(marked this as engineering because I’m not sure what it would fall under, biology maybe?)
I’ve seen in a documentary where they would put pigs in cages and lower them into a pit of CO2, but it doesn’t kill quickly and the pig would thrash around violently as it was slowly poisoned. Why not just use CO? it would kill humanely, and from what I understand, a lot of packaged meat is packaged in containers with CO to prevent spoiling, so there must be no safety issue with the meat.
In: 675
Actually, pure nitrogen gas is a superior killing agent and is rapidly lethal with no adverse effects (except death of course).
The thing that makes death by CO2 so agonizing is that the feeling of being suffocated and struggling for breath is *not* the lack of oxygen but rather the increase of CO2 in the body. Nitrogen simply displaces oxygen but allows CO2 to be exhaled as usual, so no struggle for breath.
I use nitrogen gas to euthanize rodents caught in live traps. They don’t struggle; they just keep doing little ratty things for about thirty seconds, and then they just…stop.
And nitrogen, which is about 70% of earth’s air, is not dangerous at all unless you’re inside a sealed container with pure nitrogen.
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