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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Doesn’t she have a dive certification? Feels like she’d know this…
Diving and what this is are seperate. In a dive you get nitrogen narcosis from too high of a pressure of nitrogen. Much higher than sea level, even at 100%, nitrogen. This is inert gas asphyxiation.
Not an expert, but I’m pretty sure diving is a pressure shift induced phase transition issue. Nitrogen gas reacting with something seems odd since it’s ~80% of air and difficult to break down without something extremely violent to break the N-N bond. Helium or any of the noble gases would probably be more traditional ‘inert’ chemical. But, they’re supposed to be magic, so nitrogen might have some kind of interaction with their magical organs rather than simple oxygen starvation.
Two diving issues.
The first is “the bends”; Nitrogen under pressure dissolves, you release the pressure, it comes out of solution. It’s really unpleasant to have your blood fizzing like an uncapped soda, and the bubbles forming in tissue are even worse.
The second is nitrogen narcosis: When inert gasses dissolve in lipid membranes, they alter biological functions. In fact, Xenon is used as an anesthetic! At really high pressure the nitrogen is an anesthetic, too.
The issue here, inert gas asphyxiation, isn’t one they talked about when I was getting dive certified back in the 70’s. Maybe for divers getting certified for helium mixtures?
Breaking a Nitrogen bond is the basis of most chemical explosives, starting with ‘black powder’s potassium Nitrate and going up to C4’s RDX or TNT both of which are also nitrate based.
Plain N2 on the other hand is an inert gas that doesn’t corrode or react chemically with most, repeat…most, metals so it’s used to purge holding tanks etc. Once you get that pesky oxygen down to a manageable level then nothing oxidizes, including the N2 ;)
Fairly sure that most (if not all) explosions are extremely violent
Hrrmn. Simply replacing oxygen with more nitrogen shouldn’t threaten nitrogen poisoning, unless the demons have a very specific tolerance. She’s only increased the partial pressure of nitrogen from about 0.78 atmospheres to 1 atmosphere. Nitrogen narcosis in humans triggers at a partial pressure of around 3.5 atmospheres. So the demons obviously come from locations with lower nitrogen concentrations and their tolerance just happens to hit between 0.78atm and 1atm.
Might be safer to use argon next time, though.
The problem, essentially, is that if you’re breathing an inert atmosphere, your lungs do a fabulous job of moving the O2 already in your blood back out into the air. A couple breaths, and your blood O2 level drops too much for you to stay conscious, and you reflexively keep breathing until there isn’t enough O2 in your blood for your muscles to operate.
At which point your heart (A muscle!) stops, you can’t breath, and nothing short of CPR with pure oxygen is going to save your life.
And you go from unconscious to needing emergency treatment in well under a minute. You really don’t have much margin for error doing this sort of thing.
The other problem is that, when she tries to fix this by switching the air to pure oxygen, the smoldering wood is going to explode…
That’s not nitrogen poisoning though, or nitrogen narcosis. That’s a different effect with much higher partial pressures of oxygen.That’s just lack of oxygen. Which is presumably what Sydney was going for, in her typical dumb-as-rocks approach. But yeah https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inert_gas_asphyxiation Is a thing that’s easy to look up
This is just episode #265 of ‘comic author does not know enough science and does no research to talk about what he’s talking about’. Happens every few issues due to the Dunning Kruger effect. Happens every few pages, you get used to it.
Surprising that someone could make it this far without realizing. At least 50% of the blogposts are like this.
This is not truth. I don’t find it surprising.
Dave’s not writing a textbook, he’s telling a story. If you think about the time required to develop each comic he doesn’t have a lot of spare time. You know how the internet is. You go to look up something about volcanoes then it’s 2AM and you’re reading about the history of professional wrestling.
Takes 5 minutes to google this sort of thing, fanboy. If he’s doing that little research when writing the comic, then I feel justified in complaining – especially when it’s he himself bringing up all the science crap in the first place.
Ya, it takes just five minutes, after a thousand other things that each took five minutes. How dare he not spend another five minutes!
Also…if you knew what it was, and had to communicate it to Syd in a hurry, OR you have a significant language barrier and who knows what magic mapping of lingos….isn’t this a good short hand way of signifying the situation to each other AND the readers?
Or just use Anesthetic gas, like Batman did to Superwoman in Crisis on Two Earths. Sydney would likely know the story, since she’s a big Batman fangirl.
That’s an equally terrible idea. Anesthetic has to be carefully calibrated by body weight with the patient monitored to not have a high chance of killing the target (Eg: Like the Russians did when they gassed terrorists during the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moscow_theater_hostage_crisis and killed most of the hostages)
Please don’t get all your knowledge from comic books.
“Please don’t get all your knowledge from comic books.”
Worked for Sydney so far :)
she gets some of her knowledge from law books which as we all know contains boundless medical knowledge.
Please be advised that this post contains sarcasm. please read responsibly.
I did take the patent bar, which required me to get a biology major (had to take online classes for another year to take the classes I needed to add ‘biology major’ to my existing undergraduate degrees) in order to sit for that bar.
Although I was mainly using comic book knowledge admittedly! :)
do you have to pay a licensing fee to take the patent bar? or is it free use?
There are several fees you have to pay to take the patent bar. Not licensing fees (not sure if you were making a joke) but there are application fees and examination fees. It costs about $500 for all the fees together.
Wasn’t the fact those ex-hostages died because they weren’t put in a proper recovery position?
They were just placed in busses and died on the way to the hospital
No, it’s standard Russian incompetence. You literally just need to look at how the war they started in Ukraine’s went.
Like, you know, losing a Flagship to a country with no navy.
You don’t need a boat of your own to sink someone elses battleship
No, there was a couple of hours between exposure and retrieval of the hostages. The medical personnel also weren’t aware of what the people had been exposed to so they didn’t know how to treat them.
