Alabama is seeking to become the first state to execute a prisoner by making him breathe pure nitrogen.
The Alabama attorney general’s office on Friday asked the state Supreme Court to set an execution date for death row inmate Kenneth Eugene Smith, 58. The court filing indicated Alabama plans to put him to death by nitrogen hypoxia, an execution method that is authorized in three states but has never been used.
Nitrogen hypoxia is caused by forcing the inmate to breathe only nitrogen, depriving them of oxygen and causing them to die. Nitrogen makes up 78% of the air inhaled by humans and is harmless when inhaled with oxygen. While proponents of the new method have theorized it would be painless, opponents have likened it to human experimentation.
Let’s tighten this up a bit.
Inert gas asphyxiation is very much a great way to go, but it’s basically symptomless until after you lose consciousness.
You don’t get high. The “high” people get is when they are choked out. I’m not really sure on the mechanism of that, though. You don’t get lightheaded. The lightheadedness is from the blood oxygen levels increasing.
This is why it’s very dangerous to enter enclosed spaces. You simply don’t know you’re about to die until it’s too late. Plus, people come in to try to rescue you and succumb as well.
Anyway, lots of people have this experience. It’s a common part of training for rebreathers for use in scuba diving.
As far as good ways to die, inert gas asphyxiation is up there with “proper” lethal injection (i.e. with a commercial euthanasia drug), opiate overdose, or just anesthetizing the being and doing whatever gets the job done.
IIRC the hypoxia
“high”panic reaction is from an elevated level of CO2 - that’s the evolved mechanism by which humans detect they’re in a bad place for breathing. Not absence of O2.Edit: Correction: Hypoxia alone gets you high just before you keel over. It’s the CO2 buildup that activates your body’s panic reactions.