this post was submitted on 26 Jun 2023
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Showerthoughts
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Fairly expensive, as you'd need a new disposable submarine for each execution.
Most execution is actually pretty barbaric. The multi drug cocktail used for executions in the US is a horrible system that was designed by a non-doctor. The first drug knocks you out, the second drug paralyzes you, and the 3rd drug stops your heart. Problem is if they don't give you enough of the first drug, you can be awake while your heart is being stopped which is apparently quite painful, but since you're immobilized you can't communicate that at all.
The only humane way I am aware of to kill a condemned person would be have them breathe pure nitrogen. Nitrogen is all around us- the air we breathe is 80% nitrogen so the body doesn't react negatively to it. But without that 20% oxygen, the brain asphyxiates and dies in just a few minutes. The prisoner would simply pass out and not wake up.
This protocol is often used to euthanize laboratory animals as it is considered among the most humane.
It's pretty fucked up that lab rats get a better death than humans.
I'll be honest, i never thought about HOW death sentences are executed, mostly because i live in a country where death sentences are seen as barbaric and are not possible thankfully. But now that i think about it, a "mutli-drug cocktail" sounds like one of the worst ideas, next hanging and guillotine.
Being drawn and quartered or golden bulled sounds like one of the worse ideas.
Hanging, rifle line, and the guillotine are slightly better as they’re less violent and more ‘matter of fact’.
A multi-drug cocktail sounds like one of the most humane methods, medicinally and painlessly ending a life. Sadly they’ve fucked up even that by not doing it properly.
The issue with things like hanging is that there's more room for political abuse because it's so theatrical. Even if a lethal injection took place in a town square, it would have nowhere near the same capacity for terrorism and suppressing dissent.
The problem is you can't get any actual doctors to help make it medically sound on account of that whole "do no harm" thing they're supposed to uphold, so you end up with quacks that use a functionally random set of drugs that make it appear to the crowd as a painless way to die when in actuality its one of the most brutally painful possible ways to die.
Death can be a freedom from harm, ex. Euthanasia.
So if they were going to die anyway, a doctor could rationalise it as helping them have the least suffering.
I like the nitrogen idea.
Frankly, lethal injection is soooo messed up, that had I been on death row in Utah (when I lived there), I would have selected the freaking firing squad option (yes, it's legal).