It was a complete clusterfuck of an operation and the Russian announcements were complete propaganda.
I’ve often wondered why an overdose of anesthetic gas is not used as an execution method, maybe after starting off with a non-lethal dose to ensure that the victim goes to sleep peacefully before any stronger effects begin. I’m not exactly in favor of execution to begin with, but if they’re going to do it, this seems like it would have to be the least traumatic way possible.
Narcosis is the first component given.
It is not used to kill because it has been shown that overdosing is not ‘pleasant’ and can be excruciating.
Also, those narcotics are sourced from companies in European countries who are by law not allowed to sell that to the USA if they have reasons to believe their product will be used for executions. (so hospitals are okay, government agencies not so much). Even without that legislation these companies are very unhappy indeed to have their life-saving products associated with capital punishment (and practice that is deemed barbaric in pretty much the entire EU.)
The big problem here is that Sydney doesn’t know how her power works in depth, so the consequences are unknown.
There are two issues here:
What is the target? (And how granular can you get about it?)
– Is the target all free-floating gasses?
– Is the target all gasses and liquids?
– Does it not target gasses at all, but create them?
– Does it affect things inside sealed containers that are within range?
– What about the insides of living beings?
– Does this have safety features that prevent accidentally turning your friends into chlorine?
– When this gas is created does it just dissipate normally or is it held in place by the orb?
How does the replacement occur?
– Does it just displace existing substances by creating or porting in new gasses?
– Does it transform existing materials into the desired gasses?
Now, if she’s just generating a bunch of atomic nitrogen rather than transforming atmospheric gas, you will have that elemental nitrogen react and bind with the best material nearby, probably creating a bunch of nitrogen gas and nitrous oxide and displacing the rest of the air. This would be fairly harmless.
If she’s transforming oxygen into nitrogen at the atomic level then you might end up with some weirdness such as carbon nitrides.
More likely it transforms whole molecules of O2, CO2 and so on into N2
Now if that effects gasses which are already dissolved in people’s blood, then we get a messy situation.
Your body detects the presence of oxygen in your blood to regulate your blood oxygen and thus your breathing rate. When this breaks down (for example in the case of long-term smokers who develop Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease or COPD) it alternately measures CO2 to determine this. So it could make them hyperventilate, just as their body has no oxygen available with which to feed those muscles causing muscles like the heart and diaphragm to cramp up and die.
If it affects cellular gasses then that’s easily far worse, although the exact nature of the problem is too complex for me to really give an opinion on. Lets just say bad.
In any case, the issue here is that Sydney (and us) don’t know in full how it works.
Argon – everone gets deep voices; helium – everyone gets funny voices … the fun ends once the side effects set in – asphyxiation is not a fun way to die, see here: https://my.clevelandclinic.org/health/diseases/24725-asphyxiation. It takes a couple of minutes and the path there is rather unpleasant – such as the extreme distress and the involuntary defacation and unrination parts.
There are very few ‘good’ ways to die.
Unless, of course you die for whatever cause, then it is all good, because the cause says so. You? not so much.
The Alabama Asphyxiatorhas a better ring to it (and factually more correct) :)
And fewer than one in ten Alabamans will be able to pronounce it.
Or spell it
they’d add another A word and learn to spell and say it in 12 steps.
The interesting bit here is that she’s changing the air *outside* the shield.
She’s done that before, in Galytn. Unlike with lighthook, she knows how to alter gases both inside and outside of the shield.
… In Galytn she didn’t have her shield up at all while using her power to put out the fires.
You are right. I missed that. Good catch.
The unrealistic thing about this is noticing something wrong before collapsing. People who’ve experienced this accidentally have described just switching off like somebody threw a light switch, no warning anything was wrong at all.
They’re demons, they’re tougher than humans
True, demon rank is only -10, while human rank is -25.
Well, humans yeah. We’ve also got one guy here whose lungs don’t seem to care.
They’re specifically not human and nitrogen is apparently poisonous to them, inert gas asphyxiation is not (only) what’s happening.
The unrealistic part would be that they apparently were fine before when the air around them was 78% poisonous gas.
The inhumane argument comes about because “cruel and unusual punishment” is banned in the constitution, so it’s something people can argue in court
Or course the current supreme court means that’s not going to fly
Does that mean cruel punishment is banned and unusual punishment is banned or does that mean punishment that is cruel and unusual is banned?
Could Drákōn ho Athēnaíos argue, “Yes, this punishment is cruel. But it is not unusual”?
I believe it has to be both cruel *and* unusual to be banned. Punishments that aren’t cruel, but are unusual, aren’t banned, and punishments that are usual but cruel typically are allowed.
This was brought up in the autobiography “Catch Me If You Can” (the Leonardo DiCaprio movie took enormous liberties). Frank complained to his lawyer that the French government was torturing him “Isn’t this cruel and unusual punishment?” “Cruel, yes. Unusual, no. They torture all their prisoners.”
From the owner of Guantanamo Bay detention camp and the administration in charge of Abu Ghraib prison in 2003 … Joking about France and torture seems double standard.
The joke could target the second land of the free – France is derived from the name frank or francs in french – originally meaning “free” – and the name France is used back to 1190 –
About torture we are well below our Hollywood infamy…
The movie may have taken enormous liberties but Frank Abagnale seems to taken a lot himself, there’s a lot of what he’s claimed to have done that is contradicted by the evidence
Also the US constitution ban on “cruel and unusual punishment” has no impact on the French justice system…
More murky about this subject torture was outlawed in France in 1780 by Louis XVI with the abolition of “question préparatoire” synonym of torture… 244 years ago…
For the two it’s a consequence of enlightenment philosophy …
And political regime since had ever reestablished it in law , even if in a certain number politics in charge are in denial about it’s usage, Indochina and Algeria are XXth century exemples …
Cruel and Unusual Punishment, as stated in the 8th Amendment has some caselaw and arguments behind it on how it’s been interpreted, and why the Death Penalty is still allowed as a result.
