Back in 2015 I wrote a post about Execution by Nitrogen which now seems to have been adopted in Alabama.
Execution by Nitrogen – ktwop 18 March 2015
In power plants nitrogen is often used for pressurising, purging, cooling or protection. I first came across a death caused by nitrogen in the 1970s when a maintenance worker entered a pulverised coal storage silo which had been blanketed with nitrogen for explosion protection during a shut-down. It was not a pressurised silo and therefore not seen as being a high risk area. By accident, he had entered the silo without a companion being present and without his breathing equipment. He was only found hours later inside the silo and it became clear that his asphyxiation had happened so fast that he had had no time to struggle, let alone call for any assistance. Of course the death was not so much caused by nitrogen as by the lack of oxygen and the resulting hypoxia. Nitrogen asphyxiation is not unknown as an industrial cause of death. Through the 1980s and 1990s, I came across another 4 accidental deaths at power plants where workers had inadvertently entered a nitrogen atmosphere. Just in the US, there were 80 industrial deaths and 50 injuries due to nitrogen asphyxiation between 1992 and 2002.
…..
In this modern, civilised, 21st century, firing squads, beheadings, stoning, being pushed off a roof-top, being poisoned (gas, lethal injection), hanging, electrocution and asphyxiation are all in use or proposed as methods of execution. Not so very different from the barbarous times of the Middle Ages.
Barbarous times indeed but not just barbarous states. Don’t fool yourself in thinking that human behaviour is any “better” now than it has ever been since we became “human”. The range of possible human behaviour is set by our genes and the worst possible behaviour has not changed in over 10,000 years.
Since humans are genetically capable of being barbarous, then, in the appropriate circumstances, they are brutal and barbarous. Single individuals can be brutal and so can all members of conflict-based organisations. Members of Hamas, or ISIS, or all para-militaries, and all military personnel from all countries in the world – in the appropriate circumstances – can, and do, exhibit the most barbarous possible behaviour. “Being civilised” does not change the genetic nature of humans.
Can the Holocaust happen again? Of course it can.
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