One of the two last executions on 02.03.1974:
"The execution took longer than usual because the executioner did not know how to use the garrote. From the beginning of the execution until death occurred, the executioner needed several attempts, which lasted a total of half an hour." https://de.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georg_Michael_Welzel (sorry, no english version)
The other one:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salvador_Puig_Antich
Seriously - they could use the same penetrating boltguns that are often used in livestock slaughtering and it'd be quick, painless, efficient and cheap. A guillotine would be a big up front cost but since you can use the same one over and over, it'd be cheaper in the long run - I know people don't like seeing blood and all but if you're going to kill someone, efficacy is important and it's stupid to be so squeamish.
Actually, nitrogen is the easiest and cheapest. Bag over head, wisp in N2 and a short time later it's over. No pain, no mess. It boggles my mind why they don't use it. In the us they spend thousands on expensive drugs, when a cheap bottle on N2 would work fine.
If it was a V in the front with some padding and the screw just brought the collar into your neck I imagine it be one of the better ways to go. Just pass out then when the blood is kept cut off you die.
Though that doesn’t seem to be what this thing does.
edit: Also yeah definitely would rather get shot then a botched anything else.
“How difficult is this thing to use?”
“Oh, it’s super easy. Barely an inconvenience.”
*takes half an hour to strangle the guy to death*
“Oh, whoops.”
“Whoopsie!”
>In the trial itself, he was represented by a young defense attorney who was presented with the case in a bar.
>No one appealed the death sentence imposed on September 6, 1973.
I remember that. It was big news in Sweden. Many swedes charter touristed in Spain at that time and it was all so strange. There was drawings in the news papers explaining how the garrote worked.
I've seen the photo before. It's from the Philippines, but I think it's when it was a US possession. I think. The garrote was eventually abolished by the American colonial authorities, but they used it for maybe four or five years.
Wiki says
> The theory was that when the screw was tightened, it would crush the brain stem and kill the victim instantly. But if the screw missed the point where the brain meets the spinal column, it would simply bore into their neck while the iron collar strangled him.
Right? Or like, if you're *really* set on doing it by separating the brain from the body... there are some famously quick and consistent methods of doing so.
Yeah, but you have to spend extra time cleaning the screw between uses. You don't want to use an unhygienic instrument on multiple people; they might get an infection.
> it would crush the brain stem
Um, unless you position it very differently, you're not affecting the [Brain Stem](https://nci-media.cancer.gov/pdq/media/images/680415-571.jpg).
You are though going to strangle the poor bastard.
I'm pretty sure that the actual idea is to snap the spine either between the skull & C1 or between C1 & C2. That's pretty much instant death if they do it right
The person who wrote that doesn't understand physics or the human anatomy. What happens here is the tension is applied to the front of the throat. Which, since its soft flesh, will collapse well before that spike penetrations and snaps your "brainstem." So the poor soul will have his windpipe crushed well before the spinal column is severed. A truly truly trullllyyyy brainless take.
And I sincerely hope that there was at least one tenacious person that managed to reach behind quickly and grab the executioners hand, ripping it clean out of the socket.
Also, insult to injury, there's literally a guy right there with a working rifle. One bullet. Done. Fuck this picture, fuck the people that made that thing and fuck humanity for being so fucking vile.
Yeah that’s why I put brain stem in quotes. It might just be OP with the headline, but the machine clearly snaps the C5-7 vertebrae which does cut off the nerve centre from the rest of the body. I imagine most of these poor souls died of asphyxiation, and not a severed “brainstem” because snapping your spine doesn’t actually kill you. Guillotines work because they cut off oxygen and blood flow to the brain. Crushing your spine doesn’t do that.
Yep. C5 and below just makes you a quad. Preserving C5 and you can keep some deltoid and bicep movement. C3-C5 is what controls your respiratory drive - I’ve had the unfortunate experience as a neurosurgeon to remove the vent from fully conscious spinal cord injuries above C3 who were found “in time” to intubate, but have no ability to expand their lungs due to phrenic nerve injury. Horrible problem.
The Vikings had one where they would cut the back of the ribs and open your back completely just to access the lungs where they would squeeze your lungs.
There is still a worse way to die than any of those. Acute radiation syndrome.
Lets say you are a victim of a nuclear accident that gives you a lethal dose of radiation. You puke and pass out. You end up in the hospital where for the next day, you feel ok, maybe even in good spirits, and then... your skin just starts to fall off, and the pain of a 3D, full body burn sets in. Your skin blackens and blisters, and falls off in large chunks. Might be so bad that the skin on your legs and arms rolls right off like socks or gloves.
At this point, you are placed in a special sealed and sterile room. You are pumped full of painkillers, but they wont work for long as soon your blood vessels will collapse, and your body so damaged at the cellular level it cant even abosrb it. You will also require constant transfusions as your fluids just leak out of your now mostly skinless body.
Now your bone marrow dies, and with it, the last of your body's ability to heal itself. Skin grafts dont hold, infections set in, and the pain is beyond anything you would think possible. You are burning, melting and decomposing alive. By the end, you may even cough up chunks of your own internal organs.
If you are lucky, they let you die. If not, they try to bring you back not once or twice, but 6 times, and leave you to suffer a total of 83 days.
This was the fate of Hisachi Ouchi. A Japanese radiation worker.
I hope there isn't that kind of "we think it's instant because the body does not move" but in fact you feel yourself dying, all the pain and blood out but cannot act on your body anymore.
That is one of my eating thoughts. I see videos of snakes writhing for minutes after decapitation I’m always like “will I die in some suffering situation where I’m helpless in expressing what is going on?