SCOTUS, and the Founding Fathers before SCOTUS weighed in, described the 8th Amendment only as ‘prohibiting
“barbaric” methods of punishment (ie, the reason torture via the rack or beheading is not allowed, or see and why the firing squad has been discontinued in almost every state except Mississippi, Oklahoma, South Carolina, and Utah, although they argue that’s more humane than gas or electrocution so I think that Idaho might have implemented it again), and punishments that are extremely disproportionate to the offense (ie, death penalty for a traffic violation, or unfairly excessive fines – like a $500,000 fine for petty theft – not to mention that would specifically violate the ‘nor excessive fines imposed’ part of the 8th Amendment). Or extended periods of solitary confinement, which is considered torture – watch the movie ‘Murder in the First’ with Kevin Bacon for a good example of Eighth Amendment violations via solitary confinement for extended periods of time.
Basically the individual caselaw on Eighth Amendment arguments tend to be about whether a particular form of the death penalty (or other punishments for crimes) is sufficiently ‘barbaric’ to be a violation.
Also Roper vs Simmons determined that life imprisonment for juvenile offenders without the possibility of parole for non-homicide offenses was considered a violation of the 8th amendment as well.
So it’s sort of a moot point to ask if a punishment is cruel but not unusual. The court will just ask if it’s barbaric by the standard accepted practices, and based on the crime committed and other aspects of the defendant and the details of his or her crime.
I believe anything that significantly mutilates the body is automatically counted as “cruel and unusual.” For example, I believe the case that took hanging off the table was a morbidly obese murderer, whose attorneys successfully argued hanging would count as cruel and unusual thanks to the fact that, with his exceptional weight, it was pretty much guaranteed to rip his head off rather than merely breaking his neck (the fact some condemned didn’t suffer a broken neck and near-immediate unconsciousness, but instead slowly and painfully asphyxiated, meant hanging was already on thin ice). So they zapped him instead.
The “mutiliates the body” part is probably why death-by-50-shotguns (or something like the shotgun collar from one of the Saw movies… or just a choker made of detcord) isn’t an option.
“I believe anything that significantly mutilates the body is automatically counted as “cruel and unusual.” ”
That’s not ‘automatically’ counted. It would still require an argument to be made on why it’s barbaric enough to be considered ‘cruel and unusual punishment’ although the firing squad technically does that and that’s legal in 5 states (even if it hasnt been used in decades). But I could see that being considered ‘barbaric’ in most courtroom decisions, especially in the methods you just described in the end… since that goes beyond ‘execution’ and straight into torture territory, and SCOTUS has continually ruled that torture is cruel and unusual punishment in violation of the 8th Amendment. Although…. they then wind up getting into detail about what is defined as ‘torture’ or ‘enhanced interrogation’ (pretty sure most people consider it torture).
“I believe the case that took hanging off the table was a morbidly obese murderer, whose attorneys successfully argued hanging would count as cruel and unusual thanks to the fact that, with his exceptional weight, it was pretty much guaranteed to rip his head off rather than merely breaking his neck”
I’m actually familiar with this – and it did not ‘take hanging off the table.’ Mitchell Rupe in 1994. It just delayed the execution for several years and he wound up dying in prison from illness before all the appeals could be used. Although it was definitely a good argument – but even if it did wind up working, it wouldnt take hanging off the table in general – just for that particular prisoner (since as you correctly described, hanging is meant to break the neck in one quick jerk, not strangle and definitely not decapitate, which his weight would have made possible).
I also think you might be confusing two different cases – Mitchell Rupe and Richard Cooey (Cooey vs Kerns I think) – Cooey was killed by lethal injection though, not electrocution, after he argued that his obesity + the existence of lethal injection made hanging cruel and unusual punishment for someone of his weight.
SCOTUS has not ruled hanging in general to be ‘cruel and unusual punishment’ though in any case, and one state – New Hampshire, still allows it as a form of execution. Delaware used to as well but the last hanging execution in Delaware was in 1996 (Delaware has since struck down the death penalty in any case in 2016, not just hanging).
Fact
Sawed off double barrel shotgun of buckshot to the back of the head kills the condemned before the brain registers anything but the noise at best. This due to the transmission speed of nerves.
downside- executioner has to wear full wet weather gear.
I know that some states have argued that firing squad with headshots is less cruel and unusual than lethal injection or electric chair because the prisoner can die faster before the brain can register the pain, but I might be mistaken since I haven’t really read the arguments on that – just summaries.
The guillotine seems like a more practical option.
Yeah, they might take a little while to actually die, but disconnected from their lungs you can’t hear them screaming. Worst case you see some unpleasant expressions, and they’re hard to pick up when the head is in the basket.
Hahaha, IIRC, it’s usually interpreted as neither/nor.
In her ongoing stupidity, Sydney has also killed every animal in range in that forest, especially if the demons were meant to be tougher than human. Fortunately nitrogen is slightly lighter than oxygen, so at least she probably hasn’t killed anyone in a nearby town.
Surely the animals who were tough enough to stick around while demons and supers threw down in a forest fire won’t be hurt by a little supercilious commentary.
Yeah, what are a few warcrimes between friends, like gassing forests next to commercial areas?
1) Most likely any animals in the area ran away when the forest caught fire.
2) It’s a very small area she’s done this effect to – notice that Harem is standing not TOO far away and is out of the range of the effect.
Harem is likely the best bet for
A: Calling in and updating evac.
