Category Archives: Social Commentary

Executions

I’ve asked this question before, but don’t recall if it was ever resolved. Just before the Shuttle flight one pad rat was killed and others injured from hypoxia when they entered an area with a nitrogen purge:

When the workers stepped into the compartment, they would not have smelled anything peculiar or have had any other warning that they were entering a deadly area. All five men were reported to have passed out almost immediately, and soon afterward they were evacuated from the compartment. Dies Aboard Helicopter

John Bjornstad, a 50-year-old senior chemical technician, died aboard a helicopter that was carrying him to a hospital in nearby Titusville. The medical authorities explained that the nitrogen itself was not poisonous – it makes up nearly 80 percent of ordinary air – but such an exposure deprives a person of all oxygen. He dies of what is known as hypoxia, which is lack of oxygen.

Seems like a pretty painless way to go to me. Why not just a gas chamber and run nitrogen through it until brain death?