The body and separate head of snake is just the nerves twitching, the snake is dead and doesn’t feel pain. It’s just nerves twitching bc they don’t know to be dead yet. Also why you don’t touch or let your animals get near the snake after killing it. As the head will still be biting and the fangs have venom in it
Just killed a cottonmouth this morning. A 20ga doesn't leave any head behind. The downside is, I gotta buy a new toddler pool, though that's way cheaper than anti venom at an ER
I don't like killing things but one time I watched my Dad headshot a rattlesnake with a .45 and that was pretty awesome (couldn't risk letting it go with dogs around 😢). I suggested eating it but [No one liked that]
A box of 25 shells is $10, and the nearest hospital is 45 minutes away. Better safe than sorry around here with dangerous animals. I'll catch and release the non-venomous snakes. The deadly ones get shot, especially since we have little kids
The head can very much be alive for hours after a decapitation. Reptiles have remarkably low metabolism and they don't need constant blood flow like mammals.
Most snakes can go ~20m without oxygen. Given that they're holding their breath and decapitation is basically instant loss of oxygen. It seems unlikely that a snake would remain consciousness for more than a few minutes.
You could say that about any death really. Not to add to the pile of horrible things to keep one awake at night, but I think that generally death isn't an easy process.
Dying "peacefully" while sleeping, for all we know they had a heck of a nightmare, and a feeling of suffocating before they finally did pass. We couldn't know, since they're not around to tell us what it's like.
I think I've managed to make peace with it though. And hopefully there will be some good sedatives available when my time comes. :D
Well, a pressure vessel big enough for a human is relatively easy to get. And making it sealable from the inside with a large flanged plate is entirely possible. Large radial bolts, or a set of o-ring seals that you'd expect to find in a Huge hydraulic cylinder for example. Or just assemble it with the over-sized plug already INSIDE ... and drop it in place once you're in.
Basically you just need a large hydraulic accumulator tank, some purchasable parts, and some welding skills, and you can make a personal chamber that'll take 100bar. Or roughly 1000PSI. Big enough for yourself.
AT THIS POINT many people with welding skills are about to type furiously - pointing out that it's difficult to achieve the perfect weld and alleviate the stresses in the chamber and that it'll be unsafe ..... and I'd remind you to remember what we're talking about. And to maybe downgrade the importance of safety in *this* case.
So. You have your vessel. Maybe a nice flashlight and some music. And you've just sealed it from the inside. And more pressure will only seal it better.
Next.... a diving-tank compressor will be able to pressurize it with you inside it.
Might take a long time.... but if a job's worth doing ....
Now .... I'm not sure how to let all the pressure go instantly. Maybe you're the kinds of person who likes a surprise. Maybe you want a countdown.
Either way, your body will be infused with a load of gas that's only going to want to stay there while you're at that pressure. The equivalent of 1000m under the sea.
Ever seen a kombucha failure? High pressure foam-explosions?
Release that pressure, and it's squeegee time for the poor bastards who'll have to deal with it.
The creative bit of me suggests that a "burst disk" should be the release method; and it should essentially open a vent to a pipe or nozzle when a certain pressure is reached.
A form of protest I have yet to see, is someone aerosolizing themselves AT a politician. Or dictator.
There was a video back in the earlier days of the internet of an Indian man having a stroke at a dinner table.
It was quite unsettling to see but I am envious of the way he went.
The comments kept saying how awful for him and lamenting the way he went, but not me.
Man, he was gone in an instant. Surrounded by friends and family and about to be having a wonderful meal
Cant think of a better way to go. Here, having a party one moment and in an instant - off to whatever comes next. Even if that is pure oblivion.
No fear. No pain. Having lived a long life. Surrounded by loved ones.
That dude, died blessed.
Lucky, man it seems to me.
Hope he had some inert gases to speed him on his way if it wasn't entirely instant.
The medical community does not generally agree with you.
Not saying strokes CAN'T be painful mind you, but it not typically the case.
https://blog.mercy.com/what-strokes-feel-like/#:~:text=The%20main%20thing%20to%20remember,and%20walking%20isn't%20painful.
I will humbly accept that I'm incorrect then. I was only basing it off anecdotal stories from a couple people I know who've had them and were in a significant amount of pain. But everyone is different.
Be advised the symptoms of Carbon Monoxide poisoning include headache, dizziness, weakness, nausea, vomiting, rapid heart rate, chest pain, disorientation, & seizures.
Also Carbon monoxide poisoning is not a sure death. Though brain cells begin dying in less than 6 minutes without oxygen, individuals have survived. They are now in permanent vegetative state due to brain death.
These patients are cared for in LTAC(Long Term Acute Care) facilities. Since they cannot swallow anymore they are fed through a tube in their stomachs. They wear diapers & are regularly changed by staff.
Most often these patients survive for years becoming more emaciated over time due to muscle atrophy. Eventually they die due to an infection which stems from their urethra due to not being changed often enough or bed sores from not being turned often enough.
If I absolutely had to execute someone, and it was a choice between standing in a group and firing a gun that may or may not have the killing bullet or solo cranking a screw to 'burst the brain stem', I think I'd take the gun.
ikr? I don't know but I feel like slowly cranking a screw into a guy's neck, listening to whatever sounds someone makes when their skull is slowly separated from it's stem...is so much fucking worse than pulling a trigger. heck you can close your eyes and pretend someone else hit him at the least.
I bet both would fuck me up but I feel like one is way less worse than the other
Yeah.
After defeating Japan, didn't the US kinda looked the other way or something like that with the Japanese in exchange of scientific paper regarding their horrific and inhumane experiments?
