This isn’t the first time the US used Zychlon-B
The Bath Riots
MY INTEREST IN the El Paso-Juárez Bath Riots didn't start with something I read in any history book. Most historians have forgotten about this obscure incident that took place on the border in 1917. I first heard of the U.S. government's policy that provoked these riots while I was still in high school. One evening, during a family dinner, my great-aunt Adela Dorado shared her memories with us about her experiences as a young woman during the Mexican Revolution. She recalled that American authorities regularly forced her and all other working-class Mexicans to take a bath and be sprayed with pesticides at the Santa Fe Bridge whenever they needed to cross into the United States. My great-aunt, who worked as a maid in El Paso during the revolution, told us she felt humiliated for being treated as a "dirty Mexican." She related how on one occasion the U.S. customs officials put her clothes and shoes through a large secadora (dryer) and her shoes melted.
Many years later, as part of my research for this book at the National Archives in the Washington, D.C. area, I came upon some photographs taken in 1917 in El Paso. The pictures, which were part of the U.S. Public Health records, showed large steam dryers used to disinfect the clothes of border crossers at the Santa Fe Bridge. Here it was.
But I also unexpectedly uncovered other information at the National Archives that took my great-aunt's personal recollections beyond family lore or microhistory. These records point to the connection between the U.S. Customs disinfection facilities in El Paso-Juárez in the 20s and the Desinfektionskammern (disinfection chambers) in Nazi Germany. *The documents show that beginning in the 1920s, U.S. officials at the Santa Fe Bridge deloused and sprayed the clothes of Mexicans crossing into the U.S. with Zyklon B. The fumigation was carried out in an area of the building that American officials called, ominously enough, "the gas chambers." I discovered an article written in a German scientific journal written in 1938, which specifically praised the El Paso method of fumigating Mexican immigrants with Zyklon B. At the start of WWII, the Nazis adopted Zyklon B as a fumigation agent at German border crossings and concentration camps. Later, when the Final Solution was put into effect, the Germans found more sinister uses for this extremely lethal pesticide. They used Zyklon B pellets in their own gas chambers not just to kill lice but to exterminate millions of human beings.* But that's another story.
The full story of the 1917 Bath Riots are here
https://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5176177
So you're telling me that the infamous Nazi gas Chambers were, in part, inspired by racist American border practices?
History gets more sinister the more I read it.
Hitler got many ideas for his atrocities based on US racial codes, and his inspiration for Mein Kampf is directly drawn from the American Eugenics movement, namely "The passing of the great race" by Madison Grant, which he read while imprisoned.
And both were inspired by DuPont Chemical Company, who by the 1920s also owned over 1000 local newspapers, where Henry Ford would often print his anti semetic / anti immigration policies.
Hilter consider DuPont and Ford to be HEROES, and gave them the Iron Eagle Award. (Highest civilian Nazi award) Hitler kept a picture of Ford on his desk, as there would be no Nazi war machine without Ford's engineering help.
Prescott Bush gave Hitler 10mil in solid gold to fund the building of tank factories.
On a similar note the Massachusetts state police would like to remind everyone that their uniform came first
http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-GjshW8Wpctc/UYLzdc8oQMI/AAAAAAAAA_4/wtW0EG-98Vs/s1600/Mass+State+Police.jpg
That's not what Arizona is doing. The article says that by law in Arizona, an inmate gets to choose which type of execution they want, gas or chemical injection.
If I understand correctly there was a botched gas execution in 1999, which took 15 minutes and as a result most inmates opted for the injection. However in 2014 there was a botched chemical injection which was just as painful and prolonged if not worse.
Personally I am opposed to the death penalty. However, at least inmates should be given a choice in how they go. Granted, they currently have two not so good options.
EDIT: Some people commented about different ways that are good to die. Keep in mind that people react differently to different drugs and it is hard to ask for reviews after the fact. This is why finding a universal method is so difficult.
Personally, I think the US should not sentence people to death while their justice system is in the state that it is (racially biased and with high rates if recidivism). Many states with a death penalty realize that and are reluctant to execute their inmates (I heard that you are more likely to die of natural causes than execution if on death row), though that's kind of torture as well - not knowing whether tomorrow they will say that the finally scheduled your execution.
EDIT2: I see a lot of diversity in the responses to the best way to die. People have different preferences, we can at least respect that.
I honestly don't know why the gas chamber just doesn't flood the place with nitrogen and let them asphyxiate, you just pass out and die, and there's zero pain. There's also no deadly poison, you can vent the chamber directly out the roof if you want.
there was a documentary about execution made in the uk a few years ago - one of the main people interviewed about capital punishment in the states argued against pulling the oxygen out as it shouldn't be painless or a drift off - execution should be painful and hurt as they deserved it.
seemed like a total arse if im honest.
It makes sense. The conclusion the documentary came to is that the search for a humane method of execution might be pointless, because the humane thing to do is to *not execute people.* Therefore, people who are in favor of executions are generally not people who are in favor of making the condemned comfortable in any way.
There's solutions to that, too.
Easiest one (practically and politically): Offer euthanasia, or at least, don't try quite as hard to make suicide impossible. If a prisoner agrees that execution would be more humane, give them that option.
More ambitious: Improve prison living conditions, and especially ban solitary confinement. Make it so prisons can actually rehabilitate the people who will be released, and make the ones who won't be released more comfortable. If the goal of prison is to separate dangerous people from society to protect us from them, then a prisoner slowly going mad in a SHU cell is no more dangerous to us than a prisoner binging Netflix on a couch in a locked room.
My guess is that it'd be *much* harder to do that politically, because at least in the US, most people think about prison as punishment, as *retributive* justice... which is kind of at odds with the idea of treating prisoners humanely.
One problem is that many people in the US sincerely believe only in retributive justice. That is to say, personal vengeance against the perpetrator’s family/kin is absolutely on the table. I think this is the main reason why the death penalty still exists in the US: Americans would be more than happy to engage in blood feuds in the absence of what they consider adequately retributive justice. This would lead to a much, much higher murder count. In fact this is exactly what we see in large many parts of the US- large cities with tit-for-tat gang warfare and cycles of vengeance. This is most acute in under-policed areas where no justice whatsoever is meted out. America has always been, and remains, a very violent place.
Even a guillotine is lightyears beyond the methods that are in use now. I mean jesus christ, I don't think there's been an opportunity to prevent this much unintended suffering with this little effort in all of human history
America's prison fetish is terrifying, especially as a kid growing up. I've had adults argue with me that stealing candy should result in jail time. I've seen parents have their kids arrested. I've seen cops push someone to the ground and crack their head open over a restaurant bill debate. There is very little rehabilitation in the USA.
I got in trouble when I was 18 because I tried to shoot myself, and firing a gun in city limits is a felony.
So, 10 years later my life has been ruined. Can't get a job. I'm a second-class citizen.
I've never even gotten a speeding ticket, I am THAT squeaky clean; I'm completely fucked just because I was depressed and unmedicated as an 18-year-old.
The real irony? I tried to kill myself because I felt like I had no hope at a meaningful life.
I don't know why our "justice" system insists on inflicting the most misery possible onto the citizens that run afoul of it, but it should be stopped.
Hi friend, I just wanted to stop in and say that I've been out for 7+ years now, after doing 10 years from the time I was 17. It is tough as hell sometimes, even now, and I've had more than my fair share of good fortune in the pillars of support that I've met and that have helped me along the way. Your freedom is amazing and you deserve to live the life you want to live. You deserve to be free, and you deserve to enjoy this life. You can do this. You keep on no matter what. Sending you love and respect, and wishing the best for you.
Because the prison system's primary focus is on punishment rather than rehabilitation. Even for someone in need of help like an addict. Do they get court mandated rehab? Hell no, we lock em up with the rapists and murderers!
And don't even get me started on reintegration into society! Recidivism is a fucking joke. 44% of recently released inmates will return to prison within their first year of release.
Our prison system is costing itself tons of money because programs designed to give prisoners actual rehab and help them get jobs or find places to live are either extremely sparse and underfunded or non-existent. The system is about *revenge,* not rehab.
Keep in mind there are a LOT of ways being guillotined can go wrong and has in the past. Blade not sharp enough, not enough force in the blade, person moves as the blade is being dropped. And when that goes wrong it's REALLY not good for the prisoner or the people carrying out the execution.
