Kenneth Smith ‘struggled for life’ for 22 minutes in Alabama nitrogen gas execution: Updates

It's not really about the nitrogen. Earth's atmosphere is 78% nitrogen already. It's the absence of oxygen that's fatal. Our bodies don't sense a lack of oxygen, just a surplus of CO2. The idea is to remove all the oxygen and the CO2. It's a slow suffocating process but, in theory, the subject would only experience falling asleep. Of course that assumes it's done properly and the subject isn't panicking, neither of which seem likely.

We do it for pigs! Except we use CO2, because it's cheap and apparently we don't give a fuck about pigs.

I'm a rancher and meat lover and still the fact that the slaughterhouse industry chooses to gas animals with CO2 disgusts me. On my farm we dispatch with a rifle shot to the brain, the animal is dead immediately.

Honestly that's the choice I would take if I had to be executed. Though nitrogen gas is fine too, I used to do confined space work and have seen many examples about how you don't even know that you're dead.

No no, too cruel. That would risk them hurting themselves when they fall over. We must strap them tightly in place upside down for security purposes, and then put a tube down (up?) their throat. And if we accidently put it down their food hole then that's just a bonus then it was probably their fault for struggling.

For the record, fuck the death penalty.