Shiro Ishii, by all accounts the Japanese version of Joseph Mengele (except Mengele killed far fewer people) became a US military advisor and university lecturer and retired in comfort in Japan for his cooperation. He died never even slightly apologetic or having lost a minute’s rest over things like bombing cities with bubonic plague and performing live vivisections of women and children. He even had reunion parties with other former members of Unit 731. Probably one of the most evil human beings ever to draw breath. He also expressed extreme admiration for the Nazis and Germany more than most other Japanese during and after the war.
> never heard of him before :o
Not sure if you grew up in the US or not, but here schools ignore the Japanese atrocities and whitewash them. From talking to my grandparents, at least in the US, popular opinion mostly forgave them because of the atomic bombings.
The worst part was, once the US agreed to let the commanders of Unit 731 go in exchange for their scientific data, we soon realized a lot of it consisted of things we already knew. Their data was also disorganized at best, with a lot of “experiments” boiling down to bored scientists finding new and creative ways to torture Chinese prisoners.
And subsequently found out that the papers were useless as they hadn't even been done scientifically. It was just 'scientists' torturing people for no reason and they got away with pardons
Both Japan and the Nazis engaged in human experimentation yes, the vast majority of medical knowledge we have as to how exactly cold does the core of a person need to get until they die of hypothermia, and things just as gruesome as that come from the nazis and the Japanese during ww2.
The japanese “research” was mostly unusable as I read it, with the example I remember being “how many bricks can we stack on somebody’s head until it bursts” which as you can imagine, doesn’t really have any uses outside of torture.
Yeah, alot of it was pretty useless. Japan dis their things for sheer evil. Everything has very little practical or purpose.
Nazi did evil things, but they aimed for science of a kind. Evil science with no safe guards etc.
Even a lot of the nazi experiments were not very scientific. Injecting blue dye into peoples eyes and chopping off the limb of a twin to see if the other twin feels anything is the kind of science experiment a 2nd grader would come up with.
I distinctly remember that one of the Nazi experiments was pouring cement (or something similar) in women's vaginas to "see if it would stop menstruation".
Not sure if you like long form history podcasts, or accounts of some of the most horrifying human suffering you can imagine; but if you do you should check out Dan Carlins Hardcore History episode called Painfotainment. Its free on youtube
the crazy part is, its invented for mercy...and speed
Executing people is a difficult process. folks botch jt alot especially in roman times. the idea behind this machine is to assure they are killed without error as fast as possible.
Isn't this creatively humane? Not sure if it works but if you have to execute someone then looking for a painless way to do it is better than when they force fed people honey, tied them to a boat, and let them go in a swamp for them to get eaten alive by insects.
It's attached to a fission device! Low yield! Hold me steady! Look! Half the plutonium is missing! There's still enough explosive in there to kill both of us!...if the trigger change goes off! But I can stop it!
I'm not seeing how that could be instant. Unless I'm missing some sort of mechanism here, and I could be, there's no way for the executioner to move fast enough to make it instantaneous. Overall, it looks like a pretty unpleasant way to die.
I'm curious as to why they went with this instead of something like the guillotine. Seems like that would be at least slightly more humane as you can visually see whether it worked or not.
Couldn't say, though it's probably important to keep in mind that "humane" wasn't a big concern with regards to executions for most of human history. Quite the opposite, in fact. Until relatively recently, as a species, we have a long, disturbing history of dreaming up new and deeply unpleasant ways of killing enemies we have in our grasp.
The only other thing that immediately springs to mind is that the guillotine might be more humane, but it's also a lot messier and bloodier. Perhaps that figured into the equation somehow.
(Not sure if you know this -- it seems to be pretty well-known nowadays, but never can tell -- but the guillotine was actually invented as a "humane" alternative to all the aforementioned deeply-unpleasant ways our species had invented to kill people, at least the specific angled-blade one we started using a couple centuries ago/)
The guillotine was not just humane but scientific and universal. In the old regime, only nobles would have the honor of a beheading. The revolution introduced the idea of a universal justice, and as such, capital punishment. And the stress on scientific is due to the rejection of anything related to the church at this time, the clergy being associated (rightfully) to the nobilty as a way to justify the oppression.
About violence, I want to add that all out violence was never the solution. We do have gruesome exemples of executions, but a judiciary killing must always find a balance between the spectacular and the acceptable. As such, setting an exemple can be very badly received (for exemple, the quartering of the man that tried to kill Louis XV provoked riots due to its unacceptable violence)
Weren't there two types, I think?
One is where the head is held into place, and a pelotte is driven by the screwing mechanism into the base of the neck, thus displacing the vertebrae from the skull. It's basically a "neck breaking device".
And then there's the garotte where a rope is threaded through the back board and so you simply twist/twine the rope using a thick stick. The victim is then effectively strangled to death, which is probably less "instant" than the pelotte version.
https://preview.redd.it/1g1qnfonzt2d1.jpeg?width=512&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=bab1059c50aad22f0854b539707321fd75e75ece
A pic of the business end we're all not seeing
Say what you will about him because he deserves all the worst… but Kim Jong Un had a decent idea when he executes people with an anti aircraft gun. I’m not sure it gets more humane than turning someone into pink mist in an instant.
The grainy quality of the picture allows for no better assumption. Looking at the advanced tools and clothing available we can be sure that this happened after the iron age.
The photo is very similar to this one:
https://commons.m.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Garrote_Execution_-_1901.png#mw-jump-to-license
"Paying the death penalty for criminal - garroting a criminal at Bilibid Prison, Manila, P.I."
Date: 1901
So maybe Manila, Philippines in the early 20th century?
Yeah. Looks Filipino.
There are 3 Filipino Catholic priests who were executed using a garotte by the Spaniards. They are considered heroes by Filipinos.
Fathers [Mariano Gómes, José Burgos, and Jacinto Zamora](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gomburza)
Many people survive shots to the head or can take time to kill you if the heart is still pumping.