B: Vorping in oxygen masks, including for one of herself for
C: Applying and checking oxygen masks to each of the fallen
D: Consulting Arc Light for Alternate Demon Biology / First Responder Treatment
E: Interrupting a Lunch with inappropriate situational reactions stumbling into the ticklish magic of Succubus confrontation.
F: All of the above.
All true!!! :)
Wait, now she’s panicking about someone dying? Wasn’t that always a huge risk with this whole thing, or do they have some kind of super-immortality field or Ankhs of Reincarnation set up for everyone?
Why not earlier when they were pounding away at a shield of unknown strength? Either they can’t expect to do much damage because they’re holding back a lot so they can stop their strike if it actually penetrates, or they’re hitting it full-force and just hoping very badly that it… doesn’t fall? Because if it does now they’re murderers?
The whole “demons solve things with violence” thing has to involve a lot of dying of demons are anywhere near as fragile as humans. The difference between alive and in fighting shape and dead is a factor of millimeters.
To keep it non-lethal you’d need to use wrestling or something like that which doesn’t involve a lot of impacts where you suddenly discover the person you’re hitting turns to paste when hit by what you consider to be testing-the-waters punch.
And in the case of superpowers like Swolethulhu vs humans, there may not be any punch he can deliver that can reliably dissuade a human without risk of killing them (on top of the superstrength, humans can die from tripping).
This is a common trope in comics and movies. Super-powered full-lethal attack stopped by a super shield that the attacker didn’t know about. Like Thor attacking Cap. America early in the first Avengers movie. The viewers are supposed to just ignore the attempted murder, I guess.
That, and it’s possible the demons started with less-than-lethal, but kept amping up the hits out of frustration when the shield kept blocking them. This is most likely because Parfait is also in the shield; a full-power swing without the shield could have hit her along with Sidney. They are now in full adrenaline attack mode, and aren’t worried about collateral damage.
Also possible the demons went full-lethal from the start, because they’re demons.
In spite of this, Sydney wants to resolve everything without death because it would prove she’s superior and also because they were friends of her friend.
Of course, Sydney’s panic is reasonable.
But why would Parfait would be panicking only now that her demon friends might die and not earlier when Sydney might have? She doesn’t know how durable the shield is.
Parfait has been hanging out with Sydney, caught up with Dabbler, has spent time with deus who has a good knowledge of the potential problems, was in the area when Sydney converted a large section of land to glass and has had a chance to look for information on Sydney on the internet
She’s probably got a fair idea of how to Sydney’s shield is
It is a common trope, but I think often more modern writing has been better about abusing it and taking the subject lightly and instead setting up things like very ritualized forms of combat or emphasizing the huge risks involved in trying to take someone down non-lethally instead of shrugging shoulders and pretending it isn’t a weird and potentially real-life dangerous trope.
Well she doesnt want to kill them in the first place, since they’re Parfait’s friends (according to Parfait) after all.
Oh but if Sydney dies it would be fine? Why only panic now?
I’m confused about your post. Where was Sydney in danger of dying? There’s no chance that her shield can be breached by these guys – it’s withstood kaiju world-destroyer level explosions and Maxima’s plasma blast. The Kaiju world destroyer explosion’s the only thing that even might have taxed the shield for a few seconds – and the shield can still be upgraded.
Parfait does not know how strong Sydney’s shield is, and thus does not know how much, or little, danger they’re in. Thus, it might be warranted for her to show some concern.
SHe has some idea – she’s been in it before in Galytn and it kept her safe from anything that Darude was doing.
Plus we do not know how much Sydney has told her about the shield during their girl’s night out before the lust aura started, but admittedly since it wasn’t shown on screen, I can’t exactly use that as proof of her knowledge.
We’re talking about a race that has access to both mana and healing potions, and short fuses. So fighting is just how they argue. Since they are all young and dumb, they don’t understand that humans fight to KILL, not just settle disputes. Sydney knows that none of them can reach her and Parfait, and they clearly won’t listen to reason, so she’s using (to her) a harmless way of ending the fight. Sydney needs a HUGE amount of education about the various races and what is a “safe” way to pacify each one. As far as the big squid guy, I think it’s time she wraps him up in the light hook and give him the same treatment she gave Brelx.
Oh yes, I understand Sydney, it’s Parfait that boggles my mind.
But I don’t think “humans fight to kill” is enough to explain it. Fighting people whose capabilities you’re uncertain of on a regular basis is just in general going to involve a lot of killing people because “just injuring someone so they can be healed by healing potion” is a very difficult thing to do reliably in a fight due to the difference between fighting and dead being hair thin.
You would expect a huge toll of dead people from the random conflict in general that’s kind of normalized as a very common cause of death. You’d need to do huge amounts of homework on the capabilities of every species you fight to avoid it, and even then you might run into someone with allergies or an old neck injury or something and whoops dispute settling is now adding to the annual dispute manslaughter numbers.
>due to the difference between fighting and dead being hair thin.
For humans, yeah. Demons; who knows?
I was exaggerating of course, but only a little. Outside of some circles, fighting for humans is a last resort, and these demons/internals seem to go at it over the last slice of pizza. Parfait is a piece of work, I’m sure we haven’t seen the last of her. I keep thinking of “I Dream Of Jennie” meets “Diablo 2” or “Doom”. (Oops, sorry master) etc…
It’s a little hard to tell for sure, but it looks to me like they might just be hitting areas of the shield where their attacks won’t hit anyone who was inside if it failed suddenly.
That would have to be a very generous interpretation, considering that axe demon is swigning down at an angle that is likely to hit her in the back, fire demons beam seems
to be aimed straight at her back too and cthuldude seems to just be trying to squish her. And that’s with having a full view as readers that we have, Sydney only has her own perspective to deal with.
Parfaits sudden concern for the demons lived does seem strange after she seemingly didn’t have any for the demons tarting the violence to begin with.
