Grrl Power #1226 – Whippet good
Sydney has been wanting to try this since she figured out how to do the nitrogen trick in Galytn. She just didn’t think it through all the way. She figured, change Oxygen to Nitrogen, everyone passes out, then change it back. They wake up a little dizzy, maybe have a headache, but it’s all good. What she hasn’t figured out is if she can change the air already in someone’s lungs to and fro. Probably should have tried this in the Arc-SPARQ lab.
Still. It’s not the worst tactic against, you know, really bad people. Sydney was just lucky (or possibly unlucky as the case may be) that these particular demons actually need oxygen. It’s pretty easy to imagine certain breeds of demons not really needing a lot of O2. If you’re standing knee deep in lava… honestly I have no guess as to how that would affect the atmospheric composition – besides probably a shitload of ash and little crystalized bits of rock that would fuck up a normal human’s lungs. Well, a normal human that’s immune to insane temperatures, but not immune to inhaling powdered obsidian. I would guess that 5 feet above a lake of lava, there would be… slightly less oxygen? It’s not like the heat would fuck up the O2. I think other gasses would just be added to the mix and the percentage of O2 would drop proportionally. Molten limestone would give off a shitload of Co2 for example, and that would make it harder for Heat Ignoring Man to breathe.
Of course, I write and draw this page, then 3 days later as I’m posting it, I see on the news that Alabama JUST approved Nitrogen Narcosis as a form of execution.
You know, I’m against state sponsored death penalty, not because some people don’t really deserve to die – I just really don’t trust that the state will handle prosecution and evidence correctly. The number of wrongfully convicted people over the years should make any reasonable person hesitant to grant the government that power. (Also, some non-extradition-to-the-US countries are non-extradition because we have capital punishment) – BUT, all that aside, I know a lot of people object to it because the lethal injection method has never been proven to be humane, and that’s why part of the cocktail is a paralytic, blah blah blah. Well, I’ve always wondered, if you want to kill someone painlessly, honestly, how hard would it be to just rig up like 100 double barreled sawed-off shotguns and rig them all to go off at the same time? Kind of going all in on the Firing Squad concept. Call it the Red Mist method. Or just a small room with 45 claymores all facing inward? That’d be even more sure-fire. Even if they didn’t all go off at the exactly same time, I imagine once one of them went off… the rest of them would probably go off. Granted, as close to painless as those methods might be, I’m not sure that anything where the cleanup involves opening a sluice gate and turning a hose on an area is strictly humane.
Of course, this is all happening in the comic long before Alabama decided to out whippicide, so Sydney will likely avoid some new team nickname like The Alabama Strangler, though this move might eventually get named The Dixie Chokehold.
Oh, and FYI, since it’s not windy today, Sydney just turned a dome of air into Nitrogen, and since it’s the same temperature as it was, it’s not blowing around and mixing any faster than air normally would, so Harem’s fine where she is for a few more minutes.
The new vote incentive is up! Crimson and Scarlett have a present for Ingsol!
It’s them, they’re the present. They’ve decided that “Sire-versaries” are a thing and Ingsol has to be convinced this is a good idea each time. Everyone thinks his pair of names-that-are-synonyms-with-red sirelings who are both women and who were both turned in that age range that ensure peak hotness means he’s a dirty old man, but he actually isn’t. It just worked out that way. And don’t forget that while it looks like there’s a 25 year age gap between the girls and him, it’s actually much worse, as he is 700 years old, while Scarlett is something like 180 and Crimson is only 40. But at the same time it’s meaningless as they were both fully adults when they got turned, so it’s all copacetic.
As usual, Patreon has the pair of them in various states of undress.
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Theeeeeeeere’s our girl. ^_^
We all enjoy Smugney from time to time, but Hypercompetence is _not_ Syddles trick. X’D
Love the shenaniganery. ^_^
“I was doing so good on the Not Snapping Gwen Stacy’s Neck thing! AAAAAA”
Nitrogen poisoning? How the hell are they even on Earth!? It’s 78% of our atmosphere!
Yeah, not sure how that works. In oxygen-breathing creatures, “too much nitrogen” just means too little oxygen, which causes asphyxiation. In high-pressure environments, like underwater when SCUBA diving, or in the Alabama execution method (from what I gather), it forces nitrogen into the blood that can tunr into bubbles when the pressure is reduced, but that wouldn’t apply in this situation.
your right for scuba but for the Alabama example they’ll likely just stick the prisoner in a small room and open acouple nitrogen cannisters and let them drift off to sleep or they’ll strap an oxygen mask on except instead of oxygen they pump nitrogen and the person doesn’t even realize they’re dieing until they’re already asleep
Specifically Alabama approved Nitrogen Hypoxia as an execution method. Not Narcosis as Dave said.
Hypoxia is like you said, and what Sydney did, pump in N2 to displace the O2. And people will suffocate due to lack of O2. This only slightly increases the N2 in your blood stream as the atmosphere is already 3/4 N2.
Narcosis is when you get enough N2 into your bloodstream to actually have toxic effects. The only way to do this is to increase the pressure. So this is only an issue for divers and other people working in pressurized enviroments. From a quick google it looks like Narcosis starts to set in around 70-100 fsw. So 3-4 Atmospheres of pressure.