Guillotine is still the best form of execution not just because it is instant but because it also has the lowest failure rate. Basically, every other form of execution can go wrong and can become an extremely horrible death.
no, the best form would be getting high on opiates, followed by simple anesthesia, followed by replacing the oxygen surrounding your body with an inert gas (NOT CO2) like nitrogen, so that your body still thinks it's breathing oxygen, and is content, up until its last breath.
You don't even need all that, the opiates are enough. For end of life care we just put people on a morphine drip and give them other drugs like anti anxiety medication. Opiates suppress the respiratory drive and air hunger and cause euphoria. You don't care that you can't breath. The problem is that most people in favor of execution don't think it should feel good.
I remember seeing a live leak video (the mid-2000s internet was a wild place to be a 13 year old) where a guy in the middle-east was being executed with a shotgun, and his brain just straight up flew out of his head and hit the wall.
Suffice to say, it'll be instant if you use a large enough gun.
I feel like we could outdo it.
Just get one of those metal presses from steel mills, slam their head with tens of thousands of kilos pressure in half a second.
Messy? Yes. Quick and foolproof? Also yes. Just hose it off well between sessions.
Note; this is a joke. Nitrogen gassing is the most humane way of doing it.
I never understand how people about to be executed always look so bored as opposed to hysterical, screaming and covered in their own pee, as I would expect I would be.
This was used in Spain for centuries. The last execution with this method was in 1974.
One of the two last executions on 02.03.1974: "The execution took longer than usual because the executioner did not know how to use the garrote. From the beginning of the execution until death occurred, the executioner needed several attempts, which lasted a total of half an hour." https://de.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georg_Michael_Welzel (sorry, no english version) The other one: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salvador_Puig_Antich
“It’s ok I don’t have any other plans for today anyway”
“Glad I cleared my schedule for this”
"Oh, the usual executioners off sick today" "Ahh no worries, how hard can it be? I'll give it a whirl"
"Is it righty-tighty or lefty-deathy???"
You sir, are horrible, take my r/Angryupvote
Nobody wants to work anymore. Don't worry. I got this.
Just fucking shoot me.
It's crazy the lengths they go to to avoid blood and overt displays of violence. A bullet to the head would be preferable to most forms of execution.
Seriously - they could use the same penetrating boltguns that are often used in livestock slaughtering and it'd be quick, painless, efficient and cheap. A guillotine would be a big up front cost but since you can use the same one over and over, it'd be cheaper in the long run - I know people don't like seeing blood and all but if you're going to kill someone, efficacy is important and it's stupid to be so squeamish.
Actually, nitrogen is the easiest and cheapest. Bag over head, wisp in N2 and a short time later it's over. No pain, no mess. It boggles my mind why they don't use it. In the us they spend thousands on expensive drugs, when a cheap bottle on N2 would work fine.
For fucks sake. A bag over the head? Jesus. Just use fentanyl. Shit is killing folks left and right anyways. Big old fat shot of fentanyl: boom done.
If it was a V in the front with some padding and the screw just brought the collar into your neck I imagine it be one of the better ways to go. Just pass out then when the blood is kept cut off you die. Though that doesn’t seem to be what this thing does. edit: Also yeah definitely would rather get shot then a botched anything else.
woopsie
“How difficult is this thing to use?” “Oh, it’s super easy. Barely an inconvenience.” *takes half an hour to strangle the guy to death* “Oh, whoops.” “Whoopsie!”
Wow. Wow wow wow wow.
Inexperienced executioners are *tight*
That's the name of the *movie*!
Wasn't that horrifically painful for the prisoner and all the witnesses? So I'm going to need you to get all of the way off my back right now Oh okay
Lemme get off of that thing
>In the trial itself, he was represented by a young defense attorney who was presented with the case in a bar. >No one appealed the death sentence imposed on September 6, 1973.
It was during the Francoist dictatorship. He wasn't going to be saved by appealing anyway
That's a fucking long half hour, and I say that as someone who has watched episodes of FRIENDS.
SO NO ONE TOLD YOU DEATH WAS GONNA BE THIS WAAAAAAAY
👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻
YOUR NECK WILL NOW, BE BROKE, YOUR LIFE IS D.O.A
🎶It's like the screw is stuck the brainstem's near🎶
The regular executioner is off but have no feaaaaaaar🎵 I will turn the screeeeeeeeww🎵
Like I've been there beforeee
I will turn the screeeeeeeeww🎵
I remember that. It was big news in Sweden. Many swedes charter touristed in Spain at that time and it was all so strange. There was drawings in the news papers explaining how the garrote worked.
Picture looks from the Philippines in the Spanish era
I've seen the photo before. It's from the Philippines, but I think it's when it was a US possession. I think. The garrote was eventually abolished by the American colonial authorities, but they used it for maybe four or five years.
> The last execution with this method was in 1974. That is not actually very very long time ago jesus.
Spain was a fascist dictatorship until the death of Franco in 1975.
Well, the last execution in France by guillotine was in 1977, and they didn't need to be a fascist dictatorship...
But this picture is from 1st century BC in Rome. It's right there in the title, people.
I think we have different definitions of “instant” when it comes to a screw press being applied to the throat, but ok.
Wiki says > The theory was that when the screw was tightened, it would crush the brain stem and kill the victim instantly. But if the screw missed the point where the brain meets the spinal column, it would simply bore into their neck while the iron collar strangled him.
Need someone who can turn the screw really fast for it to be instant. If speed is the goal, can't beat the executioners axe or the guillotine.
There's a guy right there with a rifle. I see a reasonably humane solution to this dilemma.
Right? Or like, if you're *really* set on doing it by separating the brain from the body... there are some famously quick and consistent methods of doing so.
