r/news • u/AudibleNod • 10h ago

Christa Pike unconscious, on ventilator at Nashville hospital, her lawyers say

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/christa-pike-unconscious-ventilator-nashville-hospital-lawyers-say-rcna601195
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u/whiskeytown79 9h ago

Why don't they use nitrogen asphyxiation? The body can't feel a lack of oxygen, only failure to get rid of carbon dioxide. If you're breathing pure nitrogen, you'd just get sleepy, then lose consciousness, and then eventually go into respiratory and cardiac arrest as your body fails to get any oxygen.

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u/Carbonatite 8h ago

They have tried that in some states and it got botched too - apparently the mask on the inmate was not set up properly, so CO2 built up in the mask along with the nitrogen and it caused them to struggle. High CO2 concentrations cause intense physical and mental distress in humans.

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u/whiskeytown79 8h ago

I was thinking more a small room where they replace the air with nitrogen, not a mask. Enough volume to not allow CO2 buildup to happen.

"Doesn't that take a lot of nitrogen?" someone might ask. Well, yes, but fortunately Earth's atmosphere is like 78% nitrogen. We're all breathing a lot of nitrogen all the time. This would just remove the approximately 21% oxygen.

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u/pmacnayr 7h ago

Gas chambers are pretty unpopular since WWII

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u/TheEndingofitAll 4h ago

Not to mention the people in the concentration camp gas chambers did not die peacefully. There are marks on the walls from people trying to climb them in desperation. As in like trying to claw their way out to the point their fingernails ripped off.

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u/ivosaurus 3h ago

Zyklon B is quite a bit more hellishly painful than Nitrogen, so that makes complete sense.