What would it feel like to be beheaded?
I doubt you can get an answer that can tell you with absolute certainty. I can share a couple of things, though.I read of an experiment that was done by a French physician in either the 18th or 20th century. A condemned prisoner was being put to death and he agreed in advance to allow the doctor to try to talk to him after the guillotine sliced off his head. The doctor said he would ask the man to blink his eyes if he could hear the doctor talking to him. When the prisoner's head was lopped off and fell into a basket immediately underneath it, the physician lifted the basket, gently repositioned the head so he could see the executed man's face, and asked him if he could hear him, blink once. Chillingly, the nearly dead man blinked, quite deliberately. The doctor asked every 15 seconds for the man blink if he could hear the doctor, and the man continued to respond as asked for an unnerving 1.5 min. Then his eyes stayed open in that glassy, vacant death stare. I don't know how the executioned man felt during that 1.5 min. -- there was no way to ascertain that. Just the idea he was conscious and aware enough to blink on command is stomach-turning to me.I watched a video (which I regretted immediately) of an American hostage held by al-Qaeda in Iraq, maybe 10 years ago. The poor man was fully awake and his throat was cut and sawed off meticulously with a pocket knife, if you can believe it. Extreme suffering, not quick and clean as with a guillotine. As the hostage's neck was sawed through, the victim was screaming in terror and unimaginable pain. As more of his throat was cut, the scream heightened and became higher-pitched and less human. The scream started like the squealing of hog being butchered. At that point, I closed the video and moved quickly to the bathroom in case I vomited, which I felt like doing. I heard from others, though, who sat through the whole thing, the high-pitched squealing continued for another couple minutes. I can't even begin to say what the poor man suffered in those three or so minutes. I don't want to know! I'd rather not even think of it. I'll leave you to draw your own conclusions. Whatever, I'm sure decapitation is a very unpleasant experience. I recommend keeping your head where it is.
Does beheading hurt? Are there any studies or research on the subject (could be on any mammal) and is there any scientific proof to whether the brain feels pain even after being severed from the body? Or does the brain go numb?
The thought of beheading comes into one's mind when he / she hear about any form of execution. May be it is famous and desired method (?) of execution for the less pain (?) it offers to the victim.Medically, many sites claim that the pain reaches an intolerable amount for couple of seconds. Also by medical sciences the head should remain alive for around 13 seconds with the current amount of oxygen and other chemicals (neurotransmitters or blah blah... I didn’t get exactly what chemicals are needed) remaining in the blood in the severed head.In the medieval (I call it the dark ages of torture and killings), many experiments have been carried out on people who underwent beheading as a punishment. The famous case of Charlotte Corday is widely available on the internet as an example of the fact (?) that our head keeps alive till 30 seconds after beheading. But the mystery remains till when it can feel the pain?I personally find it very closely related to the build of a human being and also the state of shock / nervous damage he or she is undergoing. For example, a face up guillotine victim should get unconscious from the apprehension of the event much before compared to a victim who is placed face down.Anyways, I have read a considerable amount of descriptions of these punishments and I think that fear and apprehension starts much ahead the actual punishment takes place weakening the feelings of the victim. The person is usually prepared long before by wearing proper low neck dresses, cutting off the long hair till neck so that they don’t jam the blade and obviously carrying him or her to the place, which as a combined effect may be nerve rendering for anyone. Loss of consciousness may be considered to be an obvious thing to any victim. So, it is almost impossible to tell how much pain one feels for how long time in a guillotine. After all feeling some bodily pain is something that no doctor can predict, it is rather related to the consciousness and cognition one retains at that particular time.I don’t know why people have not carried out a systematic experiment during the French revolution, roughly 30,000 people lost their heads under the blade with half of them being women and also some children – so fairly distributed guinea pigs they had, excuse me for my perversion, LOL.The way to get the correct answer may be going under the guillotine yourself obviously ;)
Victory of AlQaeda over the US in Iraq:Isn't it a joyous thing seeing evil being defeated by slighly less evil
While I am opposed to the war, you need to learn the difference between a group that targets innocent civilians and an action against an enemy that leads to civilian deaths. We didn't go into Iraq for the purpose of killing Iraqi citizens (True, I still don't know why we did go in, but it wasn't for that). And many Americans have been deservedly outraged at the revelations of some of the actions of our troops. It is simply impossible to compare us to Al-Quaeda, which is pure evil. BTW, did the noble members of Al-Quaeda see the faces of those they killed in the World Trade Center?
In a fictional story, if a person in a homosexual relationship breaks up and ends up in a heterosexual relationship as endgame, is it bad writing that is unsupportive of LGBT+? What would you think about that if you saw/read something like that?
Is there, in this story, any basis for the idea that the person who does this breaking up is bisexual?There’s nothing inherently wrong with the idea of someone breaking off a relationship with one person and ending up with another person instead.However, if the person involved is gay, and ends up in a heterosexual relationship, there had better be a pretty good explanation for why that person is involved with someone for whom he feels no sexual attraction. Did he marry for money? As a result of a threat of some kind? Did he want a “beard” to cover his attraction for men for some reason?Or is this a fantasy novel, in which magic can be used to change a person’s sexual orientation? Perhaps a Science Fiction story, in which some form of pharmaceutical or surgical intervention can accomplish those ends?I certainly know people, in real life, who have gone from a relationship with someone of one gender to a relationship with someone of another gender. This has gone both homosexual to heterosexual, and heterosexual to homosexual. I’ve found the latter to be more common, as society conditions you to behave heterosexually, and you learn more about yourself and discover you prefer someone of the same sex.In a story, I want there to be some foreshadowing and some reason this development happens.Particularly this particular combination, which anecdotally appears to me the least frequent, and which is generally a part of the hard right’s fantasy that people can have their sexual orientation changed… something which doesn’t seem to work in real life.