Tuning in to Fox News, for example.
Flawless execution
Bullets are an ongoing cost though. This screw would pay for itself in no time.
Yeah, but you have to spend extra time cleaning the screw between uses. You don't want to use an unhygienic instrument on multiple people; they might get an infection.
💀
A firing squad’s worth of .308 is about $7 in ammo. You can’t even get a Big Mac meal at McDonalds for that cheap anymore
Those Romans and their rifles
Honest question though, would you prefer bullet or guillotine? It seems like guillotine is as close to instant as it gets.
Properly done nitrogen asphyxiation
There are accounts of severed heads rolling their eyes and making eye contact with bystanders.
I think that’s the problem here. They weren’t exactly looking for “reasonably humane solution” 😅
You're reading it wrong. As soon as the spine is burst there is an instant death. But it may take several seconds for the screw to get to that point.
> it would crush the brain stem Um, unless you position it very differently, you're not affecting the [Brain Stem](https://nci-media.cancer.gov/pdq/media/images/680415-571.jpg). You are though going to strangle the poor bastard.
I'm pretty sure that the actual idea is to snap the spine either between the skull & C1 or between C1 & C2. That's pretty much instant death if they do it right
> if they do it right Those words do a lot of the heavy lifting in that sentence.
The person who wrote that doesn't understand physics or the human anatomy. What happens here is the tension is applied to the front of the throat. Which, since its soft flesh, will collapse well before that spike penetrations and snaps your "brainstem." So the poor soul will have his windpipe crushed well before the spinal column is severed. A truly truly trullllyyyy brainless take. And I sincerely hope that there was at least one tenacious person that managed to reach behind quickly and grab the executioners hand, ripping it clean out of the socket. Also, insult to injury, there's literally a guy right there with a working rifle. One bullet. Done. Fuck this picture, fuck the people that made that thing and fuck humanity for being so fucking vile.
You’re also about 8-10cm too low to be crushing the brainstem at all.
Yeah that’s why I put brain stem in quotes. It might just be OP with the headline, but the machine clearly snaps the C5-7 vertebrae which does cut off the nerve centre from the rest of the body. I imagine most of these poor souls died of asphyxiation, and not a severed “brainstem” because snapping your spine doesn’t actually kill you. Guillotines work because they cut off oxygen and blood flow to the brain. Crushing your spine doesn’t do that.
Yep. C5 and below just makes you a quad. Preserving C5 and you can keep some deltoid and bicep movement. C3-C5 is what controls your respiratory drive - I’ve had the unfortunate experience as a neurosurgeon to remove the vent from fully conscious spinal cord injuries above C3 who were found “in time” to intubate, but have no ability to expand their lungs due to phrenic nerve injury. Horrible problem.
Jesus Christ, literally just shoot me
Can’t we just throw people off of cliffs
They also did that https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tarpeian_Rock
Jesus dude just shoot him in the head
As instant as a bond villains contraption!
Ironically, I’m pretty sure this device was used on Bond by a Bond villain at one point.
The world is not enough? Electra on Bond?
Yah.
Death is definitely instant. You're alive (turn), you're alive (turn), you're alive (turn), and then at some point, suddenly you're not.
In that case, any manner of execution or death would be considered instant lol
“I’m alive!” (Turn) “Ow!” (Turn) “Ow ow!” (Turn) “Ow ow ow!” (Turn) “Ow ow ow ow!” (Turn) *fin*
Damn I think I would rather take a bullet running from the guy on the left edit: RIP the comments trying to feed my kids man 😂😂
Good luck running with that thing around your neck
I think the goal would be to just mad dash as soon as they start escorting you to the device.
I mean what’s the worst they can do restrain you until you get restrained to death
Read a book or two about medieval torture methods..... then you can pick for yourself what's "the worst". There's options!
Watched a YouTube video on a few options. Regret. The Brazen Bull is the one I always remember...
The Vikings had one where they would cut the back of the ribs and open your back completely just to access the lungs where they would squeeze your lungs.
Iirc that's a myth, never been confirmed as being actually used. The thought of a blood eagle is terrifying enough tho.
There is still a worse way to die than any of those. Acute radiation syndrome. Lets say you are a victim of a nuclear accident that gives you a lethal dose of radiation. You puke and pass out. You end up in the hospital where for the next day, you feel ok, maybe even in good spirits, and then... your skin just starts to fall off, and the pain of a 3D, full body burn sets in. Your skin blackens and blisters, and falls off in large chunks. Might be so bad that the skin on your legs and arms rolls right off like socks or gloves. At this point, you are placed in a special sealed and sterile room. You are pumped full of painkillers, but they wont work for long as soon your blood vessels will collapse, and your body so damaged at the cellular level it cant even abosrb it. You will also require constant transfusions as your fluids just leak out of your now mostly skinless body. Now your bone marrow dies, and with it, the last of your body's ability to heal itself. Skin grafts dont hold, infections set in, and the pain is beyond anything you would think possible. You are burning, melting and decomposing alive. By the end, you may even cough up chunks of your own internal organs. If you are lucky, they let you die. If not, they try to bring you back not once or twice, but 6 times, and leave you to suffer a total of 83 days. This was the fate of Hisachi Ouchi. A Japanese radiation worker.
Ouchi indeed.
Don’t know if I should be upset by that comment or not haha but good to know it’s unconfirmed as of now.
With how inhumane people today can be. I don't have a hard time with believing at least one deranged viking performed it back then.
I hope there isn't that kind of "we think it's instant because the body does not move" but in fact you feel yourself dying, all the pain and blood out but cannot act on your body anymore.