There’s also the question of what sort of nitrogen she’s making. If its N2 like we have in the atmosphere then it’s inert. If its monatomic nitrogen it’ll bond with oxygen to form nitrogen dioxide with IS toxic. It’s one of the reasons you don’t want to be in a closed space with anything burning propane.
It’s not like, SUPER, toxic. But IRL it causes chemical burns if you breathe it long enough, and it penetrates deeply into your lungs because it doesn’t have any immediate symptoms so you don’t start trying to cough it out right away.
So which form of nitrogen is she making? That’s the real question here.
Apparently the form that you* can smell.
(* well, if you are a cthuluian demon).
The form that a swole cthulu demon can smell.
Considering their aquatic nature, I’m pretty sure all cthulu variants smell.
NO2 combines with the water in the lungs to form nitric acid, which dissolves lung tissue. That’s pretty fatal.
Lemme put it this way, those guys doing the youtube chemical experiments where they’re mixing sulfuric acid and potassium nitrate, and the brown gas starts bubbling off are risking a nasty death. I want hoods and neutralization for that stuff. Though I’m not afraid to handle it PROPERLY.
Now, fuming nitric acid and oleum are another matter entirely, and I want remote handling equipment for that. Not that I really want to mess with it anyhow.
Alternative to your execution methods. One bore-sighted 16″ naval rifle firing a solid shot, bore-sighted at the head. The decedent is on a vibration-isolated chair, inside a light-tight box, far enough from the muzzle that the round arrives before the sound does. Nerves have no time to fire before the brain is spread in all directions. Instant guaranteed death, no saving throw, no pain, no warning.
Some years back, one government agency or another lost an employee to nitrogen, by total accident. She or he entered a room containing only nitrogen — anti fire precaution — and was out cold in a few seconds.
In nitrogeneous explosives, the reaction is nitrogen atoms bonding to form nitrogen molecules, as witness C_2 N_12.
Ok a lot of people seem to be confused with the phrase “nitrogen poisoning” if Sydney replaces a significant percentage of oxygen with nitrogen either through transforming it or simply producing a lot of it quickly the demons would not be getting enough oxygen to breath and would passout quickly especially since it is hard for animals to tell they are asphixiating in a inert gas like N2 or noble gases with an exception for CO2 poisoning because our bodies are made to monitor CO2 concentrations not O2 concentrations in our blood.
also a side note for the authors note any demon who lives in a lava lake would likely not be bothered by the N2 area around Sydney since in a caldera filled with lava their’s little to no oxygen near the lake instead it is replaced by CO2 SOx NOx and other such lovely gases (the x is saying their may be different numbers in that place)
Asphyxiation and poisoning are two different matters. A poison causes death by a chemical reaction while asphyxiation is simply not getting enough oxygen to live.
2 points –
1. Nitrogen gas is explicitly odorless. Cthulhu would not be smelling a “thing” but I suppose it could be argued he is not smelling something he expected to. It is also colorless.
2. Nitrogen Poisoning happens VERY fast if the O2 is removed. If she is actively removing the O2 to less than 1%. Also, as mentioned people believe they are still “breathing” but aren’t oxygenating their blood as needed. This can lead to narcosis, unconscious, and death VERY fast!
I speak from experience as a medic who as worked such Hazmat scenario including with the CSB.
but point 3 is. they are demons. who knows how their bodies really work in comparison to humans. there was one guy that bonded with a human after being all but destroyed. don’t know any humans that get blown up and just hitch a ride on their buddy that wasn’t in the blast radius as bad.
Humans can’t smell nitrogen, doesn’t mean that demons couldn’t smell it (or just have a sense that detects changes in atmospheric concentration, remember we’re seeing a translation which may substitute something close when there’s no actual equivalent term in English)
Yeah, the definition of an “odor” is just that it’s a substance we have chemoreceptors for in our noses, which encompasses a lot of things, but not all things. Much like how there are animals that have photoreceptors in their eyes for EM spectrums we don’t and thus can see colors we don’t, I’m sure some animals have chemoreceptors to identify substances that we humans have no way of detecting. Nitrogen is odorless to humans because we don’t have a chemoreceptor to tell us when there’s nitrogen around, but if this demon is of a species that DOES have a chemoreceptor for nitrogen, then nitrogen would not be odorless to him.
That’s like complaining that a demon with mantis shrimp eyes can see colors for frequencies of light outside the human visible spectrum, dude has decided non-human anatomy so it shouldn’t be all that surprising if he has non-human sensory organs.
I mean, the inherent problem with a chemoreceptor for Nitrogen that Nitrogen gas is largely inert and thus wouldn’t easily bond to a chemoreceptor to trigger a response. More feasible would be that, as a non-native and relatively recent arrival to Earth, Earth’s air still has an odd smell to it (the presence of particular pollutants, the particular ratios of trace gases, the level of oxygen to carbon dioxide, etc…) that has just rapidly disappeared as all those gases were replaced with nitrogen.
