There's a thing called 'liquid breathing' where certain highly oxygenated liquids allow normally air breathing organisms to breathe in a liquid and survive off of it. I'm wondering what the effects might be if someone was waterboarded (or simulated drowning in general) with this liquid? Medical, psychological, basically whatever information you can give me. I know this is probably really difficult to research, so thank you in advance!
I broughtthis one up with the rest of the Script Family and it generated some prettylively debate.
My firstinstinct was that this wouldn’t work at all. Waterboarding is not ‘simulated’drowning. Waterboarding is near-drowning. So if the victimcan breathe the liquid then by definition waterboarding couldn’t work.
But thenmembers of the family pointed out that lungs aren’t designed to move liquid.Liquid breathing requires a pump to move fluid in and out of the lungs,otherwise carbon dioxide isn’t removed and oxygen eventually runs out.
Whichmeans that yes, you could drownsomeone this way. If someone else was manipulating the pump and hence thesupply of oxygen and the concentration of carbon dioxide. It wouldn’t bewaterboarding but like waterboarding this could bring someone to the brink ofdeath over and over again.
Psychologically,and in terms of effects on the victim, I don’t think it would functiondifferently to waterboarding.
Drowningis still drowning, whether it’s in a lake or a puddle. The liquid required todrown an adult human is about the amount in a can of soft drink.
There’sstill a build up of carbon dioxide so the victim would definitely feel pain(unlike suffocation in a nitrogen atmosphere). Something that might be relevantto this is that breathing in 5% CO2 can cause panic attacks. 7.5%inhaled for twenty minutes gives the same symptoms as general anxiety disorder,something that’s now used to help find new anxiety drugs. (Alison Diaper, 2012)These effects seem to get worse with the length of exposure and repetition.
Thevictim would feel panic. In the case of any drowning based torture it’s aparticular sort of panic. It’s primal, consuming and not something that can besuppressed. It’s the panic you feel when you start to drown.
Thanks toGuantanamo there are now quite a few descriptions of the sensation around. ChristopherHitchens voluntarily underwent waterboarding and his account is also availablebut since I haven’t read it I can’t comment on how good it is.
If you’reable to get it I’d recommend Shane O’Mara’s book ‘Why Torture Doesn’t Work: TheNeuroscience of Interrogation.’ He covers waterboarding in some detail and thesensation and physiology of drowning is something he particularly focuses on.It’s not a large chunk of the book in terms of page count but it really is thebest thing on waterboarding I’ve read so far.
In termsof the psychological effects, emotional effects and pain the research O’Maraquotes would hold true to your scenario.
Feelingsof dread, panic and as O’Mara puts it ‘fear of imminent death’ are normal. Ahost of normal bodily responses to low oxygen, high CO2, cold, andshock combine to make the whole experience worse.
Thepracticalities of how this is set up would be a little different and that meansthere’d be a few changes in the physical effects.
Thevictim would have to be restrained, probably tied down, as in waterboarding. Inorder to make sure it’s their lungs not their stomach that fills with theoxygenated liquid at least one tube is going to be inserted into theirwindpipe, either through the mouth or nose. They’re also going to need somesort of apparatus to ensure the pump can circulate the liquid in to and out oftheir lungs.
Thesetubes are going to be reallyuncomfortable and might increase the sensation of panic. If the victim was ableto fight when the tubes were being inserted they might have sustained somedamage to the lining of their mouth, nose, windpipe and oesophagus.
A goodplace to look for the effects of these sorts of injuries would beforced-feeding through the nose. Historical accounts from suffragettes wouldprobably be the best source as forced-feeding is generally conducteddifferently now and would be less injurious/traumatic in most cases.
I’m notsure how the risk of infection would change. The liquid and tubes should besterilised or the victim would get aninfection but they’re going to be opened in an unsterile environment andinserted by force into a person who will be fighting every way they can.
Nausea,vomiting and coughing all seem to be more likely, given that the victim willneed to have the fluid pumped out at the end of the session and then have thetubes removed. The liquid itself might also be irritating to the lungs, noseand airway.
The tubesand possible injuries caused by them means that vomiting or coughing up bloodwould be much more likely.
The riskof passing out, brain injury and death is probably about the same.
And ofcourse the victim won’t be able to talk throughout, so if the torturer wantsthem to communicate they’d either need to drain the fluid and take everythingapart again or have an alternative method of communication in place.
Insertingand draining the fluid (adult lungs can hold 4-6 litres), setting up theequipment, inserting the tubes- It’s all going to take a lot of time. Waterboardingsessions themselves aren’t very long, they’re usually in the region of 30minutes for a single session. At a wild-guess-timate I think getting hold ofthe victim, restraining them and setting up the equipment would easily take twice as long as the session itself. Andall of that would then have to be repeated when the equipment is dismantled.
On apractical level that means a lot of time when your torturers aren’t doinganything to the victim.
And thatseems like a good place to put in a note of realism. This would never become a real torture method.It’s too complicated, too expensive and would take far too long. The complexityand expense aren’t just in the equipment itself but things like having tosterilise the tubes and liquid, acquiring the liquid and so forth. Using actualwaterboarding is just easier and cheaper.
Whichdoesn’t mean you shouldn’t use it inyour story. As I said, with the right set up it could work, and fiction doesn’t haveto reflect reality all the time. But it’s probably good to be aware that thisisn’t a realistic torture method and that high-tech torture devices are a stereotype that crops up again andagain in fiction.
I hopethat helps. :)
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