Nitrogen gas execution bill heading to Oklahoma governor

Associated Press ^ | Apr 9, 2015 1:21 PM EDT | Sean Murphy

[my right]

I was personally involved in a situation where three pipe welders / pipe fitters died in a situation where nitrogen was being used to purge a 18 inch pipe. When the purge block was removed, a fitter crawled into the pipe to check the root pass. After about a min., when calling to him didn't get a response, his helper, (which was his son), crawled in. Then the welder went in to try to get them out. Nitrogen replacing oxygen in your lungs is almost instant death.

[my right]

I was personally involved in a situation where three pipe welders / pipe fitters died in a situation where nitrogen was being used to purge a 18 inch pipe. When the purge block was removed, a fitter crawled into the pipe to check the root pass. After about a min., when calling to him didn’t get a response, his helper, (which was his son), crawled in. Then the welder went in to try to get them out. Nitrogen replacing oxagen in your lungs is almost instant death.

[minnesota_bound]

Kill them this way.

[VTenigma]

Well played (golf clap).

[Straight Vermonter]

Oklahoma and other states have scrambled to find new drugs after manufacturers of more effective drugs stopped selling them to states for executions.

Shouldn't they be forced to sell these drugs? I thought the gay crowd said people (and evil corporations!) aren't allowed to have moral objections any longer.

[matthew fuller]

"Unlike carbon dioxide, nitrogen doesn’t stick in the atmosphere for long periods of time. Instead, it precipitates out within a few days as ammonia-laden rain — a mixture of hydrogen and nitrogen that fertilizes plants as it falls to the ground. Researchers have found major growth in ammonium in air quality data across 15 U.S. national parks, including Rocky Mountain, Yellowstone, Mount Rainier and Canyonlands parks, according to a previous Associated Press report. In addition, invasive grasses in the Mojave and Sonoran deserts are taking over native plants and fueling wildfires — all because of an increase in nitrogen."

I think that those morons are talking about nitrogen pollutants or something other than pure nitrogen. The atmosphere that we mortals breathe is 78% nitrogen.

"Nitrogen is a common element in the universe, estimated at about seventh in total abundance in the Milky Way and the Solar System. On Earth, the element forms about 78% of Earth's atmosphere and as such is the most abundant pure element." -Wikipedia.

[Tenacious 1]

There is confined space protocol for that type of work. That’s a sad story.

[cynwoody]

Back in ‘77 Gary Gilmore flat out said “shoot me” because he didn’t want to go through all the other crap.

As I recall it, he was asked if he'd rather hang. He worried that "folks might not hang me right". Similar answer for electrocution.

However, when the interviewer asked about shooting, he said that he knew from experience that that was hard to screw up.

[cynwoody]

Nitrogen gas to kill somebody?

Should work OK. It's switftly insidious.

From an account of a 1981 NASA accident:

Nearly 80 percent of the air we breathe is nitrogen, a virtually inert and usually harmless gas. Most of the rest is oxygen, which causes the release of carbon dioxide from our bloodstream into our lungs. This CO2 build-up triggers our sense of breathlessness, the need to inhale. But when breathing pure nitrogen, no CO2 is released into the lungs, and victims have no idea they are suffocating. They breathe normally until unconsciousness strikes.

And it strikes within seconds.

Moments after Forrest Cole disappeared behind the curtain covering door 50-1, Bill Wolford followed. Crawling through the entrance, he turned to find Bjornstad lying on his back, unconscious. Yanking the curtain aside, Wolford called for help, then turned to assist his friend. As he reached for Bjornstad's hand, darkness swept over him and Wolford passed out, falling atop Bjornstad's body.

The three men had been inside Columbia for less than a minute.

[Abathar]

After WWII we turned all of our big ammunition makers down south into ammonium nitrate producers for fertilizers. There was only so much free nitrogen in the world that can be found in the ground, in fact after the war China was far more interested in those plants than anything else we had to offer. There is no way we could sustain out population now without it, the world would starve in just a few years.