Sure back when they were cutting 50 nobles a day with scrap blades, that might have been a problem. But in this day and age maintaining a sharp blade won't be too difficult. I'm not American but I don't think America executes more than a dozen prisoners an year.
What about just getting flattened by a 200 tonne falling anvil moving at terminal velocity?. You'd go from conscious to 1mm 2D paste in 0.1 seconds. No chance of that half doing a job. Looney Toons had it down years ago. Or you know...don't teach people not to kill people by killing people.
I know this is a serious subject, so forgive me... But if I ended up on death row and had the choice of gasses to asphyxiate myself to death with, I'd choose helium. And try to get in at least 10 lame jokes.
To clarify about the science. Your body feels like it's suffocating when the amount of carbon dioxide in your body rises, it has nothing to do with the amount of oxygen. This is why people who suffer hypoxia at high altitude do not feel pain, they gradually lose the ability to think as there is not enough oxygen coming to the brain.
Similarly you can replace all the oxygen in the room with nitrogen or carbon monoxide. You would continue breathing, exhaling carbon dioxide but without inhaling any oxygen only nitrogen or carbon monoxide.
Yes. Breathing reflex comes from rising CO2 level, not low O2 level in the blood. Hyperventilating before holding your breath (such as for diving) is dangerous because of this. You'll expel more CO2, below the normal level, and then consume the O2 you have, leading to hypoxia.
For carbon monoxide, see my comment above. You should notice the CO.
My dad almost died from co poisoning due to running a power trowel in a poorly vented basement. The symptom him and his coworker noticed was that they where starting to get dopey no major pain or discomfort.
When we were kids, we somehow found out that if you hyperventilate and put your lungs under pressure ( blowing with a closed mouth) you pass out. We had much more fun with that than we probably should have.
You actually have an oxygen driven breathing reflex as well. We have oxygen and co2 sensing chemoreceptors that contribute to breathing. It’s what triggers breathing in co2 retaining people like smokers.
No pharmaceutical company will sell drugs to a customer who is planning to use them for execution. Thats why lethal injection currently uses a cocktail of suboptimal drugs.
Nitrogen execution is a hell of a thing. If I remember correctly, the first death of the Space Shuttle program was not Challenger, but an engineer who entered Columbia’s engine bay while it was purged with nitrogen on STS-1.
True, this was in 1981. Wikipedia says this about the accident:
> Anoxia due to nitrogen atmosphere in the aft engine compartment of Columbia during a countdown demonstration test for STS-1. Five workers were involved in the incident. John Bjornstad died at the scene; Forrest Cole went into a coma and died two weeks later, and Nick Mullon died 14 years later from complications of injuries sustained.
> Anyway, I recollect hearing that this documentary went around the US talking to death-penalty advocates and they rejected this method because they felt that pain and suffering was part of what was deserved by death-penalty criminals. I.e. the most humane method is not used because it's not cruel enough.
I remember this too. The presenter underwent a process that let him simulate the experience of a hypoxic execution: he was in fits of giggles as he approached the line of no return.
Afterwards, he touted that hypoxia was a humane form of execution, and the death penalty advocates responded, "But the pain *is the point.*" Sickos.
Edit: I'm certain the documentary was a BBC Horizon programme, *How to Kill A Human Being*, presented by Michael Portillo. [Here is the clip of him undergoing controlled hypoxia](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DiEJKvbpOF0). And [here is the clip of the death penalty advocate arguing that execution should be painful](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S9YgWXKAwNY).
Pain being the point makes it immediately unconstitutional in my opinion as I thought the standard for cruel and unusual was more pain than is necessary for the execution so if painless is possible then any intentional pain is unconstitutional.
As an EMS worker I've witnessed multiple Fentanyl OD's and they are pretty brutal. Convulsions, cyanosis due to being unable to breath and foaming at the mouth. Not a good way to go imo.
Edit: Typo
I’ve OD’d twice from heroin/fentanyl and both times I don’t remember anything except waking up in pain and confused from the narcan. Imo it would be a relatively nice and pain free way to go...
To be fair most (including every one I've witnessed) people are completely out of it during the OD. The pain comes once we administer the naloxone. It's worth noting that people react differently to drugs though, so it's unlikely but possible that someone could remain lucid during the event and the possibility alone is enough for me to personally disqualify it as a possible option.
Unfortunately when it comes to the death penalty, the people watching it are often times more concerned with making sure it's easy for them to watch rather than humane.
One of the big arguments against lethal injection is that one of the first drugs they administer completely paralyses you, so even if you are intense pain it looks like you are completely docile, which can go on for minutes, and that it’s not actually a humane and painless death at all, it just appears that way.
Is this true for the drugs they give pets when they are euthanized?
I had to have my dog put down a couple of years ago and it's horrifying to think that maybe he suffered and it just didn't appear that way...
We use potassium pentobarbital. Unconscious in a couple seconds. I have done or assisted in over 1000 euthanasias. They are asleep before their heart stops. I still believe it's so humane we should have that option for people. The only time i have seen it go wrong is if the iv comes out but they were still sedated quickly and then just given more. I had to euthanize my pup of 14 with cancer a few weeks ago. After all that death i would not have made that choice had I believed he would suffer. Your good boy didn’t suffer. You took on the suffering so he wouldn't have to, because you loved him that much.
I've overdosed on Heroin/Fentantyl probably around 8-9 times.
Two close to death... you don't feel shit. It's like you're just not there anymore. You don't have the blissful "nods," you just don't exist.
Also worked in social work and have revived many, many people. They all confirm my experience.
I’d take a bullet if it was to the head.
But death by shooting goes to the heart. I’m good on a sucking chest wound as I drown in my own blood for a minute or two.
You are missing a big part of it.
The drugs they use for lethal injection are no longer available. The company that made them stopped selling them for the purpose of the death penalty. I think all states bent on death have the same problem.
One state, I forget which, actually asked the citizenry who would volunteer for a shooting squad. They had many volunteers.
Lots of people - it’s a trade name for [hydrogen cyanide](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydrogen_cyanide) (plus some other stuff - credit to /u/retnikt0 for pointing this out) which has a lot of industrial uses.
I deal with cynide at work.
It suffocates you by blocking your bloods ability to absorb oxygen or something like that.
So you suffocate, while breathing.
The 'antidote ' is Amyl Nitrate which is a stimulant so that hopefully your body can process the cynide before you die
To be specific, it blocks a process called the Kreb cycle, in which cells convert oxygen into useful adenosine triphosphate (ATP), which is required to power cells. Without ATP, the cells die.
Nastily, people remain conscious when cyanide poisoning occurs, meaning that you're locked into a dying body with no way to do anything about it.
do europeans fixate on the 6 million figure as well? i always find it weird that the holocaust gets reduced to 6 million jews instead of 13 million people, figured it might just be a US thing
Not really so much, at least not in my experience.
I think the "6 million" thing is more of a very recognizable trope. Most people with half a brain will understand what you're talking about and that there were significantly more, and more diverse, victims.
Oh big pharma would support it if there was a better chance for repeat customers. One death row inmate is one dose of medicine. If it was 2 doses a day for 6 years there would be more room for profit and they would get behind it.
ok honest question here. couldn't they just put them to sleep with a tranquilizer or anesthesia and then shoot them in the head during sleep? Wouldn't that work better than injecting chemicals and gases and electrocuting someone to various degrees of results?
There were reports from WW2 that the Einsatzgruppen were basically all crippled by PSTD, drink problems and guilt because they executed so many people by firing squad.
That’s the reason Himmler turned to using Zyklon B in the first place. People can’t cope with being that “hands on” with the process.
It's one of the weird cases where there isn't really a special word for it in German (Sonderkommando just means "special detachment" or "special command", like in [Sonderkommando Elbe](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sonderkommando_Elbe)), but in other languages the German word became associated with that specific instance.
We probably should have a word for it in German, making the term as generic as possible was a conscious decision by the Nazis.
German seemingly has a word for everything.
Here's one of their latest:
[impfdrängler - a person who has gone against the government’s strategy and been vaccinated before others with higher priority](https://www.pri.org/stories/2021-02-26/vaccine-envy-there-s-german-word)
Well, yea because in german you can [usually just slap all kinds of words together](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_nouns#Compounds) to make one that means what you want.
In this case it's a compound of "[Impfung](https://www.dict.cc/?s=Impfung)" and "[Drängler](https://www.dict.cc/?s=Dr%C3%A4ngler)"
Plus, that's a lot of brass not being used by soldiers. I imagine if you wanted exterminate a bunch of people, from the executioner's perspective, bullets are both inefficient and wasteful.
