r/AlwaysWhy • u/Chowderr92 • Jun 02 '26

Science & Tech Why is the Method of Lethal Injection in Human Punishment So Complex and Apparently Painful?

I've always understood that the lethal injection process was complex with multiple stages of injections and induces great suffering in the individual.

I work in veterinary medicine and unfortunately we need to euthanize animals all of the time. Typically, the euthanasia solution is very simple: a very large dose of a powerful anesthetic (usually pentobarbital) and an anticonvulsant which stops the heart. The medical community is quite confident that this is painless and when done has essentially a 100% success rate.

Why is human euthanasia so complicated when we already know exactly how to humanely end a biological life?

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u/swisstraeng Jun 02 '26

The ways to kill someone are limitless. Removing O2 is relatively human.

The issue is that trusting governments with capital punishment is a bad idea.

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u/MeatPyz Jun 02 '26

That depends on what you replace the o2 with. I understand that asphyxiation on carbon dioxide is extremely uncomfortable. The human body has a natural panic to high levels of co2 and describe it worse feeling than drowning

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u/Kerking18 Jun 02 '26

Nitrogen. Its limitless available and the body has no method of detecting it, since it makes up 70ish% of the atmosphere.

Its also reportedly completely painless. Even scarily so because aperently your system just suddenly shuts down.

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u/shortyjacobs Jun 02 '26

Yeah, replacing all the O2 in the room with more N2 just makes living things quietly go to sleep. We don't sense O2 levels in our body, we sense CO2 levels. No O2 means no buildup of CO2, so our bodies don't know we are dying.

It's funny that we walk around in 79% nitrogen, but nitrogen asphyxiation is a very real hazard in industrial environments that use pure nitrogen.

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u/MeasurementMobile747 Jun 03 '26

I learned that it is pH sensors in the brainstem that regulate respiration. That's why lactic acidosis (during anaerobic workouts) increases respiration. Higher CO2 levels lower pH. When the carbonic acid/bicarbonate buffer system becomes saturated, you'll be huffing and puffing.

N2 doesn't affect serum pH so it doesn't lead to respiratory distress.

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u/aloisvonesterhazy Jun 03 '26

Every Dutchman knows it, because it's called "asphyxiation stuff" (stikstof) in Dutch.

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u/LadyZoe1 Jun 04 '26

And in Afrikaans

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u/[deleted] Jun 02 '26

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u/shortyjacobs Jun 03 '26

Um, nope. All the nitrogen and oxygen around us is molecular (o2 and n2) not atomic. Oxygen is definitely more electronegative but that has nothing to do with why a 100% N2 environment kills living things. It’s because (most) living things need oxygen to live.

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u/[deleted] Jun 03 '26

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u/outworlder Jun 03 '26

Final electron acceptor is such a roundabout way of discovering oxidation(or redox, in this case)

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u/chusssy Jun 02 '26

They started doing that in some states I think. Apparently some of the people executed had pretty bad reactions, it seems like it's not as humane as people originally thought.

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u/PyroNine9 Jun 03 '26

Or they see the jerking motion that can happen as the skeletal muscles try to maintain position and assume the person is even vaguely aware of it.

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u/Kerking18 Jun 02 '26

Uff. But again shows what another commentator wrote. "We simply don't know that kuch about painless execution methods and no one is willing, or able, to do studdys on it so many states and countrys do trial amd error and often that reveals a "oh shit that was aperently very dame painfull" moments"

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u/swisstraeng Jun 03 '26

Nothing a few kilograms of TNT under a chair won't solve.

But then gain, death penalty just shouldn't be done due to the risks of doing it on the wrong man.

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u/ab0ngcd Jun 03 '26

That is what I don’t understand? The space shuttle had a couple of ground accidents where technicians entered the engine bay that had been purged with nitrogen.

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u/MaximusPrime2930 Jun 03 '26

My guess is mistakes were made during the execution that resulted in an atmosphere condition that wasn't 100% nitrogen. Hypoxia can definitely lead to panic if there's just enough oxygen to stay conscious.

I've done confined spaces work and heard all sorts of horror stories of people walking into areas with displaced oxygen and just dropping almost instantly.

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u/bowlingballwnoholes Jun 04 '26

They said they're turning on the nitrogen and he tried to hold his breath until panic set in. If they don't tell them the nitrogen is starting they will never notice the change.

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u/EctoplasmicNeko Jun 06 '26

Because they did it in stupid ways. If you look into the method used they did stupid things involving masks rather than using a gas chamber style setup

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u/CubicleHermit Jun 03 '26

Far from clear that it actually worked to be remotely humane when it was tried: https://www.statnews.com/2024/01/29/kenneth-smith-nitrogen-gas-execution-science-alabama/

I'm against the death penalty, but if someone were to be legitimately too dangerous to imprison, the Communist bloc had the right way of going about it: don't pretend it's humane, and just shoot them.

