Any Experience with Powerheads?

[SanePsycho]

Firstly: This post is not here to encourage or inform anyone; I'm only asking a question and am only including details necessary to that question (or questions), and to provide context/background. If I slip up in that regard please lmk.

Anyways; my big issue with suicide, being one who works in healthcare and knows the sequence of events that would occur in a suicide attempt, is that most popular forms of suicide leave a high chance of surviving, potentially with a debilitating injury, and a hospital bill to go with. Never mind laws that may exist as to how being previously hospitalized for mental illness may or may not interfere with obtaining a firearm (which, on my research, has the best bang [no pun intended] for buck when weighing success rate to suffering).

Then I randomly saw a video of people scuba diving and they were using this stick to hunt fish. They poke the fish, and the fish dies. I did more research and apparently this is called a powerhead. It's an object, ostensibly the size of a soda can or thereabouts, which caries a single round and fires when thrust hard enough in to a target. Apparently, this is not considered a firearm in the same way that construction tools which use bullets to fire nails into cement aren't considered firearms. Plus, from what I can tell encourages the same variables which make gunshot suicides successful (i.e., the end of the barrel pressed against the head; difficult to do solo). It's also more within my budge, and I can imagine buying more than one to make a rig of sorts.

Thing is; I'm always cautious. I don't care what happens after I die, but it's the psych-up and potential for surviving and/or pain that gets me. I know that the heart stopping isn't enough to immediately stop all brain function (the mind still functions between heartbeats, after all, and contains a reservoir of blood for backup), so even decapitation would be a no-go for me. Based off my experience in the medical field, I believe it'd be a total pulverization of the brain (or the majority of it; especially the frontal lobe and brain stem) that'd be the closest thing to an "off switch".

Long story short; does anyone have any experience with this or has heard any stories of this tool being used for suicide? There is one old article from a medical journal that did a case study on a suicide from this but my University did some budget cuts recently and so I cannot access that article for free.

 

[UnravelingWinter]

You'd be better off buying a .50 cal air rifle on Amazon for $850. Pretty sure it doesn't require a gun license to buy. I was considering it earlier today since I can't get N anymore. There are some videos of youtube of people shooting it at helmets, etc. What discouraged me was that even if I hit the brainstem, it might not be an automatic "off switch" like you said. I thought about shooting myself in the heart with it, but struggling to breath or choking on blood for 5-6 seconds before unconsciousness wouldn't be fun.

 

[SanePsycho]

You'd be better off buying a .50 cal air rifle on Amazon for $850. Pretty sure it doesn't require a gun license to buy. I was considering it earlier today since I can't get N anymore. There are some videos of youtube of people shooting it at helmets, etc. What discouraged me was that even if I hit the brainstem, it might not be an automatic "off switch" like you said. I thought about shooting myself in the heart with it, but struggling to breath or choking on blood for 5-6 seconds before unconsciousness wouldn't be fun.

a Powerhead can be bought for less than $200 from where I can find. 50 cal is a big boy but when you're only shooting in one direction there's diminished returns. I mean for that money, would you honestly have one .50cal air rifle in an intelligently-aimed place or 4 .38 specials also intelligently placed at various angles? Again, I'm definitely biased because I only see survivors, or people who were formerly survivors only to die in my facility. Still, you'd be surprised how few blood vessels are necessary to support livable brain function; the rest of the brain is nothing more than fancy wires.

 

[UnravelingWinter]

a Powerhead can be bought for less than $200 from where I can find. 50 cal is a big boy but when you're only shooting in one direction there's diminished returns. I mean for that money, would you honestly have one .50cal air rifle in an intelligently-aimed place or 4 .38 specials also intelligently placed at various angles? Again, I'm definitely biased because I only see survivors, or people who were formerly survivors only to die in my facility. Still, you'd be surprised how few blood vessels are necessary to support livable brain function; the rest of the brain is nothing more than fancy wires.

If I could engineer something like that, I'd probably just make a guillotine or a head smashing device on a timer.

 

[SanePsycho]

If I could engineer something like that, I'd probably just make a guillotine or a head smashing device on a timer.

Eh; pull a rack and pinion from a junkyard; use a pulley system to ensure all heads hit the skull at the same time at the same time just like a pulley can get two hammers to ring a bell; all you'd pay in addition is the $50 toward a membership in a community workshop and the associated welding class, just to spot-weld some things using equipment already in the workshop. A guillotine is...far from perfect. I've seen patients slit their throats in front of me during house calls. They still react and make noises for some time. It's not like those actions are being initiated from the neck down.

It's just like door fear in skydiving I guess. A person skydiving from the first time has to fight instincts to jump out. Difference use, I've seen people try to do what you say (and a reminder, you referenced $850 as an appropriate budget, before calling it astronomical compared to a guillotine).

Idk. My option requires taking out a steering column and using the amount of money that one might spend on one fire arm to get four projectile-firing devices.

Though I'll say, my question is if you or anyone knows of anyone doing something like this or has research on the subject.