… wait…she can change the gas in lungs?….well if people suddenly start talking with high pitched or low pitched voices,we know who to blame.
Just the act of breathing does that, Sydney converted all the gas in the air to pure nitrogen to put out the fire and to knock out her attackers. She didn’t know it could poison any of them. It appears that demons or infernals can’t breathe nitrogen without being poisoned I guess? Which is odd since Earth’s atmosphere is 78% nitrogen. Nitrogen won’t effect the voice since most of what we breathe is nitrogen. You would just start to pant and feel very tired.
Helium is also inert enough to put out fires but has the benefit of being lighter than air and will be displaced rather quickly. It would also have had the benefit of being obvious once their voices sounded funny giving them a chance to back off and de-escalate.
Some exp pips down the line.
“I cast fartbreath, for thou voice is most foul. Let thee taste and smell thy own words.”
/Halo in her Shakespeare phase of role-play.
For the individual orb user, WMD grade Spice breath seems more appropriate. Likely no need to resort to aerosolized GRAKS pushed out in a glowing lightshow, like some Dragon Ball Super Aura.
Oxide? They already have Oxygen in the area. Nitrous Oxide just means one atom of Oxygen has bonded with 2 atoms of Nitrogen. You’d still need a catalyst. Hopefully you don’t accidently catalyze some oil with your nitrogen.
More than just a catalyst. Nitrogen bond is very very hard to break. People have literally won Nobel prizes for figuring out better ways to make nitrogen chemical processes work in a less energy-expensive manner (eg: Franz Haber, 1918). It’s not just a question of putting the right stuff together in a room.
Nitrous oxide, halothane, isoflurane, desflurane, sevoflurane, enflurane, and methoxyflurane are all commonly used inhaled anesthetics.
It should be fine (source – my brother is an anesthesiologist).
I again point to Batman vs Superwoman.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l3KgCnv8mvs
“It’s not a smoke bomb – it’s anesthetic gas.”
:)
Who gets sentenced to death and how the death penalty is applied are two separate issues. Rich people hire competent lawyers, poor people… We’ve occasionally had misconduct issues, withheld or falsified evidence, falsified lab tests… So like everything else, the justice system isn’t human proof. Application side, we confiscate enough narcotics every year to kill millions. The problem there is lawyers. So the first thing we do, we kill all the lawyers.
Ahem!!!!!!
Slow down there, Dick the Butcher! :)
I must agree here. there are times when lawyers are irritating (pineapple on pizza, puns, arguing about the the verb to be, etc.) but they are needed. otherwise where would I get my ninja minions?
Hey, pineapple on pizza is doable. You just have to balance the pineapple with something tart, like pepperoni. Most “Hawaiian Pizzas” use ham (Which is also sweet-ish) and thus make an inadequately tasty pizza.
For a third ingredient, I go with something neutral, like Mushrooms or black olives, to keep the sweet/savory balance intact.
As someone who lives in New York, land of real pizza, I am forced to send a token ninja hit squad for any positive approval of pineapple on pizza. Although your post does seem well-argued, so I will only be sending a trainee group of hit squad ninjas.
No, the land of real pizzas is Naples 40°50′N 14°15′E in Italy and not New York 40°42′46″N 74°00′22″W in USA…
And pizzas are an Italian dish …
Italian population is 58 851 000 , and if even some american can apply for Italian citizenship by jure sanguinis ( https://www.italiandualcitizenship.net/italian-citizenship-by-descent ) there is more Italian citizens in Italy than in US.
“No, the land of real pizzas is Naples 40°50′N 14°15′E in Italy and not New York 40°42′46″N 74°00′22″W in USA…”
Nope. Real pizza is a New York thing. Italy’s ‘pizza’ is just the precursor. Italians from Brooklyn perfected the dish. :)
“And pizzas are an Italian dish …”
Italian-Americans! :)
“there is more Italian citizens in Italy than in US.”
Yes, and most of the good Italian pizza makers are in the US. Specifically Brooklyn, Staten Island, and Queens, in that order. Those who claim they’re also in Chicago, Illinois in suitable numbers are a rogue element who think that deep dish pizza is pizza.
Queue Jon Stewart rant.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jCgYMFtxUUw
deep dish IS pizza. good pizza even. sadly Uno’s seems to have left the non Chicago area.
“So lemme ‘splain somethin. Deep dish pizza is not only not better than New York pizza… it’s not pizza.
It’s a f***in’ casserole. I’m surprised you haven’t thought to complete your deep dish pizza by puttin’ some canned onion rings on top of it. It’s a cornbread biscuit that you melted cheese on and then, in defiance of God and man and all things holy, you poured uncooked marinara sauce atop the cheese! ATOP! The cheese! On top – the sauce… naked! Cold! On display like some sorta sauce whore!
Y’know the expression ‘There’s no such thing as bad sex or bad pizza?’ Your pizza is like sex with a corpse made of sandpaper! Lemme tell you somethin’! This is not pizza! This is tomato soup in a bread bowl! This… is an above ground marinara swimming pool for rats! Lemme tell ya somethin about your f***in’ ‘not-pizza!’ I wanna know when I get drunk and pass out on my pizza that I’m not gonna drown. Lemme tell ya somethin’ – I lookat this! I lookat this – marone, you sunovabeech, I lookat this – nyaaaaaah! Gabagool! I lookat this – when I look at your deep dish f***in’ ‘pizza’ I don’t know whether to eat it or throw a coin in it and make a wish. And if I made a wish, it would be that I wish for some REAL f***in’ pizza!
Now… now, in all due respect I realize it’s very cold in Chicago, very cold. Very windy. You need to, I dunno, have a pizza and maybe cut it open and climb inside it like a Tauntaun to keep warm?
