If someone was tortured with electrocution repeatedly, what would be the likely effects? As in, what would she be feeling as she was being electrocuted, directly after electrocution, and a short while after it? She's being tortured so the people can try to bring out her powers (it's a superhero novel) except she doesn't actually know what her powers are and has never used them, nor has a lot of idea what they actually want from her. What other types of torture would you suggest for this?
I don’t use ‘You BreakIt You Bought It’ often. But I don’t think I can help you in terms of what might cause your super poweredcharacter to manifest powers.
Real torture victimsdon’t tend to manifest super powers and I think what causes powers to manifest,that’s a detail of your world that I think you need to figure out for yourself.
If it is as simple aspain, fear, stress and trauma then almost all tortures are equal in thatregard. They cause the same symptoms, the same mental health problems, the sametrauma. So it doesn’t matter what particular technique is used.
Electrical torture ispretty wide spread globally but it isn’t used everywhere. The other torturetechniques used are likely to depend on where the torturer characters are from.Different countries have different ‘National Styles’ of torture.
The UK stands out as acountry that tends to avoid electrical torture (the British have instead reliedon stress positions). The USA and France both use electrical torture along withwaterboarding. Israel uses children’s furniture. Most Middle Eastern countriesuse falaka. China currently seems to be using restraint tortures (which mayrepresent a change in practice since Rejali published ‘Torture and Democracy’).
Beatings, sleepdeprivation, solitary confinement, starvation and uncomfortably hot/cold cellsare all common world wide.
Without more context oneither the country and time period the story is set in or why the charactersthink torture will produce super powers I can’t really suggest anythingfurther.
Electric shocks however I can help youwith.
A quick note onterminology: electrocution usually refers to a lethal process. It means someoneis killed by an electric shock. I’m assuming that you want to discuss repeatedelectric shocks.
How this affects acharacter really varies pretty widely depending on how it’s done.
Electrical torture haschanged drastically over the ~100 years it’s been around. Rejali devotes abouta third of his book to cataloguing this change.
Part of why I mentionthis is because the best survivor account I have on electrical torture comesfrom the Franco-Algerian war and is about a form of electrical torture that is not common anymore.
Electrical torture now mostly involved Tasers and stunguns. In the not-so-distant-past the dominant form used a device called amagneto: a small, hand-cranked portable device which was often used to powermilitary field equipment, especially telephones.
Both the modern andmagneto methods rarely leave scars or external marks. They’re both extremelypainful. They can both kill.
Searching for misuse ofTasers turns up a lot of advocacy groups, a lot of videos of people around the world being tortured by police, and notvery many victim accounts.
In fact my searchingthis morning has turned up more quotes from the families of victims than thevictims themselves. Which is quite a worrying sign and I think backs upRejali’s point that Tasers undermine basic oversight and accountability.
For your purposes Ithink going back to Henri Alleg’s account from the Franco-Algerian war isprobably alright, so long as it’s the sensation and pain rather than theequipment that’s the focus.
You might want to readAlleg’s book which covers the month or so he was tortured by French troops: The Question is one of the definitivemodern victim accounts and well worth a read.
This is how Allegdescribes electrical torture:
‘He attached one of them [clips] to the lobe of my right ear and theother to a finger on the same side.Suddenly I leapt in my bonds and shouted with all my might. Cha- had just senta first electrical charge through my body. A flash of lightning exploded nextto my ear and I felt my heart racing in my breast. I struggled, screaming, andstiffened until the straps cut into my flesh. All the while the shockscontrolled by Cha-, magneto in hand, followed each other without cease.’
They shout questions athim. Alleg responds-
‘Between two spasms, I turned my head towards him and said, “Youare wrong to do this. You will regret it!”’
Alleg screams a gooddeal and the torturers gag him with his shirt.
‘Suddenly I felt as if a savage beast had torn the flesh frommy body. Still smiling above me, Ja- had attached the pincer to my penis. Theshocks going through me were so strong that the straps holding me to the boardcame loose. They stopped to tie them again and we continued.’
‘After a while the lieutenant took the place of Ja-. He hadremoved the wire from one of the pincers and fastened it down along the entirewidth of my chest. The whole of my body was shaking with nervous shocks,getting even stronger in intensity, and the session went on interminably. Theyhad thrown cold water over me in order to increase the intensity of the currentand between every two spasms I trembled with cold.’
That’s all one session,Alleg’s first ‘session’ of torture which ends shortly after. It would be remissof me not to say that during this Alleg instructed his torturers to stopaddressing him with the informal ‘tu’ and reminded them that this was illegalrepeatedly. He also describes screaming a very great deal.
He’s then beaten andsubjected to verbal abuse throughout. This is pretty typical.
The torturers bring inone of his friends who has been tortured and then beat Alleg some more beforepassing him back for electrical torture.
He describes the secondsession thus:
‘Instead of the sharp and rapid spasms that seemed to tear my body intwo, it was now a greater pain that took possession of all my muscles andtightened them in longer spasms. I was taut in my bonds. I tightened my teethon the gag with all my might and kept my eyes closed.’
The torturers then giveup on magnetos and subject him to near-drowning. He’s beaten, burnt, suspendedand then thrown into a cell. This was all on the first day following his arrestand shows the typical pattern of torturers: using as many techniques as theycan and inflicting as much pain and damage as possible, as fast as possible.
So far as I canremember these are the chief descriptions of the sensation of electric shocks inAlleg’s book.
I hope that helps. :)
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