A person can be killed instantly through many different means. Gunshots to the brain, being crushed by immense weight, being crushed by smaller weights moving at high speeds, high speed collisions with hard surfaces.

As we know it, to be killed painlessly, is to be killed instantly.

If you instantly destroy a person’s entire brain then they died without pain.

Yet the most effective ways of instantly destroying someone’s entire brain are considered ihumane.

Like letting someone die of an untreatable disease but giving them so many pain meds they can’t feel anything is “humane” but shooting them in the brainstem or destroying the entire brain isn’t.

If instantly killing someone by smashing their head with a massive rock, or shooting them in the brain stem is inhumane, then humans only consider it “humane” if it doesn’t leave a mess.

Obviously I’ve left out a lot of different ways to die, be they slowly or instantaneous, but that list is massive.

But I’d much rather die messily yet painlessly than painfully yet “pretty”

  • @morphballganon
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    110 months ago

    The mess can be mitigated if you’re selective about where it’s done.

    I don’t think there’s a difference in regard to the humane value, whether you shoot someone in a lab vs hanging over a bridge railing.