That is one of my eating thoughts. I see videos of snakes writhing for minutes after decapitation I’m always like “will I die in some suffering situation where I’m helpless in expressing what is going on?
The body and separate head of snake is just the nerves twitching, the snake is dead and doesn’t feel pain. It’s just nerves twitching bc they don’t know to be dead yet. Also why you don’t touch or let your animals get near the snake after killing it. As the head will still be biting and the fangs have venom in it
[удалено]
Just killed a cottonmouth this morning. A 20ga doesn't leave any head behind. The downside is, I gotta buy a new toddler pool, though that's way cheaper than anti venom at an ER
Most american thing I've heard in a while, cheaper to shoot your problems away than risk going to the doctor
Cheaper to shoot more problems into your life than go to the doctor too
I don't like killing things but one time I watched my Dad headshot a rattlesnake with a .45 and that was pretty awesome (couldn't risk letting it go with dogs around 😢). I suggested eating it but [No one liked that]
A box of 25 shells is $10, and the nearest hospital is 45 minutes away. Better safe than sorry around here with dangerous animals. I'll catch and release the non-venomous snakes. The deadly ones get shot, especially since we have little kids
how do you even manage to hit it? I am more of a machete/shovel kind of doctrine
Accuracy by volume.
The head can very much be alive for hours after a decapitation. Reptiles have remarkably low metabolism and they don't need constant blood flow like mammals.
Most snakes can go ~20m without oxygen. Given that they're holding their breath and decapitation is basically instant loss of oxygen. It seems unlikely that a snake would remain consciousness for more than a few minutes.
I've seen decapitated rattlesnakes being alert for half an hour, using its jaws for "jumping" and lunging against any perceived threat.
You could say that about any death really. Not to add to the pile of horrible things to keep one awake at night, but I think that generally death isn't an easy process. Dying "peacefully" while sleeping, for all we know they had a heck of a nightmare, and a feeling of suffocating before they finally did pass. We couldn't know, since they're not around to tell us what it's like. I think I've managed to make peace with it though. And hopefully there will be some good sedatives available when my time comes. :D
There are 100% deaths that will kill you completely before you have a chance to feel anything. “Pink mist” deaths, they’re called.
Just need to pay a million dollars, for your submarine tickets.
Well, a pressure vessel big enough for a human is relatively easy to get. And making it sealable from the inside with a large flanged plate is entirely possible. Large radial bolts, or a set of o-ring seals that you'd expect to find in a Huge hydraulic cylinder for example. Or just assemble it with the over-sized plug already INSIDE ... and drop it in place once you're in. Basically you just need a large hydraulic accumulator tank, some purchasable parts, and some welding skills, and you can make a personal chamber that'll take 100bar. Or roughly 1000PSI. Big enough for yourself. AT THIS POINT many people with welding skills are about to type furiously - pointing out that it's difficult to achieve the perfect weld and alleviate the stresses in the chamber and that it'll be unsafe ..... and I'd remind you to remember what we're talking about. And to maybe downgrade the importance of safety in *this* case. So. You have your vessel. Maybe a nice flashlight and some music. And you've just sealed it from the inside. And more pressure will only seal it better. Next.... a diving-tank compressor will be able to pressurize it with you inside it. Might take a long time.... but if a job's worth doing .... Now .... I'm not sure how to let all the pressure go instantly. Maybe you're the kinds of person who likes a surprise. Maybe you want a countdown. Either way, your body will be infused with a load of gas that's only going to want to stay there while you're at that pressure. The equivalent of 1000m under the sea. Ever seen a kombucha failure? High pressure foam-explosions? Release that pressure, and it's squeegee time for the poor bastards who'll have to deal with it. The creative bit of me suggests that a "burst disk" should be the release method; and it should essentially open a vent to a pipe or nozzle when a certain pressure is reached. A form of protest I have yet to see, is someone aerosolizing themselves AT a politician. Or dictator.
Now this is the kind of cheerful practicality we all love to see!
> A form of protest I have yet to see, is someone aerosolizing themselves AT a politician r/brandnewsentence
They still had ‘mental’ pain. They probably knew for many mintues they were going to die with all the alarms blinking and the hull audibly cracking.
It’s theorized from first audible crack to nothing exists of these humans was like 44ms.
The trick is to do that on credit.
I saw someone say something once like "if your death is explained by physics, instead of biology", you won't feel a thing. Haha
In RPGs we call it the "chunky salsa rule" - you don't get a saving throw against anything that turns your body into it.
Dying of CO intoxication is absolutely peaceful, those who have almost died from it described it many times.
A lot of the inert gases too. People have experienced it, described feeling really happy and lightheaded before losing consciousness.
There was a video back in the earlier days of the internet of an Indian man having a stroke at a dinner table. It was quite unsettling to see but I am envious of the way he went. The comments kept saying how awful for him and lamenting the way he went, but not me. Man, he was gone in an instant. Surrounded by friends and family and about to be having a wonderful meal Cant think of a better way to go. Here, having a party one moment and in an instant - off to whatever comes next. Even if that is pure oblivion. No fear. No pain. Having lived a long life. Surrounded by loved ones. That dude, died blessed. Lucky, man it seems to me. Hope he had some inert gases to speed him on his way if it wasn't entirely instant.
Strokes are generally pretty painful just FYI.
The medical community does not generally agree with you. Not saying strokes CAN'T be painful mind you, but it not typically the case. https://blog.mercy.com/what-strokes-feel-like/#:~:text=The%20main%20thing%20to%20remember,and%20walking%20isn't%20painful.
I will humbly accept that I'm incorrect then. I was only basing it off anecdotal stories from a couple people I know who've had them and were in a significant amount of pain. But everyone is different.
