How much punishment can the human body take

More than half of all prisoners currently sentenced to death in the U. While on death row, those serving capital sentences are generally isolated from other prisoners, excluded from prison educational and employment programs, and sharply restricted in terms of visitation and exercise, spending as many as 23 hours a day alone in their cells.

This raises the question of whether death-row prisoners are being subject to two distinct punishments: the death sentence itself and the years of living in conditions tantamount to solitary confinement — a severe form of punishment that may be used only for very limited periods for general-population prisoners.

Moreover, unlike general-population prisoners, even in solitary confinement, prisoners on death-row live in a state of constant uncertainty over when they will be executed.

For some death-row prisoners, this isolation and anxiety results in a sharp deterioration in their health and mental status. When the constitution was written, the time between sentencing and execution could be measured in days or weeks.

Florida , The time frame at issue in In re Medley : four weeks. But in the wake of the Supreme Court-mandated suspension of the death penalty in and its declaration in that meaningful appellate review was a prerequisite to any constitutionally acceptable scheme of capital punishment, numerous reforms have been introduced in an attempt to create a less arbitrary system.

This has resulted in lengthier appeals, as mandatory sentencing reviews have become the norm, and continual changes in laws and technology have necessitated reexamination of individual sentences. Death penalty proponents and opponents alike say such careful review is imperative when the stakes are life and death. Yet without thorough appeals, mistakes or misconduct in death penalty cases would be missed or remain concealed.

As of June , 33 of the men and women wrongfully convicted and sentenced to death since states resumed capital punishment in the s had waited 20 or more years to be exonerated.

Seventeen who were exonerated between and June had waited 25 years or more for their exonerations and, for twelve, exoneration took 30 years or more. That figure represents a growing senior death row population, which numbered just 39 in Some death row seniors committed crimes late in life, but many are there at such advanced age because of the inevitable slowness of the capital appeals process.

Legal scholars have argued that executing people who have become so old is inconsistent with humanitarian values.

In , one year after executing year-old Thomas Arthur, Alabama executed year-old Walter Moody, the oldest person and only octogenarian put to death in the United States since executions resumed in That total was matched in the first six months of , with the executions of Billie Coble 70 , Donnie Johnson 68 , and Robert Long In 23 years of executions between and the close of the 20th century, only ten prisoners aged 60 or older were executed.

Forty-five prisoners aged 60 or older were executed between January and June , 23 since alone. With the aging of death row, states and courts are grappling with how issues of age-related physical and mental decline affect executions.

In , a year-old man was put to death in Alabama for a murder he committed in Before his execution, J. Hubbard forgot who he was at times because of dementia. The human body can take a remarkable amount of punishment, given bones made of one of the strongest materials found in nature. At the same time, even an unarmed person can inflict an astonishing amount of damage with the proper training.

So how much does it take to crack a bone? And how much mayhem can a person deal out? In an era when "extreme fighting" has become a popular phenomenon, scientists are testing the extremes that athletes at the peak of their game can reach in order to help the rest of us. Bone is extraordinarily strong — ounce for ounce, bone is stronger than steel, since a bar of steel of comparable size would weigh four or five times as much.

A cubic inch of bone can in principle bear a load of 19, lbs. At dB a jet taking off 50 metres away , sound becomes painfully loud. The loudest sound you can safely hear is dB because above that there is a chance your eardrums will rupture. But sound is just a pressure wave and there is almost no theoretical upper limit to its intensity. The existence of a "brown note", that resonates to cause victims to lose control of their bowels, has been postulated but never demonstrated in tests.

But internal organ damage from very loud sounds is perfectly possible. The loudest sound ever recorded was the eruption of Krakatoa in , which measured dB, km away. Anyone closer than 20km would have experienced sound levels of dB and, at this volume, the pressure wave would rupture their lungs and force air into the bloodstream, causing a fatal pulmonary embolism.

The T stun grenade produces a dB bang at 2 metres. At point blank range, this would rise to dB, which is enough to trigger cardiac arrest. In classic electrocution, the heart is shocked out of its beating rhythm in a process called ventricular fibrillation.

It's not voltage that kills but electrical current, measured in amps. The threshold of sensation for humans is one milliamp 1mA , while a sustained current of mA is fatal - able to stop a typical human heart weighing around g.

According to Ohm's Law, current passing through a conductor is given by voltage divided by electrical resistance, measured in ohms. The resistance of human skin varies between 1, ohms wet skin to , dry , so the lethal voltages are V and 20,V respectively.

At high voltages, extra physics comes into play. For example, only ten per cent of lightning strikes are fatal. Most injuries result from arc flash - the intense heat, light and pressure from the sudden heating effect of electrical currents. At 30mph, the chance of surviving a car crash falls to 27 per cent.

At speeds above 38 mph, you have less than a 1 per cent chance of surviving. No comments have so far been submitted. Why not be the first to send us your thoughts, or debate this issue live on our message boards. Argos AO. Privacy Policy Feedback. Just how much punishment can your body take? Last updated at 20 February Just how far can the human body be pushed? Brrr: Feeling cold? Punchbag: Sylvester Stallone as Rocky Balboa.

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