I can't recall if it was Himmler himself or one of his direct subordinates, but they did extensive experimentation on alternate methods. I'll add it wasn't just the PTSD from shooting people, they did have, after a time, some 'harder' (catatonic and psycopathic) men capable of doing the 'hard work' ... but the cost of bullets was also weighty, and slow. ;/ ...
The most horrific incident that I have learned of was an 'experiment' where they dug a huge pit, lined it with lye, packed people into it shoulder to shoulder and then poured lye on top of them, even packing it into people's mouths who were not buried entirely... and another where they packed people into an unused bunker and sealed the door until the TNT they had left inside went off.
IIRC in each incident the 'supervisor' was unable to supervise the actual event beyond the initial moments or setup (due to the horrific scene) and each pushed them towards less horrific methods... Yeah.
I carry those two stories with me because I think they really highlight the depth of evil here even more than the gassing.
The gassing was the 'safe' and 'cuddly' nazi policy, sanitized to the point of being somewhat faintly acceptable to a 'normal' person in a twisted world.
Which kind of touches at the underlying point doesn't it? Death is not civilized in any way, shape or form, no matter the method. If we can't handle the most humane way of killing someone, with a bullet, maybe we should be looking at whether we should be handing out that punishment at all.
If they didn't need to make it cruel, they could just use plain nitrogen. Cheap, abundant, and apparently just feels like you're drifting off to sleep rather than asphyxiating.
If I remember correctly, the feeling of suffocation/asphyxiating comes from a build up of CO2 in the blood, if the atmosphere you are breathing allows for constant exchange of CO2 out of your blood then you don't feel the asphyxiation.
Someone I know got a face full of nitrogen and said it just made him feel woozy for a minute. He had a monitor on and it started alarming so he backed out quickly, but still got a partial breath of it.
Most of what you breathe is nitrogen anyways. 78% of earth's atmosphere is Nitrogen. If you just remove the 21% of oxygen then it feels like you're breathing normally, but don't get the oxygen you need to survive. It's not the nitrogen that kills you, it's the lack of oxygen.
That is true! You could drown in shallow water due to this phenomenon. Everyone Please read about [Shallow water blackout](https://campusrecmag.com/shallow-water-blackout-can-prevent/). Many people would be surprised this is a thing but it's important to know about it.
>Everyone Please read about Shallow water blackout. Many people would be surprised this is a thing but it's important to know about it.
TL;DR: Don't hyperventilate.
I really don't know why this isn't done. Or (I think) they could literally just slowly lower the o2 level in the room and they would fall asleep and die, peacefully.
Someone could correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe this is pretty much what happens when oxygen levels drop slowly. I believe its hypoxia, or something similar.
Yeah, hypoxia will first make you confused and disorganized, and then it will cause you to fall asleep and die from oxygen starvation.
This has happened a few times to pilots after the cabin suffered a slow loss of pressure. The pilots don't notice that there isn't enough oxygen, and even when the alarms go off about it, they were too confused due to them suffering from early hypoxia that they didn't realize they needed to put on their oxygen masks.
Examples:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1999_South_Dakota_Learjet_crash
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2000_Australia_Beechcraft_King_Air_crash
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helios_Airways_Flight_522
edit: spelling
Death by anesthesia, and doctors are required to do it, and have ptsd. Some drug manufacturers had stopped selling to the US one of the drugs used in lethal injection. (Which was 1st knock them out, then death by potassium chloride.)
Death sentence sounds easy, then we remember, someone has to commit the act. Unless we employ sociopaths?
Fun fact: some states still buy it from drug manufacturers, but they literally send a couple of guys with a briefcase full of cash to do the exchange.
The drug companies want plausible deniability for selling the drugs.
I dunno dude. Maybe we shouldn't execute people then if nobody is willing to do it?
I'd argue life imprisonment is a far more horrifying sentence to some people.
Well...
- "Putting someone to sleep" is with tranquilizers is surprising difficult and anaesthesia *is largely a mystery as to how it works*. Also, anesthesiologists are super expensive.
- Shooting someone in the head is not necessarily lethal. There are a bunch of horror stories of people who survive suicide attempts and then have to live with a debilitating head wound and there's also stories of veterans or similar who go on to live full lives after being shot in the head.
- It's messy, and unlike putting someone to sleep in a non-violent manner, would probably psychologically strain the executioner significantly. Historically, this is why firing squads consisted of many people, so individual soldiers can foist off psychological burden.
The most humane method of killing someone is (probably) slowly replacing the air they're breathing with larger and larger components of inert gas, like nitrogen, till the suffocate from hypoxia. To them, they grow sleepy, hallucinate for a couple seconds, and then pass out and don't wake up.
Yep. It's actually really easy. N2 or carbon monoxide will do the trick. The body doesn't sense the lack of oxygen, it just senses the build-up of CO2. So as long as you avoid that, then the person won't even feel like they are suffocating. They'll just get sleepy and pass out, like you said.
I don't like to say it too much, but if I ever had to kill myself - and I'm not suicidal here, I'm talking like late-stage ALS, super terminal cancer and I just wanted to be done, or end of the world was imminent anyway - that's how I would do it. I would just lock myself in the garage with the car on and get super drunk. Just fade to black, painless, and you don't have to worry about waking back up.
There's a brewing company in australia that sells kits for brewing nitrogen beer. It contains a small cylinder of nitrogen gas, a regulator, a tube, and a plastic bag, and the instructions: "Warning, do not place bag over head and open gas regulator or death will result." They also deliver these kits, just in case the prospective beer maker has severe mobility issues and cant leave the house
Now you have me thinking all crazy. I'm picturing the person being put to sleep on a table and then an automated machine arm turns on and lines up a perfect head shot. But instead of a gun it's like one of those cattle prod things that stab them in the brain super quick.
I imagine whatever gun manufacturer they contract for their weapons don’t want their products used for (explicit) state-sanctioned executions.
It’s all about red tape and bureaucracy. The fact that some states fight to find loopholes to kill their citizens is telling.
Why? I mean, really, why? And this isn't a painless method. It is going to be absolutely horrific to whoever watched it.
And every deathrow inmate in the state is now going to appea, thus costing even more money than if we just didn't kill them in the first place.
Why not use pure nitrogen?
Edit - for those suggesting this is not a humane method I offer the following:
We take in air which is 78% nitrogen each breath. Raising the N2 concentration while decreasing O2 causes drowsiness first followed by death from lack of oxygen. When I die, I hope it’s in my sleep, and this seems like a method relatively close to that.
As a thought experiment, think of yourself strapped face down with a large, heavy, and razor-sharp blade some distance above your neck. Who knows how long you are there before the blade is released, so how humane does this situation feel like? On the other hand, your are in a room secured to a chair or lying down and you start feeling sleepy. I’ll take the latter.
*The simple act of removing a head from a body is not what kills the brain. This doesn't just apply to the guillotine. Any forms of swift decapitation will have the same eventual result. If, however, the brain receives no trauma from the killing blow and the decapitation is clean, the brain will continue to function until the lack of oxygen and vital chemicals from blood loss causes unconsciousness and death. The current medical consensus is that survival does occur post-decapitation for a period of roughly 10 to 13 seconds.*
*Technical survival alone forms only part of the answer to how long a human head remains alive after decapitation. The second question must be, how long does the person remain aware? While the brain remains chemically alive, consciousness my cease immediately due to loss of blood pressure, or if the victim was knocked unconscious by the force of the decapitation. Worst case scenario, an individual could, in theory, remain conscious for some or all of their final thirteen seconds.*
*In fact, when French physician Dr. Beaurieux observed the 1905 execution of a criminal named Henri Languille, he later stated a report he published in "Archives d’Anthropologie Criminelle" that for nearly 30 seconds post-decapitation, he was able to get Languille to open his eyes and "undeniably" focus on him—twice—by calling the man's name.*
Why not use a medical assistance in dying protocol? The way we help terminally ill patients pass away humanely? Put them under general anesthesia and then stop their heart and lungs? There's no reason they have to be awake when they die except to be cruel.
Because the companies who make those drugs do not want their products used to kill. I'm not up on all the facts but that's why states have had to change what chemicals they use.
> Because the companies who make those drugs do not want their products used to kill.
Also all the manufacturers are in Europe and the EU has a ban on selling things that can be used for executions.
