Horrendous, unsurprising.

It really feels like we are witnessing the decine of a superpower. I was there a couple of months ago. Their infrastructure is crumbling, shops empty and whole blocks abandoned or seriously run down. General feeling of degradation.

Gilead next.

Given the content of the article and that taken at face value it seems to be no less and no more abhorrent than every other method of stats endorsed murder i.e. abhorrent.

Would this cause the bends or is that only when presurised nitrogen depressurizes?

You'd need to absorb the nitrogen into the blood while being under pressure yourself and then you become subject to lower pressure to allow it to form bubbles in the bloodstream to suffer the bends.

Very horrible torture scene in tom clancy's without remorse using this

Surely carbon monoxide would be preferable?  High affinity to haemoglobin and its effects are well known even at low concentrations.

Maybe it's harder to source in a relatively pure form.  I can't imagine there's much industrial demand for it.

Of course, "preferable" isn't really a term that seems appropriate when describing methods of killing a human.

It’s not uncommon as a means of suicide, although helium is more common an asphyxiant. Plastic bag round the head with a tube from a cylinder of balloon gas in it. They always look peaceful. 

Why not just use a firing squad- more humane than that and muricans love their guns.

There’s a mahoosive irony of course that the begetter of mass media societies should suffer ‘death by rof’ when its economy is roaring away while we potter about rearranging the deckchairs crippled by what our former colonies are telling us to do.

The extent to which they tie themselves in knots over methods of execution in the US is utterly bizarre. 

I don't understand why they haven't just set up a small government facility to produce the drugs they need to kill people quickly and cleanly.  It really can't be that hard to produce this stuff. 

To be clear the whole thing is abhorrent but if you are going to have it just legislate so it can be done as humanely as possible.  

I sort of disagree

If you get yourself into a position where you support the death penalty (I don't), wouldn't you want it as inhumane as possible? 

Americans seem to think death penalty is revenge so wouldn't they want to cause pain and suffering?

Firing squad: 5 out of 6 rifles have a live round and they're all aiming at the heart. Death would be instantaneous and not, I would have thought, more painful than the electric chair or poison drugs.

But also: vets, it seems, can kill animals with chemicals without inducing pain or distress. Apart from the blockade by all the big drug companies, it's always puzzled me why they can't seem to identify a pain-free way of chemically executing people.

NOTE: I personally am 100% against the death penalty. Never, nohow, no matter what the circumstances. But if there are going to be executions, the method of killing should at least be humane.