PLEASE READ BEFORE REPLYING - Thanks!Hello everyone, Time for another Gravy the Edgelord post. I am wanting to use this in a book and I would love to know the history and what exactly it does to the body. I have a basic idea, but I know if I google it, I will end up digging into a political debate rabbithole. (I have been trying to avoid those lately!) So, I am asking here for just the facts. I am sure this would make a great Debate Room thread, but please keep political discourse mum. It's fair to state there have been cases based on the 8th Amendment and I would honestly love to know what they are. Summaries are great and so are case names. What I am looking to learn for my story is the general history of the lethal injection in the US, when it was proposed and when it was introduced. I know the electric chair would set people on fire, so it's clear they wanted something more humane. I also want to know what it DOES to the body, more or less. I want to make a note here, I don't want to know what Vets use on animals, because I have a lot of loved pets and don't want to know. If it's the same chemicals, don't tell me. Anyway, I also want thoughts on what kind of super-powers one might get from being subjected to this type of death. Because it's part of the story and I always like good ideas. I was thinking poisonous blood or something, or more like a zombie-bite of death. Anyway, thanks for saving me a headache and a new political topic to mentally debate ad infinitum. And I am sure you will be hearing from @B.E. Nugent's Collation Against Cruelty to Gravy's Characters soon enough.
But...does it have to be a lethal injection? Could you not consider alternatives, like maybe an injection that induces mild to moderate tummy upsets for the profoundly remorseful murderers? Or a runny nose for those that didn't really mean to do it? You could upgrade it to causing penile dysfunction (it's always men, isn't it!) for the especially recalcitrant murderers in your cast of sufferers. That may not be of much help on your query, but think about it. How can you get to the end of the story if the entire cast has migrated off to some cosy romance or, god forbid, crime thriller where they're the murder victim (at least it was quick!) because they're tired of the unrelenting torture? If you a least give it some thought, my work here is done.
So, they would resurrect after the death? Or somehow acquire immortality? It would be a death + life kind of thing? I'm thinking, can't you just make up a new poison - that does exactly what you want it to do? You can create a name for it using Latin or some other language. For example, life and death translates vita et mors = vittamor ... or you can come up with something more original
Okay, okay, I'll consider instituting runny noses instead. Having one sucks. (And yes, isn't it always? LOL) Well, I suppose you're right. I need to include romance between sessions of unrelenting torture. They will have a painful ever after.
Well, the Nazis sometimes used sodium pentothal (more famously known as a "truth serum") to execute spies. It basically induces a coma, then paralyses your muscles so you can't breathe and you suffocate (or that might be a different combination of drugs). You know, the lethal dose of chocolate is around 5kg. The spike in sugar would probably kill me before that though.
To give more detail of the story, it's a 2000 version/update of Hell. So, the main characters are sinners more or less. Hence, they are in my mind, immortal to some extent. As for making up a poison, I am not one to do that. I really enjoy realistic/realism elements in my fiction. (If that's the word to use?) The point of the Hell update is creating punishments that are tangible to the modern person. There is a whole lot lore behind the update and all. But this time, the update is for North America for the year 2000. So, anything that was invented/used in the US from 1900-2000 is fair game. However, I am not using radiation, because it would slowly vaporize the sinners. Because the Gamma rays break apart DNA and stuff. Anyway, I hope that helps. For further thoughts, the punishment I am attempting to update is the one for Sloth. The old-time punishment was being thrown in a pit of vipers. Hence, I realized at the core of it was poison of some kind. For a long time, I had Carbon-monoxide slated, but decided it needed something more frightening. (Don't get me wrong, C02 is scary and was used for horrible things in the 20th century.) But I wanted something more... American, I suppose. Sure, the Germans drew dark inspiration from the gas chambers in the US. But I felt I needed something else.
Thanks! I will have to look that up as having 1 drug is easier for this design of Hell than multiple. Because it has rustic mechanical elements.
How quick do you want the death to be? Nazi suicide capsules contained potassium cyanide, which would kill you in a few seconds flat.
Well, snake venom is a neurotoxin, and that is a wide category, so you have a wide selection to choose from. Would you consider a neurotoxin from bacteria - the Tetanus bacteria to be exact? It's what we get tetanus shots to protect ourselves from. But if left untreated, it causes the contraction of all your muscles - leading to a painful death. Might hell keep chambers for incubating and growing this bacteria? And then rubbing it into wounds? Here's a famous image of a soldier dying from Tetanus
The intravenous method is the exact same stuff I use daily in anesthesia, only in a way that kills the patient. It involves a medicine like propofol or phenobarb to put one to sleep, a paralytic to make sure they don't breathe, and a huge bolus of potassium chloride to send the heart into arrest. Nobody could live through that. No super powers gained, though.