Seriously, who you kidding? Who uses an iron skillet to make a pizza? You don’t use an iron skillet to make a pizza – you use an iron skillet to fend off someone who tries to serve you f****** pizza made in a skillet.
Here’s how I know I’m right. You call it ‘Chicago-style pizza,’ you call it deep dish pizza, stuffed pizza… you know what we call it?
You know what we call this? (Takes out a slice of pizza) Pizza!”
– Jon Stewart
I have one contention to make here: There’s no such thing as bad pizza because if it’s bad, it’s not really pizza, no matter what other properties it might have.
isn’t Pizza technically Oriental?
You are thinking spaghetti
Just going to drop this bit of arcana here: “Hawaiian pizza” was invented in Canada. Specifically Chatham-Kent, Ontario, by Greek-born Canadian Sam Panopoulos. Source: Google and Wikipedia.
So in addition to being an abomination, it is a lie :)
its kind of like French fries. I somehow doubt that the French had anything to do with them. or like Pizza the French version resembles the American version about as much as wild corn looks like the corn grown in Iowa, Ohio or other states of less note to me.
Actually, I know the reason that it’s called french fries. It was called french fries because American soldiers in Belgium saw them frying potatoes and figured they were French because they spoke French. Seriously look it up. :-)
Wikipedia is absolutely the worst source for accurate information imaginable. Remember, it can be edited by any chimpanzee with a keyboard, and has clear biases in prominent display.
And also… How many of us WANT to duke it out with Social Security or the IRS?
I’ve felt this way for 50 years and I haven’t killed anybody yet. It’s a practicality issue.
As an individual you can’t kill enough to matter (although culling the dynasties running things in South Carolina might be doable). You need to be running a political party that’s able to build and release a bio-weapon to get anything done.
I have to be honest, if I worked for the State Department and Pickastan said they weren’t going to extradite serial rapist/murderer/cannibal Psycho Sam, I let them keep him.
My issue with her using this tactic is that her orbs are already down on power as far as we know. Their recharge hasn’t been addressed. So a move that is requiring the reactivation of her orbs to do something that was already around when she was stressing the orbs seems overly reckless for her. Especially when she already knows she can kick their asses with the lighthook at relatively low cost.
The difference is she used a LOT more power back in Galytn than this. A huge amount of power, to both turn the desert into obsidian, THEN put out all of the fires. Then half way back to the US at mach whatever she was going at.
Yeah, but compared to the amount of air she transmuted before, this is nothing. It’s like saying, “She had trouble with flying halfway around the world at hypersonic speed, how is she risking drifting across the room?”
Dabbler figured out that recharge on their own over time, Sydney was reckless to use them like she did to help Max take down Darude is all. Think camera flash, each time you use it, it takes a moment or two to build up a charge in the coil so it can flash again (depending on how modern the flash is).
Didn’t I say this already? Archon needs to set up some chemistry safety classes for Sydney ASAP.
At the very least, she should be required to read the MSDS on any gas she plans on creating in massive quantities.
Okay I have to admit,this was a pretty smart way to take them out. She can take out Whatevercthulusnameis by using the lighthook now.
are you suggesting she should whip it? whip it good?
No. No I am not suggesting that.
No.
It’s a problem that has come along, and something has gone wrong, so while I don’t think there’s any cream that’s at risk of sitting out too long, there really is only one proper course of action to take in this situation. Particularly when you consider a good time has indeed just turned around, and killing Parfait’s friends is something Sydney would never live down, but she really can’t let any of them get away.
*Bows*
Carl, if you live I hope you see this….
Is Sidney’s orb actually changing oxygen atoms into nitrogen atoms? ’cause that would take many ginormous fuck-tons of power/energy to accomplish, even for a small area. It’d be more energy-cost effective to just separate and drive off the local oxygen atoms rather than change them nuclearly and without giving off lethal amounts of radiation.
Her orb could literally open gateways that could only be achieved on capital ships of advanced alien civilizations, I don’t think overcoming strong nuclear force is that big of deal for it.
Why burn an oil barrel worth of gasoline to achieve a result that could be accomplished with a teaspoon of gas and a different method in the same amount of time?
I’m disappointed that Aster took part in the fight, given that he already accepted Parfait’s reasoning and decision. Peer pressure’s quite the thing.
Yeah, that is a bit surprising. I’m guessing it’s a bit of a combination of feeling like he’s got to support his friends, and, being a demon, why pass on a fight that’s happening anyway?
Yeah. It just really felt like he was the reasonable one leading up to this. Including telling Brelx that helping was cheating during the no-sex succ-off.
But I guess that for demons, fighting is a lot more casual an activity even for the chill ones.
One atmosphere of nitrogen would produce “Unnoticeable/minor symptoms such as subtle changes in behaviour” per https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4337274/#:~:text=Breathing%20compressed%20air%20at%20pressures,drugs%20%5B26%2C27%5D.
Damage from “the bends” wouldn’t exist because there is no reduction in pressure.
Death by asphyxiation, however, would occur in a few minutes, with increasing brain damage before that. Swol-cthulthu should surrender before they all die. From a moral standpoint, the attacks they are using against Sidney would be lethal to an unshielded human, so she is justified in using similar potentially lethal force.
I remember Scarlet Witch during a breakout at Project: Pegasus doing something kind of similar, except she altered probabilities to cause all the CO2 in the air to cluster around Electro’s head to choke him out instead of the N2.
A little too close to the real life news. Man being executed by nitrogen today.
Haha, that’s (un?)fortunate timing with the Alabama execution approval. I didn’t even make the connection ’til you mentioned it. This was just what I was expecting since she’d already have the nitrogen turned on for the fire.