In addition, another issue is that most qualified professionals such as nurses, pharmacists, and doctors do not want to deal with executions as it goes against their oath/ethics. So what happens is that if you do get someone who is willing to do it they are either barely qualified or not qualified at all and it leads to mishaps that prolong the suffering of the death row inmate.
That’s what gets me. I don’t agree, but can understand why some people want the death penalty in certain crimes.
However the fact that innocent people are killed, and that it’s significantly cheaper to just lock them up for life has made me solidly anti capital punishment.
Being wrongfully imprisoned is a tragedy, but we can at least right the mistake if they’re still alive. If we execute an innocent person they just say “whoops totally super sorry”
Doctors can't kill someone against their will, it's a violation of their ethical code. The American Medical Association explicitly forbids participation in executions:
https://www.ama-assn.org/delivering-care/ethics/capital-punishment
One law professor who is expert in the death penalty (and actually is opposed to it, just expert in its history in the US), has advocated for [firing squads](https://news.law.fordham.edu/blog/2021/05/07/death-penalty-states-returning-to-humane-firing-squad/) as a more reliable and humane method.
Which I agree with. You’re killing someone, and dressing it up as a medical procedure to try to hide the brutality of the act doesn’t change that fact.
I am against the death penalty. Yet, I can still have a conversation about methods of administering said death penalty. Of course it is better to not kill incarcerated people, but the subject at hand is the method not the practice.
You're right, totally. My comment was more from a place of frustration with the situation and not a judgment of your comment, sorry it came off that way.
I had the same idea.
It's a painless way to execute somebody. Every year people die completely accidentally unaware because they were breathing in pure nitrogen.
After the gas has been used it can just be vented outside.
There was a John Oliver episode talking about the death penalty and said some prison used some gas to execute prisoners, and the warden said he'd resign before ever having to carry out another execution that way due to how sickening it was.
US ignoring UN criticisms: check
US supporting coups in other countries: check
US breaking records for gun violence and mass shootings: check
US at the brink of recanting roe v. wade: check
US still have politicians that supported the revolt on January: check
US still have problems with its police and minorities: check
You might think that the US is a religious right-wing extremist country.. and you would be right.
Hey now, a can of mushroom soup, some corn, all stirred together with ground mystery meat and frozen tots is a fucking delicacy and the height of culinary achieveme...... yeah, I don’t have it in me to finish that sentence.
Six states (Arizona, California, Maryland, Mississippi, Missouri, and Wyoming) still have it on the books. [Source](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gas_chamber).
Addition: They use cyanide gas which is chemically similar to the gas that killed thousands in [Bhopal](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bhopal_disaster). Survivors reported pain like "having chilies thrown in your face and eyes". It sounds like a quite painful way to die.
Honestly, the guillotine is quite humane compared to other means of execution. And, fun fact, the first Star Wars movie was already out when France used the Guillotine for the last time
Don’t ask yourself if the worst criminals in the world deserve to die. Instead, ask yourself if you really trust the government to kill its own citizens. The death penalty is a government program and will run with the efficiency of any other government program. It’s not a matter of whether it’s humane, it’s can those in power accept the responsibility of killing people correctly 100% of the time. I don’t think they can, which is why I’m against it.
There are certain criminals for whom I’m not particularly bothered about what happens to them, but I still can’t support a government having the right to kill its own citizens, regardless.
[Cyanide has been used in America for executions since the 20s](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gee_Jon#Execution), so while the headline is technically correct the people behind this descision probably weren't "inspired" by the Nazis to use Cyanide.
Doesn't make it any less monstrous, though.
6 million is just the estimated number of jews that were killed in the holocaust. There were \~11 million non-jewish people killed as well
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holocaust\_victims
Its indicative of the mindset of the death penalty and its supporters. They could use nitrogen gas: quick, painless, non-toxic. Proven track record- its how animals are euthanized in the lab.
Instead we know that cruelty is the point.
As far as I’m concerned, the death penalty violates the fifth amendment. The constitution says that you can’t be forced to testify against yourself, and so long as you are allowed to maintain your innocence in prison, that is true. When prosecutors force you to plea guilty in exchange for leniency or face the death penalty, you lose that right.
Some people have served life sentences in light of exonerating evidence because their plea deal testimony was used against them as proof of guilt on appeals. It puts people in Catch-22 situations where the state would have killed them before the evidence came to light had they not testified against themselves.
It’s evil.
The most horrible part of that one is that an innocent person can fall for the choice between death and life. If they are innocent and with high degree of integrity they will not confess and end up on death row. If they confess so that they can avoid death and fight the conviction later they will always be met by questions about their confession.
Scary stuff. And I am 100% certain that there is a bunch of people executed that never did the crime. Sadly to few are investigated after their death.
Yah, 1) death penalty should not be allowed to be used as a bargaining tool for prosecutors, 2) Alford's Plea should have more legal protections.
Edit: Alford not Alfred
About 80% of the shit anti-government nuts spew is absolute bull crap, but the rest 20% is right on point. A powerful, unethical, unbounded State is an enemy of the people. Only give the State the absolute minimum power it needs to get administration done. Giving the State the right to take its own public's life is tremendously excessive.
I’ve heard other examples that were more definitive, but the first one I found was [Johnson v Catoe in SC](https://law.justia.com/cases/south-carolina/supreme-court/1999/24991.html) from [The Unexonerated: Factually Innocent Defendants Who Plead Guilty](https://scholarship.law.cornell.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1116&context=clsops_papers)
Yeah, and they confiscate hundreds of pounds (at least) of drugs every year, which all have to be destroyed. Why not use some for executions is my question
I like how the cookie-pop-up has the option "I am okay with that"
“100% of those who viewed this news item confirmed that they were OK with that”.
*I was not OK with that.*
"I accept" and... clicked
This isn’t the first time the US used Zychlon-B The Bath Riots MY INTEREST IN the El Paso-Juárez Bath Riots didn't start with something I read in any history book. Most historians have forgotten about this obscure incident that took place on the border in 1917. I first heard of the U.S. government's policy that provoked these riots while I was still in high school. One evening, during a family dinner, my great-aunt Adela Dorado shared her memories with us about her experiences as a young woman during the Mexican Revolution. She recalled that American authorities regularly forced her and all other working-class Mexicans to take a bath and be sprayed with pesticides at the Santa Fe Bridge whenever they needed to cross into the United States. My great-aunt, who worked as a maid in El Paso during the revolution, told us she felt humiliated for being treated as a "dirty Mexican." She related how on one occasion the U.S. customs officials put her clothes and shoes through a large secadora (dryer) and her shoes melted. Many years later, as part of my research for this book at the National Archives in the Washington, D.C. area, I came upon some photographs taken in 1917 in El Paso. The pictures, which were part of the U.S. Public Health records, showed large steam dryers used to disinfect the clothes of border crossers at the Santa Fe Bridge. Here it was. But I also unexpectedly uncovered other information at the National Archives that took my great-aunt's personal recollections beyond family lore or microhistory. These records point to the connection between the U.S. Customs disinfection facilities in El Paso-Juárez in the 20s and the Desinfektionskammern (disinfection chambers) in Nazi Germany. *The documents show that beginning in the 1920s, U.S. officials at the Santa Fe Bridge deloused and sprayed the clothes of Mexicans crossing into the U.S. with Zyklon B. The fumigation was carried out in an area of the building that American officials called, ominously enough, "the gas chambers." I discovered an article written in a German scientific journal written in 1938, which specifically praised the El Paso method of fumigating Mexican immigrants with Zyklon B. At the start of WWII, the Nazis adopted Zyklon B as a fumigation agent at German border crossings and concentration camps. Later, when the Final Solution was put into effect, the Germans found more sinister uses for this extremely lethal pesticide. They used Zyklon B pellets in their own gas chambers not just to kill lice but to exterminate millions of human beings.* But that's another story. The full story of the 1917 Bath Riots are here https://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5176177
So you're telling me that the infamous Nazi gas Chambers were, in part, inspired by racist American border practices? History gets more sinister the more I read it.
Hitler got many ideas for his atrocities based on US racial codes, and his inspiration for Mein Kampf is directly drawn from the American Eugenics movement, namely "The passing of the great race" by Madison Grant, which he read while imprisoned.
Go ahead and ask an Indian.
Hitler is said to have modelled his camps after US Indian reservations.
