> just hold your breath for couple minutes (or even better - ask somebody physically stronger to "help" you to keep the plastic bag over you head to make sure that you make the time :) and i think you'll learn the difference.
That could easily kill someone, this is totally crazy advice.
It could? I mean it's obviously a terrible idea, but how is forcing someone to hold a full breath for two minutes going to cause them actual major harm? Can oxygen levels actually drop dangerously low that fast? People can hold their breath for that long with barely any setup or practice. Plus having a plastic bag to breathe in and out of should remove a lot of the discomfort and panic since mechanically you're still breathing.
Again, not saying it's a good idea, but the idea that it would kill someone suggests that I'm missing something I should know.
Very similar to blackout. [0] Depriving the brain of oxygen, in general, is a terrible idea and yes it can kill you.
Regardless if it is in a semi-controlled setting and if the intent isn't to continue until you black out but only until you begin breathing in a panic it's still very dangerous. [1]
Well your first link reads like media extrapolating a nationwide trend from next to nothing, and only really talks about the danger of doing it to yourself.
The second link doesn't mention timing except the standard 'five minutes' thing, while holding your breath for two minutes is probably going to lead to somewhere between 60 and 0 seconds of oxygen deprivation.
So I'm still unsure where the risk of dying comes from.
Right, that forces you to reach two minutes, and also makes sure the bag will be removed promptly.
As far as I can tell most of the danger comes from the possibility of having someone hold you still while you panic, and that is not what I generally consider deadly.
> Right, that forces you to reach two minutes, and also makes sure the bag will be removed promptly.
No, it does not make sure of that, besides it said 'a couple' and not 'two' (depending on the person two might very well be enough to harm them, but some might interpret 'a couple' as being even more than two).
The person was suggested to be there to make sure you can't remove the bag yourself and by the time the bag is finally removed it may simply be too late.
"Any activity that deprives the brain of oxygen has the potential to cause moderate to severe brain cell death leading to permanent loss of neurological function ranging from difficulty in concentration or loss of short term memory capacity through severe, lifelong mental disability to death."
Suggesting people do this is highly irresponsible, this is probably the dumbest sub-thread I've seen on HN in all the time that I've been here, which is especially annoying because the main thread is one of the best.
>"Any activity that deprives the brain of oxygen has the potential to cause moderate to severe brain cell death leading to permanent loss of neurological function ranging from difficulty in concentration or loss of short term memory capacity through severe, lifelong mental disability to death."
That cites source 12, which doesn't seem to support the critical "any activity" part of the sentence, at least in terms of how long the oxygen deprivation lasts.
>95.7% of these deaths occurred while the youth was alone
Seems to support my skepticism for a strictly-timed co-operative activity.
I'm not even sure you'd end up in oxygen deprivation at all within a couple minutes when you start with a nice big breath.
I'm sorry you think my question is dumb. I was just hoping to learn something. At this point I'm feeling reasonably confident that I wasn't unaware of important information, and 'dying' was strong hyperbole. I'll note again that I don't support actually doing it.
man, I've put a smile there for a reason... The "help" is brought up as a device to illustrate the difference between at-will fun excitement and against-will panic. No sane person would be forcing another to not breath ( until of course it is a part of the job, ie. like police - chockholding into submission - or military investigators - waterboarding and the like)
Edit: to "mdup" below - i've specifically mentioned "until of course it is a part of the job" above - the major aspect of Milgram experiment was to present to the experiment subjects the shock delivery as a "duty".
