When someone has been trying to commit suicide, and finally they throw themselves under a passing freight train, should they stop with their efforts to commit suicide at that point? Or would it be better to do it a few more times just to be sure?
If it was me, I'd probably make with the booze and pills first. It's probably better to be a bit numb if you're planning to get yourself decapitated.
Why? Its not like you're going to feel anything, eh? Unless you want to feel 'good' about killing yourself.
If I committed suicide by throwing myself under a freight train, and then wasn't allowed to do it a few more times just to really enjoy it, I think I would just be crushed.
I figure there's a second or two of "Fuck! I totally regret this!" between the moment you jump and the moment you get squished. I'd like to dull that feeling of awkward shame as best I can.
Surely you're not speaking from experience. 'fuck I totally regret this...' and the train hits you is better than 'God save me'....and you miss the tracks.
Wouldn't you die on impact. I mean unless you only put your legs on the track? Though I can actually come up with a few gems of humankind who would do just that.
Arguably, you die when your brain shuts down. Unless you actually have your head crushed by the train, your brain wouldn't stop right away. EDITED TO ADD: Here, I looked it up. http://europeanhistory.about.com/od/thefrenchrevolution/a/dyk10.htm
Around here when pedestrians are hit by trains, it's usually because they're sleeping on the tracks! The first train/pedestrian accident I ever went to happened nearly twenty years ago. Working in a small teevee market at the time, we didn't have the latest gear and our cameras were old, "tube" (as opposed to "chip") cameras that weren't very light sensitive and required very bright lights to make an image at night. The kinds of lights that required a battery belt to power them. As a result of us having these very bright, very portable lights, EMTs would often tell us to come up close to where they were working so our lights could illuminate the patients. Out of courtesy and respect for the victims, we generally didn't roll tape on anything we saw up close like that. And we saw quite a bit. When they called us over to shine our lights on the guy from that first train/pedestrian incident, we saw that both his legs had be severed about mid-thigh and he was conscious and kicking. More like thrashing, really. I'm still amazed that I didn't get any blood on me.
The current medical consensus is that life does survive, for a period of roughly thirteen seconds, varying slightly depending on the victim's build, health and the immediate circumstances of the decapitation. The simple act of removing a head from a body is not what kills the brain, rather, it is the lack of oxygen and other important chemicals provided in the bloodstream. To quote Dr. Ron Wright "The 13 seconds is the amount of high energy phosphates that the cytochromes in the brain have to keep going without new oxygen and glucose" (Cited from urbanlegends.com, no longer extant). The precise post-execution lifespan will depend on how much oxygen, and other chemicals, were in the brain at the point of decapitation; however, eyes could certainly move and blink. You'd think the Taliban would kidnap some folks for their own version of MythBusters and test it out.
known two people who've lost a fight with a train... first guy was lucky, it only crushed his hands.Other guy, not so much. Took it full on, got bounced, and lived.