So for Demons, Nitrogen reacts like Carbon Monoxide in Humans? It cant be all Demons or Tom would not have an army romping around in Africa and dream of someday adding Earth to his collection (or they have sigils of “life support” on their bodies or person) Succubi are likely exempt because they are a created race and meant to go anywhere as a honeypot spy-assassin.
Could it be past 80%, Nitrogen begins to react that way with Demons??
Unless Parfait and Swolethulu is layperson-wrong, maybe its the leader of the pack that gets the monoxide reaction?
Wait, so does Sydney heating these guys means she won? Does she have authority in succ-u-land now?
Yeah, poisoning doesn’t make sense. They were already breathing air that was 78% Nitrogen, a ~25% increase in partial pressure is a really shallow gradient, less than what someone experiences driving from Leadville to Miami.
The demons would have to be far more sensitive to Nitrogen than Humans are, which would be weird. Possible, but weird. Maybe Demon worlds tend to have different gas mixes in their atmospheres? But Sydney would have no way to know they are so sensitive to an inert gas.
Oxygen deprivation being more dangerous than she knows? Yes. Nitrogen [i]poisoning[/i]? Seems unlikely.
big dude is a deep sea demon, nitrogen for him mean high pressure nitrogen poisoning, that doesn’t happen at ground level pressure
but yeah, the risk of asphyxiation is real, especially since they wouldn’t FEEL like asphyxiating, what our body feel asphyxiating is the high concentration of CO2 in our blood, but breathing pure nitrogen would remove the carbon dioxide as much as the oxygen out of your system, and you wouldn’t detect it, you’ll just get tired, get cramps, and go unconscious, to death if not oxygenated asap
Nitrogen poisoning is just silly – the air was mostly nitrogen to begin with.
This right here, air is mostly nitrogen then argon and a few other noble gases and then about seven and a half percent oxygen. Pure oxygen is really bad for us cause a whole bunch of problems and you have to monitor a person that is on it very carefully. So demons would have a problem on our world to begin with if nitrogen is their kryptonite, like the stupid aliens in Signs you attack a world that is covered in the stuff you can’t handle.
Maybe she accidentally made N instead of N2, and she has nitrated the hell out of their lung tissue? But an ambulance won’t be able to fix that …
Nah, atomic Nitrogen is so unstable that the resulting fireball when it recombined into N2 would make a mere thermobaric bomb look puny. You basically never see atomic Nitrogen outside of low density plasma.
The standard figures for the composition of air are: 78% Nitrogen, 21% Oxygen, 1% Argon, and traces of other gases. Water vapour varies, so the standard figures list “dry air”, but it’s typically around 1%.
If you want a simple rule of thumb, the atmosphere is 4 parts Nitrogen to 1 part Oxygen.
It’d really make more sense to just have the O2 used to make a mess of CO2 to accomplish the same thing. Plus it’s heavier so it’ll stay at ground lvl. That’s just a simple chemical bond, and you wont be flirting with fusion and fission to change atoms completely into one another and back. Wont be putting out many fires with the energy releases those involve.
That demon is just tryi9ng to fake her out.
Honestly not interested in getting into politics here, death sentence validity wise, but as a welder who knows secondhand stories about hangers with inert argon atmospheres, I do know a bit about noble gas asphyxiation. And hank green has a short about helium asphyxiation too I think.
Basically IF it was not for some noise of gas pumps or anything, or hissing nitrogen canisters, decompressive mist, etc., they wouldn’t know it was happening until at most five seconds before they pass out. You might have some achey joints, but it woundn’t be The body can detect a buildup of CO², not a lack of oxygen. If its possible to breath out. You’re not breathing increasingly CO² rich air. Then there is nothing the human body detects.
Dave, I think the point of not having an “overkill firing squad” is that death row inmates sometimes have family too, who might maybe want an open casket funeral. Also, having someone stand near a ton of claymores would be incredibly distressing. They try not to stress the people they’re killing, usually. The whole controversy is to not be a
Funny how even big, tough warrior type have to breathe sometime.
Physical strength matters. Mental strength matters. Weapons and equipment loadout matters.
But being able to BREATHE matters more.
Er, human warriors need to breathe.
Aliens/demons/whatever? Who knows.
**Wouldn’t be painful at all. Not remotely like CO² or monoxide poisoning can be… like drowning in smoke.
**Not to be the same vicious, vengeful monsters as they are reportedly killing. But im NOT getting into it. It is a flawed system, where science matters less than heresay sometimes. More than occasionally. Yet… p#dos tho…. *Eyes slowly turn to woodchipper*………. Not….. Not getting into it.
Sorry, rushed my comment during my 15, on mobile. You cant easily scroll on my phone I guess.
Instead of Nitrogen, she should have used Helium. Sure, it would rise quickly, but she could constantly replenish it down low, and turn it back up high, creating a bubble of helium around her bubble. Not only would it knock them all out, it would make their voices high and squeaky, which would be embarrassing to a bunch of macho demons.
Matter transformation might not be what is at play here. Sydney’s trick might simply be getting all the oxygen to leave the area while getting nitrogen outside the area to replace it. Gas molecules move in a random walk; there’s nothing that says the air can’t reorder itself by element, it’s just really,really unlikely. Also, from Parfait’s reaction, demons might have a sensitivity to high concentrations of nitrogen that humans don’t know about.
I’ve always felt that’s the best way to kill someone (and to die myself if I had the option) – a small explosive charge placed at the base of my skull, just powerful enough to turn my head into a fine mist. I’m not in favor of government executions for the same reason as Dave, but that’s definitely my preferred method of death if you’re trying to inflict it without pain or torture, whether execution or otherwise.
Amanda Waller, is that you?
