Method Injecting icecold water into the bloodstream

[Jona]

I would be interested to know if and when injecting ice-cold water into the bloodstream with a syringe would lead to death.


Would a syringe be sufficient, or would a catheter and bag of cold water be required?

Would this work to ctb, and would it be very painful?

Does anyone here know anything about this?

 

[Arvayn]

In theory, this CAN kill you, but it would be incredibly painful and take a long time, as well as leave you with long-term vascular dysfunction in the event that you survive (which is, by the way, very likely). You'd need to target multiple major vessels at once in order to get the best results, and some of them are in pretty difficult spots to get to.

First off, the water is not heated to the body's internal temperature, which will cause sudden cooling of your blood vessels and, eventually, it will also make its way to your heart. This will cause arrhythmia and it will cause the area you injected the water into to stiffen up and tighten. Your blood will thicken, resulting in hypoxia, leading to slow and drawn out cell death in that area, akin to frostbite.
Second off, assuming that you go through with this and inject a large amount of water into several of your key veins, this will cause a reaction called hemolysis, which causes your blood cells to violently burst open. You'll enter shock and most likely fall unconscious, but not before suffering involuntary spasms, uncontrollable shivering and intense chest pain. When you do wake up, which is likely, you'll have suffered permanent damage.

For best results, you'd have to rapidly inject a lot of water-- at least a liter to be safe, I'd reckon-- into multiple veins that are close to your heart, like your subclavian and inferior vena cava, in order to attack your heart from multiple angles simultaneously, hoping that this will induce cardiac arrest. The problem is that your body is prepared for this, and your blood will rapidly clot and thicken in response, to prevent any of the water from reaching your vital organs. So, realistically, you'd have to try and cause severe clotting in almost every cardiovascular pathway. Not very easy.

In a nutshell, this won't work unless you are strapped down to a table and someone else does it for you, and even then, you'll have an agonizing death.

 

[mychois]

Why cold water in the bloodstream would cause (instant) death?

 

[TheEmptyVoid]

Cold slows down metabolism, what about hot boiling water?

 

[Arvayn]

Why cold water in the bloodstream would cause (instant) death?

It would not cause instant death, though it is likely to cause death if you merely inject enough of it into the correct veins, at sufficiently close spots to vital organs. A very, very unpleasant death.

Cold slows down metabolism, what about hot boiling water?

That would actually be even worse and more painful than cold water.

Assuming that the water is in the hundreds of degrees Celsius, it would begin to denature your blood and the walls of your veins, quite literally deconstructing themselves and dissolving into simpler substances. You'd get severe internal burns and, as your vessels rupture, you'll begin to suffer internal bleeding and massively painful inflammation.
Your blood will also coagulate within the affected site, cutting off any blood flow to its connected limbs and organs. You'll suffer thrombosis and eventually develop embolisms, and you're very likely to have a stroke and pass out after a few minutes.

While passed out, you will continue to be cooked alive by the water from the inside, as your body works to expel it and the water cools off from being exposed to your comparatively much cooler internal fluids. You'll suffer permanent internal scarring (which will likely lead to lifetime chronic pain), and your tissues will die and will get infected, which could require amputation or surgery depending on the severity.

Again, theoretically possible, especially if you manage to target and directly damage your heart, but practically unfeasible. The combination of survival instinct and extreme pain is all but guaranteed to make you stop and seek help, and even then, you need precise anatomical knowledge in order to make the injection within the proper areas. Which are also buried beneath layers of fat and muscle.