Transcript
Alabama suffocated a man to death in a gas chamber tonight after starving him so he wouldn’t choke on his own vomit as they did it. And this was deemed perfectly legal by multiple courts in the vaunted American legal system.
That’s what happens when you value institutions over people.
Link for more info: https://www.reuters.com/legal/alabama-prepares-carry-out-first-execution-by-nitrogen-asphyxiation-2024-01-25/
This is pretty surprising, everything I’ve read indicates that he should indeed have been out in seconds. I wonder if the mask was a bad fit or the nitrogen wasn’t pure?
Definitely not seconds. If that were the case, simply holding your breath for a few seconds would be enough to make you pass out. That myth comes from chokeholds, which are not the same thing, and (when done properly) don’t actually stop the person from breathing. Instead, they put pressure on the arteries, to cut off the brain’s blood supply directly.
Actual asphyxiation takes several minutes, as the oxygen in your blood is slowly consumed. For nitrogen asphyxiation, you get a wicked endorphin high as your brain realizes it’s low on oxygen and releases endorphins to try and keep you awake. (Side note, this is why autoerotic asphyxiation is a thing. People do it intentionally to get that endorphin release and make orgasms more powerful.) But your sense of suffocation actually comes from high amounts of carbonic acid in your blood; Carbonic acid is from CO2, (it’s also what gives carbonated drinks that characteristic bitter taste, and is why flat soda tastes cloyingly sweet without the bitter carbonic acid to counter the sweetness.) Since the CO2 never builds up in your system, you never get the sense of suffocation. You just get that euphoric endorphin high, then you fall asleep.
Nitrogen asphyxiation is actually how I’d prefer to go out, if I got to choose. Like if I were in a lot of pain in my elder years and simply wanted to die, nitrogen asphyxiation is how I’d want to do it. But I also recognize that at that point it would be a choice, not something the state is forcing upon me. This dude was forced into it, which means there’s a much higher chance of him panicking regardless of the method.
This is actually not totally correct, take a look at @[email protected]’s thoughtful reply to my comment below!
It’s definitely not just seconds. Think about how long you can hold your breath, you’d be conscious for at least that long. You start getting brain damage after like 4 minutes without oxygen, and can live for maybe 6 minutes.
Edit: I’m wrong here! See the reply for why.
I don’t think this is quite right. Read up on “time of useful consciousness”. I think if you exhale the air in your lungs and inhale oxygen-free air you’ll be out much faster than if you just held your breath. I’m not entirely sure if total pressure matters or partial pressure matters, but I’m quite sure that there will be some similar effect. I have found some claims that the partial pressure is the major factor, so breathing pure nitrogen seems like it would incapacitate someone faster than holding their breath does, because the nitrogen is actively removing oxygen from their blood.
You are totally right. I looked into it a bit, the mistake I made was assuming that we’re more efficient at extracting oxygen from the air than we actually are. A held breath contains quite a lot of usable oxygen, which we can extract over minutes of time. Breathing in nitrogen would rapidly replace that still fairly-oxygenated air with pure nitrogen, and evidently our blood doesn’t carry more than a few seconds worth of oxygen.
Thanks for the gentle correction!