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Kenneth Smith ‘struggled for life’ for 22 minutes in Alabama nitrogen gas execution: Updates
(www.independent.co.uk)
this post was submitted on 26 Jan 2024
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I personally experienced breathing nitrogen until loss of consciousness under controlled and supervised conditions for training purposes with the RCAF. I was in a room with seven other people who were all doing the same thing as well as instructors who were in here with us for safety.
The point of the exercise was to sit in a room with a mask on, recognize the symptoms of hypoxia when we experienced them and throw a lever that would resume normal air breathing once we had enough. We were given tablets with simple games to play to simulate having our minds occupied on accomplishing some tasks. We knew they were going to switch or air supplies with pure nitrogen at some point to cause hypoxia but we didn't know when it was going to happen. The room was also a hypobaric chamber but it didn't stimulate a high enough altitude to induce hypoxia by itself, it was only there to simulate the environmental signs of decompression ( fogging of the air, percieved drop in pressure, cooling sensation, etc)
We sat there for a few minutes accomplishing the tasks on the tablets (basically paying candy crush) with nothing special going on. Then I noticed that we all started breathing deeper and harder. When I looked around people were also red in the face but strangely did not feel any discomfort from it and some people were even still playing on their tablets without noticing. Some of them threw their personal lever immediately because the point of the exercise was to recognize the signs of hypoxia. But others including my competitive ass wanted to see how far I could take it and if I could outlast others so we kept going.
My breathing naturally got deeper and harder but strangely I wasn't feeling like I was suffocating. I started feeling pins and needles in my extremities. Concentrating on the tasks in the tablet became increasingly difficult and slower. A few moments later I got tunnel vision and my hearing started to sound muffled. These two effects progressively got worse until I could almost not see or hear anything anymore at which point I finally threw the lever just before passing out due to a phenomenon called oxygen paradox where when oxygen supply is resumed the hypoxia symptoms briefly get worse before going away. I didn't even notice passing out. I woke up a few moments later and from my perspective it seemed that time had skipped forward a minute. Had I not thrown the lever and there were no instructors to do it for me I would have died a few moments later.
All of this took less than 5 minutes and I never experienced anything worse than mild discomfort throughout. I don't know how they managed to make it last 25 minutes other than maybe the brain stem running on fumes and keeping the heart beating but there is no consciousness at that point. If I ever had to pick a way to be executed this would be it, provided that it is done correctly.
Sounds like they didn't remove the CO2, just gave him a mask that forced him to breathe nitrogen. Like a standard medical respirator, so he spent half an hour rebreathing his CO2 and whatever oxygen slipped in around the mask.
I know that CO2 is what the body uses to push the sensation of "needing" air. So I wonder if that would have changed his CO2 content from what it would be in just nitrogen...
You did that in a safe situation where nobody was trying to kill you. I don't suffer when holding my breath underwater, but the moment someone holds me down I am going to panic.
It is not fair to liken this to being held underwater. When forced to hold your breathyour lungs fill with CO2 which will cause pain, an urge to breathe and a primal urge to panic because your body has evolved the ability to sense this excess of CO2 to force you to breathe. But when breathing pure nitrogen your body doesn't have an evolved way to detect it besides minor symptoms that you may or may not notice until you pass out.
Yes, the very idea that you will die can be emotionally distressing but this will be common to all methods of execution.
Try to hold your breath for as much as you can, and you will feel an very strong urge to breathe. This doesn't happen with nitrogen.
Sure, the person is mad scared, but he's not suffering because of the nitrogen.
"Waterboarding doesn't cause suffering because it isn't literally drowning."
That's what you sound like.
The body is weird when it comes to breathing. It doesn't measure one of the critical gasses. 3 things particularly send the body into a breathing panic.
Rising CO2 (via blood acidity)
Water in the airways.
Resistance to inflating the lungs.
Water boarding is particularly evil, since it creates just enough of the last 2 to trigger a full blown drowning reaction, but is light enough to not actually be dangerous. This lets the questioner hold the victim in that zone, without permanent physical harm (but massive psychological harm).
Nitrogen hypoxia doesn't set off any of those triggers. This makes it particularly dangerous to some workers. They don't realise anything is wrong until they pass out.
