over the years where people have been exposed to low O2 and they usually get a bit fuzzy headed before passing out. However the execution scenario has one massive difference: The person knows he is being killed against his will as opposed to willingly participating in something that they know they will wake up from. I think it is better than hanging/injection/electricution.

I think the problem is that the companies that produce the drugs won't allow them to be sold to anyone who wants them for that purpose. 

THere was another issue too. THe guillotine often took a few goes to get the job done

😬  yikes

It's exactly that. Probably didn't help when the anti-vax loons started screaming about people being given 'execution drugs' in hospital.

I didn't know that - Dr Guillotin certainly intended it to be 'humane'.

What an utterly deplorable thing to say, you should be ashamed of yourself

A gun (or guns) could be set up in exactly the same way they do for proofing them.

Then all someone would have to do is press a button or pull a lever - each of which are done with the electric chair or hanging.

You should be even more ashamed 

Where's the context for your personal attack on me?

Otherwise you're just farting in the wind

There is no 'personal attack'.  It's a fine line but an important one, between "you are stupid" and "you said a stupid thing".  The former is an ad-hom attack, the latter is not.

In the context of the post that Andrew is responding to, it's entirely fair game.  That comment was utterly moronic, thoughtless in the extreme, and if you gave it a nanosecond's serious thought it should be obvious how it's actually quite offensive.  Whether or not you're ashamed of yourself, you should certainly be ashamed of that.

What do you mean "what's the context."

The context is you saying a very offensive thing and me criticising you saying it, obviously.

Well, that's cleared that up then 🤣

You or he can point out the comment he was responding to anytime

Otherwise you're just farting in the wind too

Why the obfuscation?

You should have pressed "quote original in your reply"

You don't actually know which post of yours Andrew was responding to?  Wow! 🤣 indeed.

For future reference, if you click on the "In reply to" at the top of a post it takes you back to the post it was written in reply to.

TBH I suspect anyone attempting you engage you in a sensible conversation may as well be, which is why I usually ignore you.

It would be sensible to press "quote original in reply", particularly when the reply is an effort to convey something you feel is important.

Enjoy the rest of your day 😉

This is a bit strange.

I genuinely have no ill feeling towards Maggot the UKC user.

A personal experience such as losing a friend as described by Maggot, is to be respected.

I typed Crikey! and Hope you understand no offence is ever intended. Someties you read something and imagine how it was being said. Well, it's very likely that I imagined saying those words very differently to the way many people here imagined it.  

I certainly didn't wish to make any further reference to Maggots experience- as doing so can prolong a persons suffering. So I acknoweldged the sensitive and personal account of losing their friend, then got back to the original topic.

Confused?

Yeah, me too.

Wow. the way some people's brains work! Or don't.

jk

Smeg off

😁

Yes, a gun seems the best method to me. I'd have it setup so they are strapped down, as they are now for lethal injections etc. But this time their head is fixed into place and there is a fixed 50. Cal rifle (or perhaps two to minimise the chance of a jam) which can be remotely fired at the press of a button. 

The head would explode in an instant causing instant and total destruction of the brain meaning there could be no chance of pain or suffering. In fact, as the bullets travel faster than sound, they wouldn't even hear the shot.

Sure it's messy but it gets the job done, has no chance of suffering and it's cheap and simple to set up. Plus Americans do like their guns so seems culturally appropriate too. 

why not just a captive bolt specially made with enough power to do the job? Or a silent hydraulic vice.

Slight problem with open-casket funerals, which are very popular in the US. You can put a suit over a shredded breast-plate but you can't put makeup on mush. 

I remember reading something about the speed of implosion on the OceanGate sub once the hull was compromised. I'm convinced that is the most humane way. Though may prove to be expensive. 

Vladimir Komarov was put in an open casket.

Jeez Louise I could have done without seeing that.

You could play repeats of Today in Parliament to the condemned but I’m not sure if this would be humane or cause unnecessary suffering. 

You might need to update Wikipedia about that, his entry says that "Konstantin Vershinin's orders were that Komarov's remains were to be photographed, then immediately cremated so that a state burial in the Kremlin wall could take place.[29] The remains underwent a quick autopsy that morning, then were cremated.[30]"

Hasn't this thread died yet?

Because it's causing a lot of inhumane drawn out suffering.

Rather than stifle the conversation, why not just choose not to read it?

It was meant to be ironic humour, sorry if you missed that.

I was wavering on adding a 😁 but sometimes that spoils the irony (IMO).

All good in the Hood 👍🙂 (sorry, bad joke)

I've have more than my fair share of negative replies from people who have misconstrued my comments.

Apologies 

Not catching the irony is actually quite appropriate on an "American" thread 😁

I'm generalising of course but Americans are commonly reputed to not get irony.

No, you've had well deserved negative replies from people who understood your thoughtless, insensitive and frankly moronic comment perfectly.

No, as evidenced by your reply.

Now go and enjoy the rest of your day in peace.

Supposed to be very nasty, the body fights against it.

Where as Nitrogen is/was "supposed" to be a reasonably good way to go.

we breathe 80% of it every time we breath, and excess is supposed to make you euphoric, Nitrogen narcosis is a divers issue.

Pigs offered food in a nitrogen rich trough, will eat, pass out, wake up and dive straight back in. CO and CO2 rich troughs don't work the same.

Portillo did a program about the death penalty, lots of yanks didn't want to use N2 because they wanted the "victim" to suffer, not die euphorically.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/sn/tvradio/programmes/horizon/broadband/tx/executions...

As I mentioned above. Nitrogen is probably as good a way to go as any but that assumes you don't mind being killed and aren't innocent (which in one state it was shown to be 50% of death row candidates). Being strapped down and having a mask attached to your face by people trying to kill you is likely to be a far from pleasurable experience (although as you say that would suit some people in favour of the death penalty just fine) this would apply to all methods that are thought of as 'nice'.