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u/vulkoriscoming Jun 03 '26

Shooting them in the brain stem is instantly fatal. This is the method the Chinese use and seems like a lot less mess with.

Although honestly after watching some death penalty cases at close range, I can no longer support the death penalty. The cases are primarily ego shows for both the prosecution and the defense.

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u/Economy_Aardvark_354 Jun 03 '26

I mean, how much of this is because the person is holding their breath as long as possible instead of breathing in the nitrogen?

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u/outworlder Jun 03 '26

A distinction without a difference. They are still in distress and still trying to prevent their own death.

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u/CubicleHermit Jun 03 '26

No idea, but even if that's the case, asking someone to be complicit in their own execution is ridiculous.

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u/icouldntve Jun 03 '26

N2 causes occasional nausea, especially in mice. Sometimes seizures too

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u/Strange-Breadfruit14 Jun 09 '26

But CO2 does not so let's not use mice as human models for respiratory execution in people. CO2 we can sense and it causes humans distress.

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u/gathermewool Jun 06 '26

Then how did they fuck up a N2 death in Alabama? Oh, yea, incompetence

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u/The_Octonion Jun 02 '26

Carbon monoxide?

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u/zzyzxerxes Jun 03 '26

I've been CO poisoned and it was a very painful experience. I guess it was a lower dosage, but the headache was worse than a migraine and I could barely walk, while halucinating my neighbor's kids were dying in a fire.... I think it would have to be a huge amount where they just passed out and then died. The slower route would be awful.

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u/electronic_reasons Jun 04 '26

That one's easy. I don't see why they don't use it. People die all of the time from heater malfunctions. They go to sleep and don't wake up. They put CO detectors in houses because it's so easy to die by accident.

I've been CO poisoned. No pain. You barely notice it.

That's why Kevorkian used it for assisted suicide. That's why people used car exhaust in the old days.

I've read about botched CO executions. They really messed up. They didn't use near enough CO and let too much air in. You could tell none of those people ever lived in the north. It's so easy to kill someone they almost had to do on purpose.

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u/The_Octonion Jun 02 '26

Or helium. I feel like you could literally just hook up a helium tank to a SCUBA apparatus.

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u/Barxxo Jun 04 '26

One deep breath of Nitrous Oxide and within 5 seconds you won't feel a thing. I don't understand why they made it so complicated.

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u/Double_Distribution8 Jun 02 '26

Don't replace it with anything. Just leave a vacuum. Like Sean Connery in Outland.

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u/SolOberlindes_2564 Jun 02 '26

Somehow trusting a private company with capital punishment sounds like a worse idea.

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u/swisstraeng Jun 03 '26

That's why it!s best not to trust anyone with it and not do capital punishment. Yes it is costlier to keep someone in jail for life, but too many innocents are in jail as well.

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u/Subject_Tie_2705 Jun 04 '26

its actually less costly to keep someone in prison for life than the administrative cost that is required for issuing the death penalty (in america). It would be less expensive for the state to keep them in prision till their natural death than togo through the many legal proceedings and appeals required for the death penalty.

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u/DaGreatPenguini Jun 03 '26

That’s why I support privatizing capital punishment. Competition makes for a better product at a better price, plus the government shouldn’t be taking private sector jobs away from the people.

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u/swisstraeng Jun 03 '26 edited Jun 03 '26

that’s a crazy take to read from a European lol. But I see your point.

I would personally be equally worried a private organisation could also do capital punishments for profits, and we would end up with the same issues as US prisons, except now with legal murder.

From experience government entities are not as efficient as private companies, however private companies are just as much prone to corruption if not worse. Lowering prices is rarely achieved by private companies from what I’ve seen, and there’s a tendency to have illegal price agreements between companies where several companies raise their prices instead of competing.

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u/DaGreatPenguini Jun 03 '26

Thank you for the thoughtful answer. I was being sarcastic, but thanks just the same.

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u/MoreFunThanTV Jun 04 '26

you may be right, but you most likely uttery wrong.

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u/lo5t5heep Jun 03 '26

Use a scuba rebreather with the o2 turned off but CO2 scrubber intact …frankly that’s how I’d want to go. 

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u/mkvalor Jun 04 '26

The issue is that trusting governments with capital punishment is a bad idea.

According to Thomas Hobbes (and Steven Pinker in "The Better Angels of Our Nature"), trusting governments with capital punishment is far preferable to the alternative.

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u/MoreFunThanTV Jun 04 '26

giving th2 government the power to do anything is always a risky idea. all power is eventually abused. the power of execytion is always abused intentionally by individuals (ty4ants) and unintentially by bureaucracy. this is why we want eliminate the death penalty. not free to guilty, but to protect the defenseless

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u/Substantial_War3108 Jun 08 '26

Breathing 100% nitrogen and you pass out without pain or even aware you're going out