Transcript
Alabama suffocated a man to death in a gas chamber tonight after starving him so he wouldn't choke on his own vomit as they did it. And this was deemed perfectly legal by multiple courts in the vaunted American legal system.
That's what happens when you value institutions over people.
Link for more info: https://www.reuters.com/legal/alabama-prepares-carry-out-first-execution-by-nitrogen-asphyxiation-2024-01-25/
You are totally right. I looked into it a bit, the mistake I made was assuming that we’re more efficient at extracting oxygen from the air than we actually are. A held breath contains quite a lot of usable oxygen, which we can extract over minutes of time. Breathing in nitrogen would rapidly replace that still fairly-oxygenated air with pure nitrogen, and evidently our blood doesn’t carry more than a few seconds worth of oxygen.
Thanks for the gentle correction!