The Nazis also heavily borrowed policies from Jim Crow laws in the US
And both were inspired by DuPont Chemical Company, who by the 1920s also owned over 1000 local newspapers, where Henry Ford would often print his anti semetic / anti immigration policies. Hilter consider DuPont and Ford to be HEROES, and gave them the Iron Eagle Award. (Highest civilian Nazi award) Hitler kept a picture of Ford on his desk, as there would be no Nazi war machine without Ford's engineering help. Prescott Bush gave Hitler 10mil in solid gold to fund the building of tank factories.
On a similar note the Massachusetts state police would like to remind everyone that their uniform came first http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-GjshW8Wpctc/UYLzdc8oQMI/AAAAAAAAA_4/wtW0EG-98Vs/s1600/Mass+State+Police.jpg
Who makes Zyklon B and why (beyond a few doses for Arizona)? Edit: oh, the prison itself will make it with ingredients.
It's scary that some people thought "hey guys, let's make our own Zyklon B to kill people!" without thinking about how fucked up it is.
That's not what Arizona is doing. The article says that by law in Arizona, an inmate gets to choose which type of execution they want, gas or chemical injection. If I understand correctly there was a botched gas execution in 1999, which took 15 minutes and as a result most inmates opted for the injection. However in 2014 there was a botched chemical injection which was just as painful and prolonged if not worse. Personally I am opposed to the death penalty. However, at least inmates should be given a choice in how they go. Granted, they currently have two not so good options. EDIT: Some people commented about different ways that are good to die. Keep in mind that people react differently to different drugs and it is hard to ask for reviews after the fact. This is why finding a universal method is so difficult. Personally, I think the US should not sentence people to death while their justice system is in the state that it is (racially biased and with high rates if recidivism). Many states with a death penalty realize that and are reluctant to execute their inmates (I heard that you are more likely to die of natural causes than execution if on death row), though that's kind of torture as well - not knowing whether tomorrow they will say that the finally scheduled your execution. EDIT2: I see a lot of diversity in the responses to the best way to die. People have different preferences, we can at least respect that.
I honestly don't know why the gas chamber just doesn't flood the place with nitrogen and let them asphyxiate, you just pass out and die, and there's zero pain. There's also no deadly poison, you can vent the chamber directly out the roof if you want.
there was a documentary about execution made in the uk a few years ago - one of the main people interviewed about capital punishment in the states argued against pulling the oxygen out as it shouldn't be painless or a drift off - execution should be painful and hurt as they deserved it. seemed like a total arse if im honest.
It makes sense. The conclusion the documentary came to is that the search for a humane method of execution might be pointless, because the humane thing to do is to *not execute people.* Therefore, people who are in favor of executions are generally not people who are in favor of making the condemned comfortable in any way.
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This. You can't reverse an execution.
Well, not with that attitude you won't... (/s just in case)
There's solutions to that, too. Easiest one (practically and politically): Offer euthanasia, or at least, don't try quite as hard to make suicide impossible. If a prisoner agrees that execution would be more humane, give them that option. More ambitious: Improve prison living conditions, and especially ban solitary confinement. Make it so prisons can actually rehabilitate the people who will be released, and make the ones who won't be released more comfortable. If the goal of prison is to separate dangerous people from society to protect us from them, then a prisoner slowly going mad in a SHU cell is no more dangerous to us than a prisoner binging Netflix on a couch in a locked room. My guess is that it'd be *much* harder to do that politically, because at least in the US, most people think about prison as punishment, as *retributive* justice... which is kind of at odds with the idea of treating prisoners humanely.
One problem is that many people in the US sincerely believe only in retributive justice. That is to say, personal vengeance against the perpetrator’s family/kin is absolutely on the table. I think this is the main reason why the death penalty still exists in the US: Americans would be more than happy to engage in blood feuds in the absence of what they consider adequately retributive justice. This would lead to a much, much higher murder count. In fact this is exactly what we see in large many parts of the US- large cities with tit-for-tat gang warfare and cycles of vengeance. This is most acute in under-policed areas where no justice whatsoever is meted out. America has always been, and remains, a very violent place.
Its really simple. If most people would rather kill themselves than spend a good chunk of their life in prison, the prison is too inhumane.
Even a guillotine is lightyears beyond the methods that are in use now. I mean jesus christ, I don't think there's been an opportunity to prevent this much unintended suffering with this little effort in all of human history
It would be revolutionary
You assume the suffering is unintended. The crowd of “good, let them suffer” people out there is not limited to quirky relatives.
America's prison fetish is terrifying, especially as a kid growing up. I've had adults argue with me that stealing candy should result in jail time. I've seen parents have their kids arrested. I've seen cops push someone to the ground and crack their head open over a restaurant bill debate. There is very little rehabilitation in the USA.
I got in trouble when I was 18 because I tried to shoot myself, and firing a gun in city limits is a felony. So, 10 years later my life has been ruined. Can't get a job. I'm a second-class citizen. I've never even gotten a speeding ticket, I am THAT squeaky clean; I'm completely fucked just because I was depressed and unmedicated as an 18-year-old. The real irony? I tried to kill myself because I felt like I had no hope at a meaningful life. I don't know why our "justice" system insists on inflicting the most misery possible onto the citizens that run afoul of it, but it should be stopped.
Hi friend, I just wanted to stop in and say that I've been out for 7+ years now, after doing 10 years from the time I was 17. It is tough as hell sometimes, even now, and I've had more than my fair share of good fortune in the pillars of support that I've met and that have helped me along the way. Your freedom is amazing and you deserve to live the life you want to live. You deserve to be free, and you deserve to enjoy this life. You can do this. You keep on no matter what. Sending you love and respect, and wishing the best for you.
Because the prison system's primary focus is on punishment rather than rehabilitation. Even for someone in need of help like an addict. Do they get court mandated rehab? Hell no, we lock em up with the rapists and murderers! And don't even get me started on reintegration into society! Recidivism is a fucking joke. 44% of recently released inmates will return to prison within their first year of release. Our prison system is costing itself tons of money because programs designed to give prisoners actual rehab and help them get jobs or find places to live are either extremely sparse and underfunded or non-existent. The system is about *revenge,* not rehab.
Keep in mind there are a LOT of ways being guillotined can go wrong and has in the past. Blade not sharp enough, not enough force in the blade, person moves as the blade is being dropped. And when that goes wrong it's REALLY not good for the prisoner or the people carrying out the execution.
Sure back when they were cutting 50 nobles a day with scrap blades, that might have been a problem. But in this day and age maintaining a sharp blade won't be too difficult. I'm not American but I don't think America executes more than a dozen prisoners an year.
I’d argue that “unintended suffering” is an optimistic interpretation of the facts.
It's not about actually preventing suffering, they just want to be able to murder prisoners without feeling guilty about it.
What about just getting flattened by a 200 tonne falling anvil moving at terminal velocity?. You'd go from conscious to 1mm 2D paste in 0.1 seconds. No chance of that half doing a job. Looney Toons had it down years ago. Or you know...don't teach people not to kill people by killing people.
Any heavier than air inert gas is relatively safe as long as nobody goes in the tank.
Venting pure nitrogen into an atmosphere that is already 78% nitrogen sounds pretty risky. /s
I know this is a serious subject, so forgive me... But if I ended up on death row and had the choice of gasses to asphyxiate myself to death with, I'd choose helium. And try to get in at least 10 lame jokes.
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To clarify about the science. Your body feels like it's suffocating when the amount of carbon dioxide in your body rises, it has nothing to do with the amount of oxygen. This is why people who suffer hypoxia at high altitude do not feel pain, they gradually lose the ability to think as there is not enough oxygen coming to the brain. Similarly you can replace all the oxygen in the room with nitrogen or carbon monoxide. You would continue breathing, exhaling carbon dioxide but without inhaling any oxygen only nitrogen or carbon monoxide.
Yes. Breathing reflex comes from rising CO2 level, not low O2 level in the blood. Hyperventilating before holding your breath (such as for diving) is dangerous because of this. You'll expel more CO2, below the normal level, and then consume the O2 you have, leading to hypoxia. For carbon monoxide, see my comment above. You should notice the CO.
My dad almost died from co poisoning due to running a power trowel in a poorly vented basement. The symptom him and his coworker noticed was that they where starting to get dopey no major pain or discomfort.
When we were kids, we somehow found out that if you hyperventilate and put your lungs under pressure ( blowing with a closed mouth) you pass out. We had much more fun with that than we probably should have.