Also, to clarify. I am massively against the death penalty. It's both cruel, and not particularly effective as a deterrent. It's also no cheaper, in practice, than life imprisonment. However, if it is going to be used, it should be as humane as possible. Nitrogen hypoxia is about as humane as it can get.
They cannot do it humanely with a method that requires the person to breath normally to work. If they can hold their breath it will always be inhumane because they will still be struggling and have the same impending doom and physical reaction as waterboarding.
It does not matter if the chemical properties are different when the person has a working brain and doesn't want to die. Or if it is being implemented by incompetent people who couldn't even kill him with lethal injection in 2022.
So what method would you suggest, assuming you must choose a method?
I'm completely against the death penalty. It's no longer an option over here in the UK. However, if it must be done, do it as humanely as possible.
I will not choose a method because all options require a trained an licensed medical professional to implement humanely, and nobody who qualifies will participate because they have ethics that prohibit causing harm to be licensed medical professionals. That includes putting someone to death against their will.
Picking a method is agreeing with the assumption that we have to put people to death.
The thing is, all of the humane ways to kill someone require the person to be a willing participant in the process. Nitrogen works when the person is relaxed and breathing normally for example.
All options do not require a medical professional to administer. It does not take someone with a doctor's knowledge or skill to make an airproof chamber. It won't take a doctor to set up a system to add air to the chamber. You don't need to be a doctor to rig a way to flood the chamber with another gas and remove the oxygen. Non-doctors can wheel him in, strapped to a bed. Then the regular pre-PhD's can operate the system. Now the scientists and engineers to design this death trap may have doctorates, but they don't need medical licenses. Design it well enough and a chimp or small child can operate the chamber controls. You will need a medical professional to declare death, though.
Hard to design a system that can be operated by a chimp when the people actually designing and implementing the process are clearly incompetent.
If they don't have a medical professional monitoring the person's oxygen levels to ensure he is dying as fast as it is supposed to work, how will they know if their made up bullshit about it being humane when forced upon someone is accurate?
Imagine if they were putting a free diver or other person who has practiced holding their breath for extended periods of time, how would they know if it was even working without monitoring them?
The states that execute people have lied about every prior method being 'humane' and non of them ever were in practice on someone who did not want to die. The electric chair supposedly killed the person instantly, but that was a lie. Lethal injection was supposed to be putting someone to sleep and described in the same way as nitrogen, but that was clearly a lie in practice because the people that do it are incompetent.
Quoting an article about safe use of nitrogen, it is odorless, tasteless, and colorless. At extreme low levels of oxygen, nitrogen can cause unconsciousness and death in seconds and without warning.
I'm not talking about the chimps who executed this guy designing the system, I'm talking about qualified scientists designing it. The beauty is, you don't need a medical doctor to monitor oxygen levels if you rapidly remove the oxygen and add nitrogen. Send in slightly chilled nitrogen and the air will rise above it. Relief valve up top spits out the oxygen. Homeboy is unconsciousness before he realizes why the air just got cold.
The freediver will hold his breath confidently for four minutes, exhale, suck in pure nitrogen, and be out in a breath or two.
I agree that the state does lie and incompetently kills people, but we can design a system that does it well. I just don't agree they should ever use it.
Which qualified scientists designed this system?
No idea, I was discussing hypotheticals.
Why bother? People are being put to death in the real world where competent people are not involved in executions.
Well you said you didn't want to pick an execution method because they all needed medical doctors, so I proposed a situation that doesn't require one except to declare death. But good point, we'll only pick up this discussion after you break in and rip the mask off the next execution victim.
No, your proposal would still need a doctor.
The only thing that wouldn't is a guillotine.
I disagree, you wouldn't need a medical doctor in my proposal except to declare death.
Your proposal is unicorns and rainbows fantasy land bullshit.
I disagree to this as well.
So you'd rather have someone die in agony, rather than make a decision?
I'm asking that if an evil must happen, should it be a different, lesser evil, or a normalised greater evil? The whether the evil should happen at all is a separate debate.
As I said, I agree with you on the latter. The death penalty shouldn't be a thing. I'm asking about the situation until you (as a society) actually get that far.
Smith clearly died in agony from this method. Lethal injection was also promoted as painless, which it would be in theory and was not in practice for the same fundamental issue that the whole death penalty process involves incompetent people fucking up because competent people won't take part in it.