It’s not so much ‘nitrogen poisoning’ as lack of O2 via displacement/dilution of the air in the room. The ‘news’ stories on the upcoming criminal removal are virtually all so wildly off the mark that it’s laughable, you can tell that not one ‘journalist’ spent ten minutes looking anything up but just picked the scariest sounding term they assumed nobody else would be familiar with and ran with that.
What would have been better would have been if the State had chosen to use carbon dioxide as the agent of choice.
That way they could have gotten away with a small room and a couple of fire extinguishers, a lot faster and much cheaper, as well as giving the ‘news’ space for lots of follow on stories when the gorebull warmists melt down :)
Take this moment to lighthook them all into a nice, neat pile then put the shield over them so they can’t get out, restore the atmosphere inside, and wait for the rest of the team to arrive.
Sydney has yet to project her shield anywhere but centered on herself. She either does not know how, or does not have the ability to do so.
Parfait seems to be implying that nitrogen is specifically poisonous to demons…but the atmosphere is already 70% nitrogen. If you breathed in 70% mustard gas, you’d be very dead.
A classic since april 25th 1792 a guillotine , less gruesome … than US method…
I am against capital punishment, but between a guillotine, and the last fumble in US…
And the fabrication is doable even by a creationist…
The guillotine was a very gruesome way to go, actually. Yes, the blade was very heavy, but it also had a tendency to get dull very quickly. The lucky ones were able to bribe the executioner to sharpen the darned thing before having their heads loped off. The others… well, let’s just say it was not a quick death.
False the blade + weigh is about 40 kg ( about 90 lbs) and fall from 2,30 m (about 7’6″)
Some physics
V² = 2gh
v²=2×9.8×2,3=45,8
Ec=1/2 m v²
1/2 m = 40/2= 20
Ec=20×45,8 = 916 J about 708 feet pound
To break a brick 50 J are needed.
It’s a legend a sword or a cleaver don’t need to be razor sharp to cut..
And the first execution by electric chair was botched in 1890 and very gruesome… Search about William Kemmler .. and described at this time as “Far Worse Than Hanging” and “They would have done better using an axe”.
This is also why they use the wet sponge. And why that guy in Green Mile is such an asshole for making sure that one guy didn’t get it.
Yeah, and that arsehole got his just deserts (can’t remember if it was shown in the movie, but certainly in the book)
Axes were the problem, not guillotines. Swinging that axe could take 2-3 strikes sometimes.
The guillotine was used incorrectly.
For a painless death, it should have been blunt and it should have been the head rather than on the neck on the block.
I do not understand how Mr Guillotine got this wrong, as he was ostensibly trying to create a machine to deliver a painless death. He had no desire for his name to be associated with his invention, but never acknowledged that his invention was a huge blunder.
Efcetiveness of guillotine is intently superior to electric chair historically only one execution was botched between 1792 and 1977 it’s the Pierre Hébrard execution at Abli in 1831 due to a sabotage…
And in 1905 when Languille was beaheaded the alleged 30 second , counted by Dr Beaurieux is a false the Dr Beaurieux had never catched the head.
Concusuion by chrush of vertebrae in spinal cord is not fatal in all cases at the contrary of beheading.
And if you except the terror.. where about 90% where guillotined it had slowed , the last raise was during Algeria war – 244 victims- , between 1969 and 1981 6 persons where beheaded 1 per two years if it was reported to US population it would be two per year.
The last capital execution in France occurred in 1977.
The gruesomeness of an execution had contributed against it’s trivialization.
We have a federal/constitutional ban on *proscribing* Cruel and Unusual Punishment, but I have been curious if there’s ever any death row inmates that *request* at least an *Unusual* method of death (Cruel would still be a hard no, even if they ask). Like if there’s ever been someone who *wanted* to be thrown into a volcano, either as a religious self-sacrifice, or because they think it’d be awesome.
On another extreme; I doubt there’s many scientifically-minded people on death row who’d at least want their death to advance scientific progress, and sign up for risky, likely-to-almost-certainly-lethal experiments. Or people who have multiple life sentences could also do so: so if they survive it, they get a lifetime or two taken off, equivalent to how much they should have died.
For example, in this comic’s universe: Vehemence.
Say, if Maxima did decide to field-execute him back at the first fight, or Archon/the government decided he was too dangerous to live, and executed him:
He’s already *requested* to be allowed to go to hell, so he can fight to his heart’s content. If he was executed: Where do you think he’d end up?
Not sure if hell is another dimmension , and no damned showed in comics..
It’s much more analogy and not the christian hell , before Christianity -the major part of history – hell is described as the “underworld” with entrances from the land of the living.
Hel is the female godness of the “underworld” in norse mythology and Hel in old norse means “underworld”.
With only six stable lava lakes in the entire world I am not even sure that USA owns one.
Doesn’t this drain the heck out of the orbs? Why not simply grab them with the lighthook? Seems a lot safer.
Because she has a limited number of hooks and there are more demons than she has?
She has two, and they are rilly rilly stretchy
doubt this would cause much of a diplomatic incident given demonic ethics. They’d probably, as a whole take it as ‘do you think you’d be less dead if you had messed with her actual master? This is on upyou fir not prepping for lateral attacks’
But on your death penalty thing
1) yeah big reason for me to be against it is the whole problem with our judicial system and Human judicial systems in general. Wrongful prosecution rates would need to be waaaay the hell lower for me to even consider it. Still think it should exist as the zoroastrians had it though. Someone in an office of political power lies? INTO THE FIRE PIT! but that has more to do with me thinking that the punishments for those who abuse power should be commiserately higher
2) most ethical death penalty would almost certainly be simply knocking someone out the lowering the o2 levels in a sealed chamber until they asphyxiated in their sleep. Like those suicide assistance machines. But honestky? I like the red mist method more because I feel an execution SHOULD be brutal to watch and as painless as possible for the victim. People shouldn’t be able to look on it and dismiss it.