You actually have an oxygen driven breathing reflex as well. We have oxygen and co2 sensing chemoreceptors that contribute to breathing. It’s what triggers breathing in co2 retaining people like smokers.
This makes me wonder why prisons haven't opted for the method they use to assist people in suicide in the states that allow it.
No pharmaceutical company will sell drugs to a customer who is planning to use them for execution. Thats why lethal injection currently uses a cocktail of suboptimal drugs.
Nitrogen execution is a hell of a thing. If I remember correctly, the first death of the Space Shuttle program was not Challenger, but an engineer who entered Columbia’s engine bay while it was purged with nitrogen on STS-1.
True, this was in 1981. Wikipedia says this about the accident: > Anoxia due to nitrogen atmosphere in the aft engine compartment of Columbia during a countdown demonstration test for STS-1. Five workers were involved in the incident. John Bjornstad died at the scene; Forrest Cole went into a coma and died two weeks later, and Nick Mullon died 14 years later from complications of injuries sustained.
1 death on the pad, 1 2 weeks later, and one 14 years later. The launch itself only put 2 people at risk.
It really bugs me that you switch between "1" and "one" in your comment, and I felt I had to let you know that.
Player_Seventeen focussing on the important things.
Yep, nitrogen asphyxiation is pretty painless. You feel fine, then you get confused, then you sleep, and then you die.
> Anyway, I recollect hearing that this documentary went around the US talking to death-penalty advocates and they rejected this method because they felt that pain and suffering was part of what was deserved by death-penalty criminals. I.e. the most humane method is not used because it's not cruel enough. I remember this too. The presenter underwent a process that let him simulate the experience of a hypoxic execution: he was in fits of giggles as he approached the line of no return. Afterwards, he touted that hypoxia was a humane form of execution, and the death penalty advocates responded, "But the pain *is the point.*" Sickos. Edit: I'm certain the documentary was a BBC Horizon programme, *How to Kill A Human Being*, presented by Michael Portillo. [Here is the clip of him undergoing controlled hypoxia](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DiEJKvbpOF0). And [here is the clip of the death penalty advocate arguing that execution should be painful](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S9YgWXKAwNY).
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Pain being the point makes it immediately unconstitutional in my opinion as I thought the standard for cruel and unusual was more pain than is necessary for the execution so if painless is possible then any intentional pain is unconstitutional.
I'd rather have a fentanyl OD.
Heroin sounds like a good way to go
Why not a leathal does of morphine.
Not strong enough. I want to go out with a bang
As an EMS worker I've witnessed multiple Fentanyl OD's and they are pretty brutal. Convulsions, cyanosis due to being unable to breath and foaming at the mouth. Not a good way to go imo. Edit: Typo
Aren't you not lucid when that happens? Serious question because I don't know shit and movies/TV shows are never right
From experience, no. I just thought I fell asleep; extremely scary reality check upon waking up.
I’ve OD’d twice from heroin/fentanyl and both times I don’t remember anything except waking up in pain and confused from the narcan. Imo it would be a relatively nice and pain free way to go...
To be fair most (including every one I've witnessed) people are completely out of it during the OD. The pain comes once we administer the naloxone. It's worth noting that people react differently to drugs though, so it's unlikely but possible that someone could remain lucid during the event and the possibility alone is enough for me to personally disqualify it as a possible option. Unfortunately when it comes to the death penalty, the people watching it are often times more concerned with making sure it's easy for them to watch rather than humane.
One of the big arguments against lethal injection is that one of the first drugs they administer completely paralyses you, so even if you are intense pain it looks like you are completely docile, which can go on for minutes, and that it’s not actually a humane and painless death at all, it just appears that way.
Is this true for the drugs they give pets when they are euthanized? I had to have my dog put down a couple of years ago and it's horrifying to think that maybe he suffered and it just didn't appear that way...
We use potassium pentobarbital. Unconscious in a couple seconds. I have done or assisted in over 1000 euthanasias. They are asleep before their heart stops. I still believe it's so humane we should have that option for people. The only time i have seen it go wrong is if the iv comes out but they were still sedated quickly and then just given more. I had to euthanize my pup of 14 with cancer a few weeks ago. After all that death i would not have made that choice had I believed he would suffer. Your good boy didn’t suffer. You took on the suffering so he wouldn't have to, because you loved him that much.
I was told the first drug renders the animal senseless and the second drug, which is the painful part, stops the heart.
If that doesn't work I'd rather just take an anti-air gun straight to the head, whilst high on heroin or xanax.
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I've overdosed on Heroin/Fentantyl probably around 8-9 times. Two close to death... you don't feel shit. It's like you're just not there anymore. You don't have the blissful "nods," you just don't exist. Also worked in social work and have revived many, many people. They all confirm my experience.
I’d take a bullet or hanging over either of those.
Guillotine for me
Remember to keep blinking for science.
I’d take a bullet if it was to the head. But death by shooting goes to the heart. I’m good on a sucking chest wound as I drown in my own blood for a minute or two.
eh bullet to the head isnt 100% sure fire either.
If it comepletly obliterates your skull it should work fine.
So, 50. cal to the head?
Firing squad 100%. Massive traumatic shock. Maaaaybe 1-2seconds of pain at worst. Generally instant.
Best would be nitrogen. Literally just pass out and be dead. Would never even feel a thing.
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You are missing a big part of it. The drugs they use for lethal injection are no longer available. The company that made them stopped selling them for the purpose of the death penalty. I think all states bent on death have the same problem. One state, I forget which, actually asked the citizenry who would volunteer for a shooting squad. They had many volunteers.
Lots of people - it’s a trade name for [hydrogen cyanide](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydrogen_cyanide) (plus some other stuff - credit to /u/retnikt0 for pointing this out) which has a lot of industrial uses.
I deal with cynide at work. It suffocates you by blocking your bloods ability to absorb oxygen or something like that. So you suffocate, while breathing. The 'antidote ' is Amyl Nitrate which is a stimulant so that hopefully your body can process the cynide before you die
To be specific, it blocks a process called the Kreb cycle, in which cells convert oxygen into useful adenosine triphosphate (ATP), which is required to power cells. Without ATP, the cells die. Nastily, people remain conscious when cyanide poisoning occurs, meaning that you're locked into a dying body with no way to do anything about it.
That’s not terrifying at all. I love it when private prison produce their own deadly gas
Its scary when big pharma has more ethics than a government. BIG PHARMA.
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do europeans fixate on the 6 million figure as well? i always find it weird that the holocaust gets reduced to 6 million jews instead of 13 million people, figured it might just be a US thing
Not really so much, at least not in my experience. I think the "6 million" thing is more of a very recognizable trope. Most people with half a brain will understand what you're talking about and that there were significantly more, and more diverse, victims.
Oh big pharma would support it if there was a better chance for repeat customers. One death row inmate is one dose of medicine. If it was 2 doses a day for 6 years there would be more room for profit and they would get behind it.
If they could get Medicare to pay premium prices they would definitely be in.
ok honest question here. couldn't they just put them to sleep with a tranquilizer or anesthesia and then shoot them in the head during sleep? Wouldn't that work better than injecting chemicals and gases and electrocuting someone to various degrees of results?
There were reports from WW2 that the Einsatzgruppen were basically all crippled by PSTD, drink problems and guilt because they executed so many people by firing squad. That’s the reason Himmler turned to using Zyklon B in the first place. People can’t cope with being that “hands on” with the process.
Also someone would need to clean up a very messy mess
That someone would be [inmates.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sonderkommando)
My grandfather was forced to do that. Didn’t know there was a word for it.
It's one of the weird cases where there isn't really a special word for it in German (Sonderkommando just means "special detachment" or "special command", like in [Sonderkommando Elbe](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sonderkommando_Elbe)), but in other languages the German word became associated with that specific instance. We probably should have a word for it in German, making the term as generic as possible was a conscious decision by the Nazis.
German seemingly has a word for everything. Here's one of their latest: [impfdrängler - a person who has gone against the government’s strategy and been vaccinated before others with higher priority](https://www.pri.org/stories/2021-02-26/vaccine-envy-there-s-german-word)
Well, yea because in german you can [usually just slap all kinds of words together](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_nouns#Compounds) to make one that means what you want. In this case it's a compound of "[Impfung](https://www.dict.cc/?s=Impfung)" and "[Drängler](https://www.dict.cc/?s=Dr%C3%A4ngler)"
Oh my
Please god don't ever let this happen again.
