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Comment by saidajigumi | Hacker News Reader

This can and does kill people, in a variety of low oxygen situations. E.g. labs with liquid nitrogen freezers are mostly now fitted with O2 alarms to warn occupants about a dangerous and undetectable low O2 situation. Since you're still able to expel CO2, you literally won't feel anything wrong until you just collapse and quietly asphyxiate. Movies get this wrong all the time, and it bugs the heck out of my biotech friends with safety training with aforementioned labs.

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Your body will prompt you to breath when either CO2 levels are too high or O2 levels are too low. In your example the subject is still breathing even if he isn't getting O2.

One problem ER docs see periodically is the CO2 "sensor" can become broken in patients with chronically high blood CO2 levels, i.e. people with certain types of COPD. They only breath when their blood O2 levels are low, and if you give them oxygen they just stop breathing.

This is not true; just about any relatively non-toxic inert gas other than CO2 can take the place of oxygen without any significant response.

We do have a hypoxic respiratory drive, but it is exceptionally weak, and unconsciousness will occur before any noticable distress is noted.

The hypercapnia alarm response we're all familiar with is tied to carbon dioxide levels, not oxygen.

What's not true? That he's not breathing?

Hence the recommended method of life exit for people with terminal illness is to use a hood connected to Helium. Of course you need some "assistants" to remove the evidence since most places assisted suicide is illegal.

Excuse the morbidity, but if this type of asphyxiation is essentially pain and stress free, would it not be a humane method for euthanasia or even for capital punishment?

Yes it would.

Yes. It's been approved for capital punishment in the US state of Oklahoma:

http://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/how-oklahoma-came-to...

Also search for “exit bag”. You’ll find instructional images, as well as an instructional video made for the sick and elderly, about using this technique to commit suicide.

It sure would. If I had to be executed and could choose my method, I would choose this.

I don't know why it's not universally used. I suppose it's some combination of tradition and a belief that executed criminals should suffer.

But at least it's a totally painless and stress free way to die.

I guess one thing to look out for is the smell of rotten eggs in a server room. From what i understand that is a sign that the UPS batteries are venting hydrogen sulfide.

That or sulfur dioxide, yeah. I've smelled the latter in an office that doubled as a data center, when one of the UPSs' charge regulation circuit went wonky and overdrove its batteries.

That's probably not a major asphyxiation risk unless you're trapped in a room with it, though, because, unlike inert gases like helium or nitrogen, sulfur compounds are irritating as hell - a UPS boiling its batteries will send you fleeing for the nearest source of fresh air, with eyes and nose streaming, before it'll suffocate you.

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