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Tangentially, this is my frustration with the death penalty - it's way too complicated & error-prone when much simpler, reliable, and humane methods are available like this.

Humans are easy to kill, and it's not hard to do so humanely.

(Yes, there are many other problems with the death penalty besides the technical execution of it, but you'd think we could at least do that part right.)

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Any time someone tries a new method of execution, activists pounce on it and take it to court, making any new method expensive because of court costs and tied up in years of cases. The only methods of execution that can't be filibustered in this way are methods where courts have specifically ruled in the past that the method is okay. That's why execution is limited to specific methods, and why we're not going to use carbon monoxide or nitrogen.

Personally, I'd prefer that if the extra suffering caused by a method of execution is less than the suffering caused by, for instance, a week in jail, we should ignore the suffering and permit use of the method.

Depending on the jail you use as a baseline, that might be a scary way to die.

Yeah, with all the problems the US has had acquiring an appropriate cocktail of drugs for lethal injections over the last few years, you'd think someone would look into this kind of thing. Nitrogen is super easy to get.

I am not up to date with US lethal injection, but weren't the changes in lethal injections in the US "yeah, it's still a painful death, but we added muscle relaxants so it looks peaceful on the outside and acceptable to the public?"

The changes are of the form that nearly every legit manufacturer of the cocktail refuses to produce it for the purposes of capital punishment.

https://www.npr.org/2015/03/11/392375383/states-scramble-to-...

I think there's always been a paralytic involved. The idea was to knock the person out with a barbiturate, then stop the breathing with the muscle relaxant, and finally stop the heart with a bolus of potassium chloride.

It's not so much to pretend it's peaceful, as it's a error in how the drugs are administered and availability of appropriate drugs.

This is exactly my point - why do something so complicated when many people die quietly in their homes from CO poisoning? Let's just setup a CO poisoning chamber to do the same thing.

Or nitrogen as the article describes. Or a fatal overdose of a pleasant drug like morphine?

Even the guillotine is quite humane, though gory.

I never understood it either - there must be some crazy reason though.

Sadism, mostly. The electric chair was painful enough but too picturesque, which makes it easy to rally against. The injections solve that problem whilst still inflicting immense pain. Which is supposed to be good, because these damn criminals had it coming. Or something.

Many argue that the deliberate cruelty is the point. Also stigma around gas chambers.

Some states are experimenting with Nitrogen

Article from NYTimes from 2018: https://web.archive.org/web/20210704140110/https://www.nytim...

Needless to say, bringing back gas chambers is a hard sell.

Isn't Arizona planning to start executions in gas chambers again using Zyklon B?

They've always used hydrogen cyanide (HCN) gas, typically produced from potassium cyanide pellets dropped into hydrochloric acid. Zyklon B is just HCN.

Edit: not HCl, H2SO4.

Or just carbon monoxide. The thing people are so paranoid over in their homes because it is a silent killer.

Not to be grim, this is a very "adult" subject that most adults have a hard time discussing.

After seeing friends and family struggle with severe injury / deformities and Alzheimer's / mental decline (cancer with grueling treatment as well) - I can as a currently happy and healthy person say that I would likely use some form of firearm to end my life. It's quick, hard to mess up and above all my right as a human being.

I generally dislike political spats regarding labor / "obligations" to society in general - but I think the most sacred right is the right to decide whether you contribute by living. Both capitalism and socialism demonize the idea of suicide because each needs some form of a worker and the pursuit of a certain constructed life to work properly. Something that I'll never understand and that I believe is more morally wrong is family deciding that someone should "get over" their own choice to no longer live. In my opinion nothing is more selfish and less respectful of what life should mean to an individual.

> hard to mess up

I was under the impression it was in fact not that hard at all to mess up.

Though in fact, seems like other methods are indeed likely “worse” in terms of achieving the intended outcome:

https://www.medpagetoday.com/psychiatry/generalpsychiatry/83...

> hard to mess up

I had a co-worker who had earlier in life done that to himself. The bullet took an eye and a chunk of his brain out. He was instantly transformed from one of the smartest people in the room, to someone who could barely keeping up with conversations, with about half of the IQ.

> hard to mess up

I think it depends a bit on technique and choice of firearm. Some people foolishly put a gun in their mouth and assume it will definitely kill. But it's entirely possible to miss the brainstem and just blow off the side of your face instead. Now you are alive but mangled.

Something like a shotgun is probably a bit harder to screw up.

But personally I'm far too chickenshit to use a firearm. I'd probably try to find someone who'd sell me fentanyl, were I interested in terminating my own existence. At the moment, however, I'm far more likely to suffer an existential crisis and so I've zero desire to answer life's greatest question any sooner than strictly necessary.

And here I am in France, where the closest thing to a gun I can get legally is a nail gun.

That would be very dramatic.

My frustration is that a significant portion of the people on death row are innocent, if you kill them they have 0% chance of getting out alive. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blackstone's_ratio

I think it says something about the way we think about the death penalty (and maybe death itself) that the specific method is a major issue. Maybe one method or another causes more or less suffering for a few minutes, but the end result is the same. The content of that few minutes pales in comparison to the fact that the condemned will not experience the rest of their life.