I can't pick a method when it is guaranteed to be horrible because of the context of the death penalty.
I will gladly pick a method or two for people who want to be euthanized and participate willingly. Those same methods will always be torture to someone who does not want to die as long as incompetent people are running the show.
I reject your premise. Alabama’s government could have just said “we can’t get the drugs for lethal injection, so we’re not doing the death penalty any more.” Instead they said “we’re going through hell and high water to kill this guy.” Fuck them. The death penalty is morally wrong because it puts every member of a democratic society in the position of being a killer.
Locked in a box, with a cat, a flask of poison, a radioactive source, and a Geiger counter.
Except when the Geiger counter gets a hit, it sets off a nuclear bomb inside the box so I'm instantly vaporized.
It only truly works if you can isolate the room completely. That's quite hard to do with a nuke involved. You'll definitely know when they are dead!
Unfortunately, I believe any use of nuclear weapons is prohibited by treaties. Might I suggest a giant acme hammer or anvil? Instant meat paste, assuming they aren't a cartoon character in disguise.
I kinda want to be able to donate my organs, so maybe they could just make a bomb-helmet with shaped charges that would paste my head and leave the rest of my body intact for harvesting. 🤯
I'm actually curious whether nitrogen hypoxia would leave the organs viable. However, it's not a point that should be pushed. Let's not give the rich any more reasons to want to keep the death penalty.
Your method could be a bit messy. I'd imagine even the doctors involved in the organ harvesting would be squeamish when confronted by the results. Ironically, nitrogen hypoxia would be my preferred way to go.
this is like arguing that suicide is inhumane and should be illegal
A person who is doing it voluntarily for suicide would not be struggling against impending doom and would be breathing normally. The context here is execution against someone's will.
the impending doom is coming in either scenario, either you play it up, fight it, and die trying, or you just follow through with it.
That's a conscious choice people are capable of making in that scenario.
If you don't want to struggle, you just breath normally.
I guess the person being put to death should have just made a decision to die then. That's what you are saying right, that they suffered because they didn't choose to just roll over and die?
yeah, pretty much.
The same exact decision you make when you get born into society and are forced to integrate, otherwise be ostracized.
I don't make the rules.
Your first sentence is simply false.
you are conflating waterboarding with non consensual, but expected waterboarding.
He isn't going to get out of it, but it's also not like he has no idea whats going to happen.
How to deal with waterboarding? Don't breath.
What?
if you're a prisoner on death row, it's not exactly like you have zero advanced notice of whats going to happen.
Given that bureaucracy exists, i think it might be prudent to say that you might even have ALL of the advanced notice one could possibly want in that scenario.
When I’m held down I get turned on.
A lot of people are focused on this quote:
Which says to me that from the time they brought him in and strapped him down until he died lasted about 22 minutes and the murderer struggled physically against the restraints the entire time.
This quote farther down suggests from the time they started administering the gas until he died only took a couple of minutes:
Several could be 25, and he could have been shaking from pain and agony, but it seems more likely he was holding his breath and shaking out of fear while trying to fight and get free.
Keep in mind that the first quote is from his anti-death penalty spiritual advisor and this entire article is brought to us by a magazine with an "end the death penalty campaign".
I'm generally anti-death penalty myself, but nitrogen asphyxiation seems way better than electrocution, lethal injection, or hanging. They could probably do it better by using some kind of general anesthesia to render him unconscious and then flood the room with pure nitrogen, or even just get rid if the death penalty all together. Unfortunately this is the world we live in and so fae this is the least bad option we've seen.
How dare you actually read the story!?
I do have some reservations about the idea of a compassionate execution method. It's kinda like tasers. Yes, they are a huge improvement on the alternative, but that also means they get used a lot more frequently.
The death penalty is barbaric.
Tom Scott did a video on this as well.
25 minutes does seem like an awfully long time.
State fucked it up ..dude it's Alabama.
So you weren't fighting for your life.
That will be true for any method of execution.
True. Maybe we should outlaw them all.
I can't say that I'd be giggly about having my brain cells oxygen deprived for going on 5 minutes.
You did that shit for a job? I hope they paid you well, sounds like you could have easily died if something went wrong..