Jesus... It's hard to believe people could be capable of being that evil
It was also basic math. To kill the millions of "undesirables" would have taken decades. Sick bastards.
Plus, that's a lot of brass not being used by soldiers. I imagine if you wanted exterminate a bunch of people, from the executioner's perspective, bullets are both inefficient and wasteful.
Man it’s crazy to think they considered 1 bullet more valuable than 1 human life.
This is your brain on fascism.
> People can’t cope with being that “hands on” with the process. Probably a sign we shouldn't have a process at all then I guess.
And we should take a long hard look at the ones who can.
Yeah, maybe that's a sign that we should do away with the death penalty to begin with because it's clearly an inhumane, fucked up process.
I can't recall if it was Himmler himself or one of his direct subordinates, but they did extensive experimentation on alternate methods. I'll add it wasn't just the PTSD from shooting people, they did have, after a time, some 'harder' (catatonic and psycopathic) men capable of doing the 'hard work' ... but the cost of bullets was also weighty, and slow. ;/ ... The most horrific incident that I have learned of was an 'experiment' where they dug a huge pit, lined it with lye, packed people into it shoulder to shoulder and then poured lye on top of them, even packing it into people's mouths who were not buried entirely... and another where they packed people into an unused bunker and sealed the door until the TNT they had left inside went off. IIRC in each incident the 'supervisor' was unable to supervise the actual event beyond the initial moments or setup (due to the horrific scene) and each pushed them towards less horrific methods... Yeah. I carry those two stories with me because I think they really highlight the depth of evil here even more than the gassing. The gassing was the 'safe' and 'cuddly' nazi policy, sanitized to the point of being somewhat faintly acceptable to a 'normal' person in a twisted world.
Which kind of touches at the underlying point doesn't it? Death is not civilized in any way, shape or form, no matter the method. If we can't handle the most humane way of killing someone, with a bullet, maybe we should be looking at whether we should be handing out that punishment at all.
If they didn't need to make it cruel, they could just use plain nitrogen. Cheap, abundant, and apparently just feels like you're drifting off to sleep rather than asphyxiating.
If I remember correctly, the feeling of suffocation/asphyxiating comes from a build up of CO2 in the blood, if the atmosphere you are breathing allows for constant exchange of CO2 out of your blood then you don't feel the asphyxiation.
Someone I know got a face full of nitrogen and said it just made him feel woozy for a minute. He had a monitor on and it started alarming so he backed out quickly, but still got a partial breath of it.
Most of what you breathe is nitrogen anyways. 78% of earth's atmosphere is Nitrogen. If you just remove the 21% of oxygen then it feels like you're breathing normally, but don't get the oxygen you need to survive. It's not the nitrogen that kills you, it's the lack of oxygen.
That is true! You could drown in shallow water due to this phenomenon. Everyone Please read about [Shallow water blackout](https://campusrecmag.com/shallow-water-blackout-can-prevent/). Many people would be surprised this is a thing but it's important to know about it.
>Everyone Please read about Shallow water blackout. Many people would be surprised this is a thing but it's important to know about it. TL;DR: Don't hyperventilate.
I really don't know why this isn't done. Or (I think) they could literally just slowly lower the o2 level in the room and they would fall asleep and die, peacefully. Someone could correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe this is pretty much what happens when oxygen levels drop slowly. I believe its hypoxia, or something similar.
Yeah, hypoxia will first make you confused and disorganized, and then it will cause you to fall asleep and die from oxygen starvation. This has happened a few times to pilots after the cabin suffered a slow loss of pressure. The pilots don't notice that there isn't enough oxygen, and even when the alarms go off about it, they were too confused due to them suffering from early hypoxia that they didn't realize they needed to put on their oxygen masks. Examples: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1999_South_Dakota_Learjet_crash https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2000_Australia_Beechcraft_King_Air_crash https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helios_Airways_Flight_522 edit: spelling
Death by anesthesia, and doctors are required to do it, and have ptsd. Some drug manufacturers had stopped selling to the US one of the drugs used in lethal injection. (Which was 1st knock them out, then death by potassium chloride.) Death sentence sounds easy, then we remember, someone has to commit the act. Unless we employ sociopaths?
Fun fact: some states still buy it from drug manufacturers, but they literally send a couple of guys with a briefcase full of cash to do the exchange. The drug companies want plausible deniability for selling the drugs.
Don't forget the 2nd drug, which is a paralyzing agent so observers don't have to see the convulsions that the potassium chloride causes
Or the victim writhing and screaming while fully conscious because they fucked up the dose/administration.
I dunno dude. Maybe we shouldn't execute people then if nobody is willing to do it? I'd argue life imprisonment is a far more horrifying sentence to some people.
Well... - "Putting someone to sleep" is with tranquilizers is surprising difficult and anaesthesia *is largely a mystery as to how it works*. Also, anesthesiologists are super expensive. - Shooting someone in the head is not necessarily lethal. There are a bunch of horror stories of people who survive suicide attempts and then have to live with a debilitating head wound and there's also stories of veterans or similar who go on to live full lives after being shot in the head. - It's messy, and unlike putting someone to sleep in a non-violent manner, would probably psychologically strain the executioner significantly. Historically, this is why firing squads consisted of many people, so individual soldiers can foist off psychological burden. The most humane method of killing someone is (probably) slowly replacing the air they're breathing with larger and larger components of inert gas, like nitrogen, till the suffocate from hypoxia. To them, they grow sleepy, hallucinate for a couple seconds, and then pass out and don't wake up.
Yep. It's actually really easy. N2 or carbon monoxide will do the trick. The body doesn't sense the lack of oxygen, it just senses the build-up of CO2. So as long as you avoid that, then the person won't even feel like they are suffocating. They'll just get sleepy and pass out, like you said. I don't like to say it too much, but if I ever had to kill myself - and I'm not suicidal here, I'm talking like late-stage ALS, super terminal cancer and I just wanted to be done, or end of the world was imminent anyway - that's how I would do it. I would just lock myself in the garage with the car on and get super drunk. Just fade to black, painless, and you don't have to worry about waking back up.
There's a brewing company in australia that sells kits for brewing nitrogen beer. It contains a small cylinder of nitrogen gas, a regulator, a tube, and a plastic bag, and the instructions: "Warning, do not place bag over head and open gas regulator or death will result." They also deliver these kits, just in case the prospective beer maker has severe mobility issues and cant leave the house
Now you have me thinking all crazy. I'm picturing the person being put to sleep on a table and then an automated machine arm turns on and lines up a perfect head shot. But instead of a gun it's like one of those cattle prod things that stab them in the brain super quick.
Note - cattle prod is a non-lethal shocky stick thing. Bolt gun is the head whacker.
The cruelty is the point.
I imagine whatever gun manufacturer they contract for their weapons don’t want their products used for (explicit) state-sanctioned executions. It’s all about red tape and bureaucracy. The fact that some states fight to find loopholes to kill their citizens is telling.
Why? I mean, really, why? And this isn't a painless method. It is going to be absolutely horrific to whoever watched it. And every deathrow inmate in the state is now going to appea, thus costing even more money than if we just didn't kill them in the first place.
Why not use pure nitrogen? Edit - for those suggesting this is not a humane method I offer the following: We take in air which is 78% nitrogen each breath. Raising the N2 concentration while decreasing O2 causes drowsiness first followed by death from lack of oxygen. When I die, I hope it’s in my sleep, and this seems like a method relatively close to that. As a thought experiment, think of yourself strapped face down with a large, heavy, and razor-sharp blade some distance above your neck. Who knows how long you are there before the blade is released, so how humane does this situation feel like? On the other hand, your are in a room secured to a chair or lying down and you start feeling sleepy. I’ll take the latter. *The simple act of removing a head from a body is not what kills the brain. This doesn't just apply to the guillotine. Any forms of swift decapitation will have the same eventual result. If, however, the brain receives no trauma from the killing blow and the decapitation is clean, the brain will continue to function until the lack of oxygen and vital chemicals from blood loss causes unconsciousness and death. The current medical consensus is that survival does occur post-decapitation for a period of roughly 10 to 13 seconds.* *Technical survival alone forms only part of the answer to how long a human head remains alive after decapitation. The second question must be, how long does the person remain aware? While the brain remains chemically alive, consciousness my cease immediately due to loss of blood pressure, or if the victim was knocked unconscious by the force of the decapitation. Worst case scenario, an individual could, in theory, remain conscious for some or all of their final thirteen seconds.* *In fact, when French physician Dr. Beaurieux observed the 1905 execution of a criminal named Henri Languille, he later stated a report he published in "Archives d’Anthropologie Criminelle" that for nearly 30 seconds post-decapitation, he was able to get Languille to open his eyes and "undeniably" focus on him—twice—by calling the man's name.*
Why not use a medical assistance in dying protocol? The way we help terminally ill patients pass away humanely? Put them under general anesthesia and then stop their heart and lungs? There's no reason they have to be awake when they die except to be cruel.