At the risk of being boring, I just did some digging on google. (Get it? Boring? Digging? Ah, suit yourselves). Anyway, from wikipedia: (from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lethal_injection) Yikes. Not a pleasant way to go by any means, but what is...? At least it's better than the short drop. As for the history of it - again, from the same wikipedia page (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lethal_injection#History): The first state to approve it was Oklahoma, on May 10, 1977. The next day, Texas approved it too. Since then, until 2004, 37 of the 38 states using capital punishment introduced lethal injection statutes (the last state, Nebraska, maintaining electrocution as its single method until adopting injection in 2009, after its Supreme Court deemed the electric chair unconstitutional). So, it depends on when you're setting your story. You could, if you wanted, set it sometime between 2004 and 2009 in Nebraska ... and have an argument between supporters of the chair and the lethal injection. (The chair is barbaric, Rahhh! The lethal injection is being administered by medically untrained barbarians, Bahhh! And so on).
Tetrodotoxin might take a bit longer than that, but all you need is a puffer fish. Or a blue-ringed octopus.
Thank you! This is exactly what I need to know. So the Potassium Chloride is the technical killing agent, then? And yeah, I'm not concerned about the character living, because she's kinda immortal? In a way. (Read the above posts to get more context to the story.) As for superpowers, I am thinking it over. Are the sleep things a gas or liquid?
Thanks so much! This background information is what I was looking for! Also, the general information as well. I really appreciate your digging around for me, because I didn't want to get lost in the Google Rabbit Hole. It is interesting that it was first used in WWII Germany, which leads to many ethical questions. However, I am so glad to learn some of the history and instatement in the US; along with the general idea of what it does. And actually, the story is set in 2008, but for more information about it, read the above posts for more context.
Yes, it is. However, I decided to go more of the general poison route as many nurotoxins didn't seem scary enough. I did have tetanus in one of my stories (not this one), but also I have heard of more executions than cases of tetanus. It does seem like a fun cause of death for a book. That is actually a good idea for a section of Hell. However, the thing is, in this version there are no devils/demons dishing out punishments. This Hell is more mechanical in nature. Oh, scary! (Great painting.)
The Propofol or Phenobarb sleep meds (one or the other) would be in a 20ml syringe IV push, the paralytic medication, most likely Succinyl Choline, would be a 10ml syringe IV push, and the Potassium Chloride bolus would come from a 100ml drip piggybacked onto a saline line, most likely lactated ringer, which would run wide open via a peripheral IV, usually put in the back of the hand or in the crux of the elbow. Hope that helps! Td
Or if you want something easy to obtain - a massive dose of insulin would work as well. 40 units of insulin (about 13ml) would kill most people, although it depends on their specific physiology and how high their blood sugar already was.
Hahah, I understand. But I swear it is 100% for my book. Anyway, if you want more context to the story, I wrote some stuff above in the other posts about it. It's just a reimaging of Hell for the modern world with the sinners as main characters.
Yikes!!!!! You do not want a lethal injection that isn't quick to work, but takes as much as an hour. Trust me. It'd be just as painful as the short drop noose, but the condemned person would take even longer to die. (The short drop, in case you're wondering, is another name for how people used be hanged - e.g. standing on a chair, and then the chair is kicked away etc. The rope takes immediate effect, but instead of snapping the person's neck and killing them within a few seconds (which was the practice from roughly 1880s onwards), the person hangs there for as long as 30 minutes, struggling to breathe, kicking and gasping. Eventually, the body loses control over bladder functions, and there is involuntary urination and defecation, etc. -- but the person is still alive while the crowd points and laughs. Not a good way to die at all). On the other hand, if you'd like to kill your character painfully and over time, give him 3-4 ounces of medical-grade pure alcohol (i.e. 100% proof) to drink -- or even worse, inject him with it. That stuff is seriously nasty. This Quora thread explains why: What would be the effects of ingesting 100 proof alcohol? I mean, effects to the human body starting from time of absorption? You will be falling-down drunk within a minute or two ... but the ethanol will burn your tongue, then move on to your esophagus and stomach lining ... and get worse from there. It will absorb as much moisture from your body as it can, which is seriously bad news. Bear in mind, consumption-grade alcohol is bad enough, but industrial-grade ethanol (despite being a chemical common both at home and in labs) would be even worse, since it may have trace compounds that could be toxic. Never ingest or inject industrial-grade ethanol. It's a horrific way to die. The truly sad thing is that some alcoholics want that buzz so much that they sneak into hospitals and swipe medical-grade pure alcohol, so they can drink it. Hospitals use it as a disinfectant, and to sterilize surgical equipment. It's definitely not for drinking.
Well, it's Hell so it's not supposed to be quick by any means. About hangings however, my forensics teacher in college said that the whole pee/poo before death was not real. She had years of experience and never encountered such a thing. Anyway, thanks for the note about alcohol. I have used menthol in a story once, it was interesting to write.
However, people who are hanged *do* get partial erections. It's called 'angel lust'. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_erection This was noted in the war criminals who were hanged in Tokyo after WW2.
Hahah, yeah. That's funny as fuck. Anyway, what a way to go with some weird air fetish. LOL. (I wonder if there's any stats on female prisoners.)
