There has been a push by Indiana legislators to rework and add alternative methods to the carrying out of executions in Indiana. House Bill 1119, authored by Rep. Jim Lucas,
I’m generally against execution due to the chance it could be applied to an innocent person, but if it’s going to be a thing, why the fuck can’t it be asphyxiation by nitrogen? The most painless and peaceful way to sleep yourself to death is RIGHT THERE. The body doesn’t even consciously know that it’s dying. The person just blacks out and that’s it.
Source: Project Hail Mary
Edit: okay, so I actually clicked and read the first paragraph of the article and nitrogen hypoxia is the additional method. Yay! I guess…
Edit2:
“And for nitrogen hypoxia, we would be asking the executioners to administer a method to humans that we do not even use to euthanize animals anymore due to the distress it causes them to process.
“The exposure to euthanize a pig would need to be longer than seven minutes. How long would they have to safely wait and watch for the gas exposure to definitively kill a human?” LaCoursier asked.
I feel like biomedical monitoring of the heart and brain waves could definitively determine when brain death has set in. Perhaps maybe providing counseling to the executioner helping them understand that nitrogen gas hypoxia, even if it takes longer, is the gentlest way to go, could maybe help with the trauma of being an executioner?
Alabama executed someone with nitrogen in 2024 (I know other states have as well, but this was the first one I remember reading about), it doesn’t seem as quick and painless as one is lead to believe in writing.
A witness told the BBC that Smith thrashed violently on the gurney and the execution took around 25 minutes.
…
“I’ve been to four previous executions and I’ve never seen a condemned inmate thrash in the way that Kenneth Smith reacted to the nitrogen gas,” Lee Hedgepeth told the BBC’s Newsday programme.
Huh, guess I’m wrong. Dangit sci-fi books, you lied to me. I always thought that’s why nitrogen-rich environments were so insidiously dangerous as opposed to CO2-flooded ones, because the body is hardwired to detect and panic in response to CO2 suffocation, but there’s no such innate detection mechanism for low-O2 or high-N2 (or argon or any other inert gas).
25 minutes is pretty amazing for a body to survive in a hypoxic environment. That sounds like it was a horrible experience for everyone. It would seem there’s no good way to die…
Didn’t they try that once and the condemned was trying not to breath as long as he could, convulsing, fighting for his life till the last moment? From what I read it wasn’t peaceful at all.
Yeah, another commenter brought that up. I was naively unaware. Sucks…I really thought it was the calmest way to die. It was comforting to know there might be a quiet and non-messy way out in case of an agonizing advanced terminal illness or something like that in my future.
I’m generally against execution due to the chance it could be applied to an innocent person, but if it’s going to be a thing, why the fuck can’t it be asphyxiation by nitrogen? The most painless and peaceful way to sleep yourself to death is RIGHT THERE. The body doesn’t even consciously know that it’s dying. The person just blacks out and that’s it.
Source: Project Hail Mary
Edit: okay, so I actually clicked and read the first paragraph of the article and nitrogen hypoxia is the additional method. Yay! I guess…
Edit2:
I feel like biomedical monitoring of the heart and brain waves could definitively determine when brain death has set in. Perhaps maybe providing counseling to the executioner helping them understand that nitrogen gas hypoxia, even if it takes longer, is the gentlest way to go, could maybe help with the trauma of being an executioner?
Alabama executed someone with nitrogen in 2024 (I know other states have as well, but this was the first one I remember reading about), it doesn’t seem as quick and painless as one is lead to believe in writing.
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-68085513
Huh, guess I’m wrong. Dangit sci-fi books, you lied to me. I always thought that’s why nitrogen-rich environments were so insidiously dangerous as opposed to CO2-flooded ones, because the body is hardwired to detect and panic in response to CO2 suffocation, but there’s no such innate detection mechanism for low-O2 or high-N2 (or argon or any other inert gas).
25 minutes is pretty amazing for a body to survive in a hypoxic environment. That sounds like it was a horrible experience for everyone. It would seem there’s no good way to die…
Didn’t they try that once and the condemned was trying not to breath as long as he could, convulsing, fighting for his life till the last moment? From what I read it wasn’t peaceful at all.
Yeah, another commenter brought that up. I was naively unaware. Sucks…I really thought it was the calmest way to die. It was comforting to know there might be a quiet and non-messy way out in case of an agonizing advanced terminal illness or something like that in my future.