Oklahoma governor signs bill allowing nitrogen gas executions

[zebo-the-fat]

In general I am against the death penalty simply because of the problems of killing the wrong person. There have been several cases of people being on death row for years before new evidence shows that they were innocent.
If you are going to kill people, nitrogen is ideal, it is cheap and painless, I remember watching a documentary about test pilots, demonstrating the effects of oxygen starvation, the guys were put into a chamber and wore breathing masks, the ratio of nitrogen to oxygen was adjusted while they did various tests (maths problems, writing etc.) As the oxygen was reduced and replaced by nitrogen they became confused, made mistakes and eventually passed out, when the oxygen was restored they recovered and said that they were totally unaware that anything had happened. The feeling of suffocation is not due to a lack of oxygen, it is due to a build up of carbon dioxide, because they were breathing normally (not holding their breath) the CO2 didn't build up in their blood so they felt fine.