mlb789 : Though the longest time a human head was recorded to be 'alive' was 16 seconds after decapitation, it showed no signs of real awareness. It was pretty much in a state of complete disorientation, and more likely reflexive muscle twitching than conscious movement. With that sudden loss of a blood supply, the brain would go into coma within 2 seconds. Still crazy though. Though it isn't believed you are conscious and pain free, it isn't like we can confirm that by asking a beheaded person

rcarter2 :  Within 2 seconds though.  You still could be aware, and as you said, we don't know if they were aware, but we don't know that, so I prefer to believe the living for a bit part.  I would never pick tr guillotine ever because of that.

rcarter2 :

Though these being hypothetical situations and all. I put my answer so that I would get both a decent hangman who would measure me and would know the length and quality of the rope. So that when the drop would come, my neck would just snap and I would not get decapitated.

Brigand : Yeah. I guess I do have a tendency to look too much into things like simple hypothetical questions

rcarter2 :

I was actually thinking about this: Is there a method of execution that could not be botched in any way? And if no, which one would be the least likely to be botched?

Brigand : Well, maybe an execution where the preference is to die in excruciating pain. I think it is pretty hard to botch up an execution where it is supposed to be slow and painful. Like you had to die by having your flesh slowly nipped away with fingernail clippers.

rcarter2 :

Ah, oh yes. Like the old Chinese "death by a thousand cuts."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slow_slicing

Called slow slicing there on the wikipedia. Many of these olden time executions could not be botched per se or... at all. My favourite is the good old brazen bull and I think I said myself in another topic which asked how I would like to die. I believe I said "drawn and quartered" but I guess the romantic part of it would  wear off very soon....

For a second I thought maybe I should have been more specific on the methods of execution, since I thought people would think modern aka current American means but I am happy limited to that within you and I am also happy to see the firing squad is more popular here on Vizzed than I ever though it would be. See you in Utah guys!

I guess if I had to be executed and was given the option on how they will kill me, I would chose a classic way of execution so I would go out like King Louis XVI and be publicly executed through the means of the guillotine(beheading). I choose this way because its a classic medieval way of execution and at-least I would go out in front of the entire general public so I would have an audience when I die.

If I had to choose between having my head cut off or being burned at the stake, I'd rather be burned at the stake

Everyone knows that a hot stake is better than a cold chop

No one will ever execute me and if they try I will execute them.

rcarter2 : I was always under the impression that they were awake for it. I know many of them have been conducted on conscious people, if not all of them. There are lots of documentations of the inmates panicking while it's happening because it's taking too long, about them dying in pain while conscious, etc. One part of the lethal injection drug is an anesthetic but it doesn't put them to sleep. It's not even a painkiller, it's almost more of just a relaxant since the other parts would kick in before you were ever to fall asleep, especially since I don't think the dose is significant enough to do so.

Lethal injection can be humane I suppose but there are a lot of cases where the dosage of the injection aren't altered for each inmate, which results in them suffocating to death by the part of it that paralyzes the muscles minutes before the drug that stops the heart takes effect. This also affects how the anesthetic would work, since if it's not enough to work for your body, you're going to feel what's going on. Some of the bigger inmates wait minutes paralyzed because the dose of the potassium chloride is too small and takes an excruciatingly long time to actually stop the heart, in which times they either struggle to breathe and sit there in panic feeling it happen slowly or they die of asphyxiation before it ever stops the heart.

In any case, this isn't a whether it's humane or not story, it's more of a "I would never in a zillion years choose that willingly to die by" story.

The hanging thing is silly too that that seems like a good idea, I agree. Suffocation is a terrible way to die and even the best rope suited for your particular body height/weight won't always do the job, such as breaking your neck but not killing you. It's way too circumstantial and luck of the draw.

I would do death by firing squad, simply because it's a squad. If the "first" shot (they fire at once) doesn't kill me, someone else in the squad surely will. Even if all four (or however many) shots wouldn't kill me, I'd be so full of holes that dying from blood loss would be quick and I'd more than likely lose consciousness from it anyway if it took a few minutes to die anyway. Also, it preserves the organs besides the heart to be donated.

THE MORE YOU KNOW.

(I'm glad no one said they'd prefer death by electric chair because that'd be about the stupidest thing to ask for, haha.)