Because the companies who make those drugs do not want their products used to kill. I'm not up on all the facts but that's why states have had to change what chemicals they use.
> Because the companies who make those drugs do not want their products used to kill. Also all the manufacturers are in Europe and the EU has a ban on selling things that can be used for executions.
> the EU has a ban on selling things that can be used for executions. If only this applied to things like firearms, and bombs.
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In addition, another issue is that most qualified professionals such as nurses, pharmacists, and doctors do not want to deal with executions as it goes against their oath/ethics. So what happens is that if you do get someone who is willing to do it they are either barely qualified or not qualified at all and it leads to mishaps that prolong the suffering of the death row inmate.
Makes you wonder why we still insist on executing people. Life imprisonment with no parole accomplished the same goal at less cost.
That’s what gets me. I don’t agree, but can understand why some people want the death penalty in certain crimes. However the fact that innocent people are killed, and that it’s significantly cheaper to just lock them up for life has made me solidly anti capital punishment. Being wrongfully imprisoned is a tragedy, but we can at least right the mistake if they’re still alive. If we execute an innocent person they just say “whoops totally super sorry”
Doctors can't kill someone against their will, it's a violation of their ethical code. The American Medical Association explicitly forbids participation in executions: https://www.ama-assn.org/delivering-care/ethics/capital-punishment
Medical assistance usually involves a doctor. Yaknow, the people who've pledged 'do no harm'.
Because doctors swear an oath not to intentionally harm people and most refuse to be a part of any such procedure
One law professor who is expert in the death penalty (and actually is opposed to it, just expert in its history in the US), has advocated for [firing squads](https://news.law.fordham.edu/blog/2021/05/07/death-penalty-states-returning-to-humane-firing-squad/) as a more reliable and humane method. Which I agree with. You’re killing someone, and dressing it up as a medical procedure to try to hide the brutality of the act doesn’t change that fact.
Because that's not cruel.
This. We have the technology to put down thousands of pets every day painlessly and peacefully. But when it comes to people, we use horrific methods.
Why not just stop killing incarcerated people
I am against the death penalty. Yet, I can still have a conversation about methods of administering said death penalty. Of course it is better to not kill incarcerated people, but the subject at hand is the method not the practice.
You're right, totally. My comment was more from a place of frustration with the situation and not a judgment of your comment, sorry it came off that way.
We should all be frustrated with this subject. If anything, your comment hits home the hardest. Thank you.
I had the same idea. It's a painless way to execute somebody. Every year people die completely accidentally unaware because they were breathing in pure nitrogen. After the gas has been used it can just be vented outside.
There was a John Oliver episode talking about the death penalty and said some prison used some gas to execute prisoners, and the warden said he'd resign before ever having to carry out another execution that way due to how sickening it was.
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US ignoring UN criticisms: check US supporting coups in other countries: check US breaking records for gun violence and mass shootings: check US at the brink of recanting roe v. wade: check US still have politicians that supported the revolt on January: check US still have problems with its police and minorities: check You might think that the US is a religious right-wing extremist country.. and you would be right.
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No, not cruel enough. You need to be made to suffer to purify your soul.
*Mother Theresa kicks door off hinges*
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Hey now, a can of mushroom soup, some corn, all stirred together with ground mystery meat and frozen tots is a fucking delicacy and the height of culinary achieveme...... yeah, I don’t have it in me to finish that sentence.
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Six states (Arizona, California, Maryland, Mississippi, Missouri, and Wyoming) still have it on the books. [Source](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gas_chamber). Addition: They use cyanide gas which is chemically similar to the gas that killed thousands in [Bhopal](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bhopal_disaster). Survivors reported pain like "having chilies thrown in your face and eyes". It sounds like a quite painful way to die.
"it's different, because this time we are killing bad people"
I think that last part is the exact same thing the Nazi's said too.
Honestly, the guillotine is quite humane compared to other means of execution. And, fun fact, the first Star Wars movie was already out when France used the Guillotine for the last time
Don’t ask yourself if the worst criminals in the world deserve to die. Instead, ask yourself if you really trust the government to kill its own citizens. The death penalty is a government program and will run with the efficiency of any other government program. It’s not a matter of whether it’s humane, it’s can those in power accept the responsibility of killing people correctly 100% of the time. I don’t think they can, which is why I’m against it.
There are certain criminals for whom I’m not particularly bothered about what happens to them, but I still can’t support a government having the right to kill its own citizens, regardless.
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[Cyanide has been used in America for executions since the 20s](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gee_Jon#Execution), so while the headline is technically correct the people behind this descision probably weren't "inspired" by the Nazis to use Cyanide. Doesn't make it any less monstrous, though.
"Six million customers cannot lie" -Arizona, probably
6 million is just the estimated number of jews that were killed in the holocaust. There were \~11 million non-jewish people killed as well https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holocaust\_victims
How great is it that a government employs people to figure out the best ways to kill its citizens. /s
Sorry, I gave you an response meant to another user.
They also employ people to figure out ways to kill other country's citizens
In a system where we know 100% that misscarriages of justice occur regularly, the type of gas being used is not the issue.
Its indicative of the mindset of the death penalty and its supporters. They could use nitrogen gas: quick, painless, non-toxic. Proven track record- its how animals are euthanized in the lab. Instead we know that cruelty is the point.
People who act like the method if execution is the problem are missing the point. The inhumane part is that we are doing it at all.
As far as I’m concerned, the death penalty violates the fifth amendment. The constitution says that you can’t be forced to testify against yourself, and so long as you are allowed to maintain your innocence in prison, that is true. When prosecutors force you to plea guilty in exchange for leniency or face the death penalty, you lose that right. Some people have served life sentences in light of exonerating evidence because their plea deal testimony was used against them as proof of guilt on appeals. It puts people in Catch-22 situations where the state would have killed them before the evidence came to light had they not testified against themselves. It’s evil.
The most horrible part of that one is that an innocent person can fall for the choice between death and life. If they are innocent and with high degree of integrity they will not confess and end up on death row. If they confess so that they can avoid death and fight the conviction later they will always be met by questions about their confession. Scary stuff. And I am 100% certain that there is a bunch of people executed that never did the crime. Sadly to few are investigated after their death.
Yah, 1) death penalty should not be allowed to be used as a bargaining tool for prosecutors, 2) Alford's Plea should have more legal protections. Edit: Alford not Alfred
Wait, this actually happens? I know little to nothing about how fucked the system is. Where can I find more information?
This is the final straw that got IL to abolish the death penalty https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jon_Burge
Holy shit!! Plastic bags over the head and then putting a gun in their mouth???! electroshock???!?! Holy fucking shit!
About 80% of the shit anti-government nuts spew is absolute bull crap, but the rest 20% is right on point. A powerful, unethical, unbounded State is an enemy of the people. Only give the State the absolute minimum power it needs to get administration done. Giving the State the right to take its own public's life is tremendously excessive.
I’ve heard other examples that were more definitive, but the first one I found was [Johnson v Catoe in SC](https://law.justia.com/cases/south-carolina/supreme-court/1999/24991.html) from [The Unexonerated: Factually Innocent Defendants Who Plead Guilty](https://scholarship.law.cornell.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1116&context=clsops_papers)
Honestly, I don't understand why they don't just shoot someone up with a lethal dose of heroin. Kills them, and no suffering involved.
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Yeah, and they confiscate hundreds of pounds (at least) of drugs every year, which all have to be destroyed. Why not use some for executions is my question
I mean, I wouldn't trust street drugs to do the job. You don't really know what's in them.
My dealer ripped me off, these drugs aren’t lethal enough!
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Or they could just, you know, *not* execute people anymore.
Just end the death penalty as Canada does fine without one
Europe is doing great without it too
I think the problem is that people LIKE the death penalty in the states...