Totally valid. I had assumed (silly me) that since oxygen deprivation worked on some, that the rules applied “in general”. But demons or aliens responding differently is valid in comics.
“You are a blind man, swinging an axe, in a crowd of children.”
(Wish I could remember where that quote’s from. Google is strangely less helpful than usual.)
Stone of Tears apparently
Technical question, who is the shooter with the horns and head flame? Why are they joining the fight?
if you look at the prior strips she’s one of the background members of the demon group who is hanging back while the others talk. Parfait gives them a name a few strips back.
Parfait is missing her choker.
Parfait is missing her choker
Just had one of them “refrigerator moments”. So Sydney eats a lot of spicy food, yeah? Well when Parfait “wouldn’t take no for an answer” Sydney LICKED HER EYEBALL. Shouldn’t it have felt like jamming a hot pepper in her eye?
That assumes both that Sydney had recently eaten something spicy, which is likely, and that capsaicin would affect Parfait. Capsaicin works by lowering the threshold at which certain receptor cells think is dangerously hot, and Parfait as part Ifreet may not have them at all.
…BOY this strip had some timing.
Ah yes, Sydney just once again accidentally breaking the Geneva Convention.
To be fair, that’s quite easy. If it’s a weapon, but doesn’t shoot projectiles, and doesn’t have a blade, it likely breaks the Geneva Convention.
Toxic gas? No go. Sound? Right out. Lasers? Straight to jail. Heck, fire something into the clouds and you’ve broken… well, not the Geneva Convention exactly, but the Environmental Modification Convention.
Archon’s about to give the UN a decade-long migraine.
Something tells me the demons are not signatories to the Geneva convention. Nor are they fighting a declared war between nations. Nor are any of them non-combatants. And in Sydney’s case, she’s not even on foreign soil.
Lasers, which project a stream of photons, which are SOMETIMES particles, must therefore only SOMETIMES violate the Geneva Conventions.
A quantumly uncertain violation, perhaps?
Good to see DaveB getting in on the use of Nitrogen to time with the execution method just used in the US with it. As a Diver Sydney should know this would kill them or at least cause the bends or severe issues. Why not just use straight up Carbon Dioxide for some “Evil Winds”? She could kill them quicker that way.
The bends happens when you’re coming up from a much higher pressure and dissolved oxygen in your blood gets expelled, causing bubbles of nitrogen in areas
Nitrogen narcosis happens under pressure
neither of them are going to be happening here
She’s clearly not a very good diver
I said she should use the Light Hook but did she listen?
In her defence there’s no reasonable way for her to read my comment so I’ll just feel slightly smug.
Remember, this fight happened more than 12 years ago, so beyond breaking the 4th wall, you’re also fighting time mismatch.
I work for a company that produces nitrogen. The execution supposedly let the guy survive for a long time before he died. They have always taught us that we only had a few seconds, before we passed out. Something is fishy. If you want to execute someone and want a non painful way of doing it, how about heroin overdose? Not cruel, not painful, and I’m sure the PD has a bunch laying around somewhere, so cheap.
In terms of painless ways to go, Veterinarians have it all down. Euthanizing a terminally ill pet is a matter of a single injection, basically an overdose of sedative. They fall asleep and stop…well everything. Doesn’t get much more peaceful.
According to my vet, the company that makes the painless euthanasia drug used for pets won’t let it be used for executions.
As far as the execution goes, from what I’ve read it seems the mask wasn’t airtight on this face so he was still getting some O2 with the nitrogen so it took a lot longer. Take that with a grain of salt, though, that’s just speculation I’ve read online.
A chamber with just nitrogen and no oxygen would be a type of asphyxiation, just without being strangled by psychobubba.
Executions are a problem, when it comes out the trial was b.s. and the convict was totally innocent (happens WAY too much to be believed!), you can’t tell the dead guy “Sorry, but you have to leave jail now.”, or whatever it is they do. Dead is Dead, and there are no takebacks!
Now a method that would be totally painless and would never even be sensed would to death by high explosive. (There are high and low explosives, which are defined by their speed of deflagration. You can google it.)
That’s because the shockwave from a high explosive will thrash your brain into protoplasmic soup in less time than a neuron can transmit it’s signal. No neural signals, no sensations, no experience to be horrified by.
On the other hand, blowing up somebodies head would probably be considered some kind of horrific crime by most of the world, and terribly messy as well. It would likely cause nightmares for anyone that saw it, and really mess with someone waiting to be executed by that means.
So it seems there’s no really good way to do a humane execution.
So I’m against executions in general, with one exception. If someone has been proven guilty without any doubt, and they are and will remain, a threat to the greater populace if still alive with no reasonable way to mitigate such risks. There are very few people that would ever qualify for that, but it’s possible.
“Nitrogen Poisoning”: nonexistant, at least for Earth-based organisms.
“Nitrogen Narcosis”: Occurs at high pressures (FAR above atmosphere) so not a factor here.
Regular old inert-gas asphyxiation: what Sydney was going for here, and what she actually got here. Humans lose consciousness in about 12 seconds (without holding breath), death only occurs several minutes later, but brain damage can start to occur sooner. Demon/alien/etc physiology may have different responses.