 

[Pain In The Ass]

struggling to breath or choking on blood for 5-6 seconds before unconsciousness wouldn't be fun

5-6 seconds of terror sounds like a very good outcome to me - I think we need to expect a certain degree of displeasure, if our objective is to kill ourselves!

 

[SanePsycho]

5-6 seconds of terror sounds like a very good outcome to me - I think we need to expect a certain degree of displeasure, if our objective is to kill ourselves!

That's just propaganda from a culture that insists that you must continue living. I do not care all that much how people find me. But to insist that all suicide will involve pain and suffering I believe is just the fruit of a culture that defaults to "life" as the default. Death does not require displeasure; to say that it does is only to discourage those who may want or need to cease life.

 

[Pain In The Ass]

That's just propaganda from a culture that insists that you must continue living. I do not care all that much how people find me. But to insist that all suicide will involve pain and suffering I believe is just the fruit of a culture that defaults to "life" as the default. Death does not require displeasure; to say that it does is only to discourage those who may want or need to cease life.

The perspective of your comment is from an ideal world where peaceful euthanasia is legal. The perspective of mine is from the current reality. No 'propaganda' involved.

 

[SanePsycho]

The perspective of your comment is from an ideal world where peaceful euthanasia is legal. The perspective of mine is from the current reality. No 'propaganda' involved.

I beg to differ; there are certainly ways it can be done peacefully. In fact, I've even suggested one here and still waiting to hear how that may compare to other forms of suicide. Nothing I've postulated so far necessitates an "ideal world".

 

[Al_stargate]

That thing must be powerful since it's made to shoot underwater. One would have to devise some sort of pulley to fire it since it's really long. And where would you aim it? Heart? Head? I would try if it can punch through coconut easily before attempting anything. But any kind of trauma injury is not peaceful and hard to actually do. Bullet is small and has more of piercing power, that harpune thing is not small at all. I think it is designed more to catch the animal. Maybe there are different kinds of harpunes that fit in that thing. The only way I can see it working is a well-placed shot to the hearth.

 

[Smart No More]

A guillotine is...far from perfect. I've seen patients slit their throats in front of me during house calls. They still react and make noises for some time. It's not like those actions are being initiated from the neck down.

Are you comparing throat slitting to having your head chopped off?

There's a big difference. The most significant one being a severed spine (along with complete decapitation of course).

Slitting your throat is only half the job of decapitation at the very most. Nobody decapitated is making noise after being decapitated. There may be a few seconds of residual consciousness but the massive drop in blood pressure and shock will see them out in little to no time. Unlike slicing your throat and it being a variable outcome. End of the day, it's just incorrect to assume that a person slitting their own throat and responding and gurgling for a while indicates that decapitation is going to be the same.

 

[SanePsycho]

Are you comparing throat slitting to having your head chopped off?

There's a big difference. The most significant one being a severed spine (along with complete decapitation of course).

Slitting your throat is only half the job of decapitation at the very most. Nobody decapitated is making noise after being decapitated. There may be a few seconds of residual consciousness but the massive drop in blood pressure and shock will see them out in little to no time. Unlike slicing your throat and it being a variable outcome. End of the day, it's just incorrect to assume that a person slitting their own throat and responding and gurgling for a while indicates that decapitation is going to be the same.

You are correct and it was a poorly-worded statement meant only as a side note. All I meant was that obviously your brain doesn't need a constant blood flow; it manages to survive inbetween heartbeats. It (or rather the skull) also maintains a reserve of blood. No reason to think that death would be immediate but I think that's just us agreeing vis-a-vis the whole shock and blood pressure thing.

That thing must be powerful since it's made to shoot underwater. One would have to devise some sort of pulley to fire it since it's really long. And where would you aim it? Heart? Head? I would try if it can punch through coconut easily before attempting anything. But any kind of trauma injury is not peaceful and hard to actually do. Bullet is small and has more of piercing power, that harpune thing is not small at all. I think it is designed more to catch the animal. Maybe there are different kinds of harpunes that fit in that thing. The only way I can see it working is a well-placed shot to the hearth.

It only fires when sufficient contact is made with a solid(ish) object. So from the bullet's perspective it only enters flesh. It's like a stapler; except besides a staple it's a bullet, and besides being activated by a lever-type motion it's activated via being pushed from behind (again, the same sort of tech that lets construction workers drive metal rods through cement via hammering a round that's been loaded in to a special tool). It seems to most commonly come supporting rounds between .32 and .45

I was thinking of a rack and pinion type of system, or maybe just a simple pulley. Multiple of these powerheads (removed from these shafts) aimed strategically at certain parts of my skull. All of which raise simultaneously with a single pull of some rope or string, and then fall and swing in an arc once that string/rope is let go. A lead weight could be placed behind the powerheads to give extra force.

I'm not sure how practical this would be to the average Joe; but given I've got a semi-respectable workshop and plenty of scrap, I could definitely rig something like this up I think. No different than using a pulley to have a hammer hit a bell. Except it's multiple hammers, and the bell is my head.

 

[SanePsycho]

Okay so due to everyone lying awe in wait I will be sure to put up some schematics once I've drawn them up.