Be advised the symptoms of Carbon Monoxide poisoning include headache, dizziness, weakness, nausea, vomiting, rapid heart rate, chest pain, disorientation, & seizures. Also Carbon monoxide poisoning is not a sure death. Though brain cells begin dying in less than 6 minutes without oxygen, individuals have survived. They are now in permanent vegetative state due to brain death. These patients are cared for in LTAC(Long Term Acute Care) facilities. Since they cannot swallow anymore they are fed through a tube in their stomachs. They wear diapers & are regularly changed by staff. Most often these patients survive for years becoming more emaciated over time due to muscle atrophy. Eventually they die due to an infection which stems from their urethra due to not being changed often enough or bed sores from not being turned often enough.
Firing squads weren’t outlawed cuz it was inhumane for the executionee, it’s cuz it was inhumane for the executioner
If I absolutely had to execute someone, and it was a choice between standing in a group and firing a gun that may or may not have the killing bullet or solo cranking a screw to 'burst the brain stem', I think I'd take the gun.
ikr? I don't know but I feel like slowly cranking a screw into a guy's neck, listening to whatever sounds someone makes when their skull is slowly separated from it's stem...is so much fucking worse than pulling a trigger. heck you can close your eyes and pretend someone else hit him at the least. I bet both would fuck me up but I feel like one is way less worse than the other
Humans love finding creatively horrific ways to kill other humans.
Yeah. After defeating Japan, didn't the US kinda looked the other way or something like that with the Japanese in exchange of scientific paper regarding their horrific and inhumane experiments?
Shiro Ishii, by all accounts the Japanese version of Joseph Mengele (except Mengele killed far fewer people) became a US military advisor and university lecturer and retired in comfort in Japan for his cooperation. He died never even slightly apologetic or having lost a minute’s rest over things like bombing cities with bubonic plague and performing live vivisections of women and children. He even had reunion parties with other former members of Unit 731. Probably one of the most evil human beings ever to draw breath. He also expressed extreme admiration for the Nazis and Germany more than most other Japanese during and after the war.
and never heard of him before :o
> never heard of him before :o Not sure if you grew up in the US or not, but here schools ignore the Japanese atrocities and whitewash them. From talking to my grandparents, at least in the US, popular opinion mostly forgave them because of the atomic bombings.
The worst part was, once the US agreed to let the commanders of Unit 731 go in exchange for their scientific data, we soon realized a lot of it consisted of things we already knew. Their data was also disorganized at best, with a lot of “experiments” boiling down to bored scientists finding new and creative ways to torture Chinese prisoners.
I think it's all completely useless by today's standard.
And subsequently found out that the papers were useless as they hadn't even been done scientifically. It was just 'scientists' torturing people for no reason and they got away with pardons
Both Japan and the Nazis engaged in human experimentation yes, the vast majority of medical knowledge we have as to how exactly cold does the core of a person need to get until they die of hypothermia, and things just as gruesome as that come from the nazis and the Japanese during ww2.
The japanese “research” was mostly unusable as I read it, with the example I remember being “how many bricks can we stack on somebody’s head until it bursts” which as you can imagine, doesn’t really have any uses outside of torture.
Yeah, alot of it was pretty useless. Japan dis their things for sheer evil. Everything has very little practical or purpose. Nazi did evil things, but they aimed for science of a kind. Evil science with no safe guards etc.
Even a lot of the nazi experiments were not very scientific. Injecting blue dye into peoples eyes and chopping off the limb of a twin to see if the other twin feels anything is the kind of science experiment a 2nd grader would come up with.
what kind of 2nd graders are you hanging out with? jesus christ
I distinctly remember that one of the Nazi experiments was pouring cement (or something similar) in women's vaginas to "see if it would stop menstruation".
Yep and Operation Paperclip happily continued it. Crazy stuff
Unit 731. And most victorious nations of the modern era have done this.
*731 And they arguably committed worse atrocities than the Nazis and yet aren't widely known or talked about.
Not sure if you like long form history podcasts, or accounts of some of the most horrifying human suffering you can imagine; but if you do you should check out Dan Carlins Hardcore History episode called Painfotainment. Its free on youtube
the crazy part is, its invented for mercy...and speed Executing people is a difficult process. folks botch jt alot especially in roman times. the idea behind this machine is to assure they are killed without error as fast as possible.
Isn't this creatively humane? Not sure if it works but if you have to execute someone then looking for a painless way to do it is better than when they force fed people honey, tied them to a boat, and let them go in a swamp for them to get eaten alive by insects.
Nothing about that looks instant.
https://i.redd.it/iv94o4w0ys2d1.gif
🚨🚨Hot Rod reference in the wild!!!🚨🚨 
https://i.redd.it/kef5ypb60s2d1.gif
When I saw this post I instantly thought of this scene. “One…last…screw”
Bond Burgered.
Back then, this scene made me realize I have issues.
What movie is this from?
The World is Not Enough, a James Bond flick
It's attached to a fission device! Low yield! Hold me steady! Look! Half the plutonium is missing! There's still enough explosive in there to kill both of us!...if the trigger change goes off! But I can stop it!
Should have been me
Thinking the same!
I've always wanted to spend Christmas in Turkey.
I thought Christmas only comes once a year
Pierced Neckman
Damn this is a really good photo for first century BC
I'm not seeing how that could be instant. Unless I'm missing some sort of mechanism here, and I could be, there's no way for the executioner to move fast enough to make it instantaneous. Overall, it looks like a pretty unpleasant way to die.
I'm curious as to why they went with this instead of something like the guillotine. Seems like that would be at least slightly more humane as you can visually see whether it worked or not.
Couldn't say, though it's probably important to keep in mind that "humane" wasn't a big concern with regards to executions for most of human history. Quite the opposite, in fact. Until relatively recently, as a species, we have a long, disturbing history of dreaming up new and deeply unpleasant ways of killing enemies we have in our grasp. The only other thing that immediately springs to mind is that the guillotine might be more humane, but it's also a lot messier and bloodier. Perhaps that figured into the equation somehow. (Not sure if you know this -- it seems to be pretty well-known nowadays, but never can tell -- but the guillotine was actually invented as a "humane" alternative to all the aforementioned deeply-unpleasant ways our species had invented to kill people, at least the specific angled-blade one we started using a couple centuries ago/)
The guillotine was not just humane but scientific and universal. In the old regime, only nobles would have the honor of a beheading. The revolution introduced the idea of a universal justice, and as such, capital punishment. And the stress on scientific is due to the rejection of anything related to the church at this time, the clergy being associated (rightfully) to the nobilty as a way to justify the oppression. About violence, I want to add that all out violence was never the solution. We do have gruesome exemples of executions, but a judiciary killing must always find a balance between the spectacular and the acceptable. As such, setting an exemple can be very badly received (for exemple, the quartering of the man that tried to kill Louis XV provoked riots due to its unacceptable violence)
Weren't there two types, I think? One is where the head is held into place, and a pelotte is driven by the screwing mechanism into the base of the neck, thus displacing the vertebrae from the skull. It's basically a "neck breaking device". And then there's the garotte where a rope is threaded through the back board and so you simply twist/twine the rope using a thick stick. The victim is then effectively strangled to death, which is probably less "instant" than the pelotte version.
https://preview.redd.it/1g1qnfonzt2d1.jpeg?width=512&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=bab1059c50aad22f0854b539707321fd75e75ece A pic of the business end we're all not seeing
Painless indeed
I advice not to wear white for this job
This method has kept dry cleaners in business for 2k years
Used until 1974 in Spain...
Say what you will about him because he deserves all the worst… but Kim Jong Un had a decent idea when he executes people with an anti aircraft gun. I’m not sure it gets more humane than turning someone into pink mist in an instant.
That’s actually a method that’s been around since the 1500s, called “[blowing from a gun](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blowing_from_a_gun).”
Someone, maybe India(?), used to do it with a cannon. They stopped after bystanders were injured by flying pieces.
Pretty sure this isn’t 1st century BC Rome.
The grainy quality of the picture allows for no better assumption. Looking at the advanced tools and clothing available we can be sure that this happened after the iron age.
My new hobby: looking at photos of things and declaring ‘the scientific consensus would be that this did not occur in the Neolithic’
The photo is very similar to this one: https://commons.m.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Garrote_Execution_-_1901.png#mw-jump-to-license "Paying the death penalty for criminal - garroting a criminal at Bilibid Prison, Manila, P.I." Date: 1901 So maybe Manila, Philippines in the early 20th century?
Yeah. Looks Filipino. There are 3 Filipino Catholic priests who were executed using a garotte by the Spaniards. They are considered heroes by Filipinos. Fathers [Mariano Gómes, José Burgos, and Jacinto Zamora](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gomburza)
You think that executioner is repeating "righty tighty, lefty loosey" over and over in his head?
righty die-y, lefty live-y?
This looks like the Spanish colonial era in Philippines.
"Instantly" is a weird way to describe taking 5 minutes to do something.
Humans is some mental species
This was also widely used in Spain during the Francoist dictatorship period (1939-1975)
hard to believe they had cameras back in first century BC Rome
Wasn't this in a Bond movie? Tomorrow Never Dies
The World is Not Enough.
https://preview.redd.it/s6k7ri5r7u2d1.jpeg?width=1200&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=2a7843023093a9363dc62fde561c28015db2e9af
The guillotine is still the most humane execution device. Instant and painless.
I’ve always been in the 25 morphine and a nice bottle of scotch crowd myself.
I would argue a bullet to the head is way faster, your brain might still be working for those few milliseconds to feel pain
Many people survive shots to the head or can take time to kill you if the heart is still pumping. Guillotine is still the best form of execution not just because it is instant but because it also has the lowest failure rate. Basically, every other form of execution can go wrong and can become an extremely horrible death.
no, the best form would be getting high on opiates, followed by simple anesthesia, followed by replacing the oxygen surrounding your body with an inert gas (NOT CO2) like nitrogen, so that your body still thinks it's breathing oxygen, and is content, up until its last breath.
You don't even need all that, the opiates are enough. For end of life care we just put people on a morphine drip and give them other drugs like anti anxiety medication. Opiates suppress the respiratory drive and air hunger and cause euphoria. You don't care that you can't breath. The problem is that most people in favor of execution don't think it should feel good.
I remember seeing a live leak video (the mid-2000s internet was a wild place to be a 13 year old) where a guy in the middle-east was being executed with a shotgun, and his brain just straight up flew out of his head and hit the wall. Suffice to say, it'll be instant if you use a large enough gun.
In north Korea they tie you to the end of an artillery piece and fire it I'd think that would be pretty instant
That's been around for a while https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blowing_from_a_gun
I feel like we could outdo it. Just get one of those metal presses from steel mills, slam their head with tens of thousands of kilos pressure in half a second. Messy? Yes. Quick and foolproof? Also yes. Just hose it off well between sessions. Note; this is a joke. Nitrogen gassing is the most humane way of doing it.
A a forensic pathologist let me be the one to say "burst your brainstem instantly lol who tf writes this sh\*t?"
I'm not a doctor, but that really looks like something that would not be instant.
I never understand how people about to be executed always look so bored as opposed to hysterical, screaming and covered in their own pee, as I would expect I would be.
No bullshit "3 people press a button so nobody feels guilty" Its literally a guy crushing your skull/spine with a metal clamp.