How To Off A Character

I'm planning to write a police procedural short story (to get some practice) that starts off with a victim's suicide, but I need info on how to start this off right. The victim plans to jump into a river on a bridge 2-3 stories high. Just in case that event leaves him paralyzed if he dives head-first, he drinks some drain-o about 30 minutes doing the stunt. Would that be a final death, or is there still room for error?

Aw puck, Darkwing's on a killing spree again, we guillotin'in again.

It could be that I don't know what I'm talking about, but I'd think he'd be in too much pain from the draino to be capable of getting to the bridge.

Clowns to the left of me, jokers to the right, here I am...

Have him drink the Drain-O right before he jumps off. He can still manage the jump and the Drain-O will inevitably kill him if he fails, it'll just be slightly slower.

I've got new mythological machinery, and very handsome supernatural scenery. Goodfae: a mafia web serial

I don't know if Drano can kill a person. Ingesting it causes chemical burns to the esophagus, but the stomach contains hydrochloric acid, which reacts with the lye in the Drano to form salt water. There were murderers who tried torturing people with Drano. [1] It caused enormous blisters on the mouth, and caused people to scream and convulse. The symptoms were instantaneous, as lye is a powerful base and reacts very quickly. I'm guessing it's much more painful than lethal. Not a good way to commit suicide.

Agreed. Antifreeze would be considerably more effective.

When they commit suicide people tend to choose methods that are easy to obtain, very lethal and not painful, and unlikely to cause permanent injury. I'd also like to add that the most common method of committing suicide, at least in the U.S., is firearms, account for half of the suicides, as they tend to be kill you quickly without much pain. The U.S. has fairly liberal gun laws so they are easy to obtain. Hanging or suffocation is next at 20%. Poisoning makes up only 17% of the the deaths. Few people go for stuff like drain cleaner or antifreeze; as they can be non fatal and very painful. [1] Heroin and morphine are the most common drugs used for this. Paracetamol, which is found in Tylenol, is common but much less so than heroin. Dentists and doctors are more likely to kill themselves with drugs than other people, because they access to drugs. Hopping off of bridges isn't always effective either. The height needs to be at least 150 feet tall to ensure death, and have nothing soft at the bottom. Most bridges don't satisfy this criteria. You have to live near such a bridge for that work. High building suicides are much much more common than bridge jumps.

I have to wonder why, if he is going to drink poison, he's still going to toss himself off a bridge. They first would certainly do the trick. Also, why not just swallow a bunch of painkillers, like vicadin? It would do the trick and not hurt.

I am a nobody. Nobody is perfect. Therefore, I am perfect.

Most suicide methods have a much higher failure possibility than most people think !

Someone who is determined to succeed and who has done some research will often combine two methods. But jumping isn't a particularly good combination ingredient because it requires physical exertion, which most other methods work against.

...if you don’t love you’re dead, and if you do, they’ll kill you for it.

Plus, a lot of people chicken out, as I learnt at school.

But is it possible for someone to survive a gunshot through the mouth?

Damn our resiliency!

Although, I've heard that a gun shot through the mouth works well.

That being said, is there a building he can jump off of? Concrete is much harder than water, most of the time.

edited 15th Sep '11 4:33:25 PM by MrAHR

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Yes. A very very minute chance but yes. (People have survived getting hit by cannon fire to the head before so this is survivable.)

If you get a bad angle you'd just mess up your face.

Clowns to the left of me, jokers to the right, here I am...

Depends on height and velocity. Water's actually really bad at compressing: if you jumped from the Golden Gate or Brooklyn Bridge the impact would definitely leave you unable to swim and almost certainly kill you.

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Gunshot through the mouth depends enormously on what type and caliber of gun and where inside your mouth you put it. .22 pretty much straight up through the roof of your mouth? May very well survive it, with brain damage. 30-gauge shotgun with .00 buckshot to the back of the mouth? Survival possibility just plummeted to near zero because you'll tear the crap out of the hindbrain, and that controls the autonomic functions like breathing and heartbeat.

Look at the various parts on this drawing◊ and compare then with this quick and dirty overview of what does what.

edited 15th Sep '11 8:42:14 PM by Madrugada

...if you don’t love you’re dead, and if you do, they’ll kill you for it.

What about a gunshot to the brainstem? I had a character who wanted to do that because she was obsessed with finding a method that would succeed. She got talked out of it thankfully.

That would do it. There's a reason that police call it "execution-style" when it's a single gunshot into the base of the skull (a brainstem shot, in other words). It would at the very least leave her functionally a vegetable, probably paralyzed from the neck down and on both heart and respiratory machines....if she received medical attention within a very few minutes.

The brainstem is made up of three parts: the pons, the medulla oblongata, and the upper end of the spinal cord. The medulla oblongata and the pons regulate the autonomic functions of the body — that's the things that your body does without conscious control: heartbeat, breathing, digestion, and such like. Damage them and you've got respiratory and heart failure. Damage the upper spinal cord, and you've got paralysis.

Incidentally, "hindbrain" and "brainstem" are two different names for the same section. It's also sometimes called the "lizard brain" or "reptillian brain".

edited 16th Sep '11 7:53:41 AM by Madrugada

...if you don’t love you’re dead, and if you do, they’ll kill you for it.

A jump off of a skyscraper would most likely do the trick.

Just make sure they land on concrete.

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What else are they going to land on? Cream puffs and jelly donuts?

I've got new mythological machinery, and very handsome supernatural scenery. Goodfae: a mafia web serial

Or you could just have the guy sit car with the engine running. Just sayin'

Theres sex and death and human grime in monochrome for one thin dime and at least the trains all run on time but they dont go anywhere.

^^ A car. A truck. People. A dumpster full of trash. The concrete doesn't flex at all when the falling body hits. All of those other things will deform and absorb some of the impact force. Not much, and depending on how long the fall is, probably not enough, but jumpers and people who have fallen several stories have survived. A long fall is not guaranteed to be fatal.

Look, the human body is surprisingly resilient and surprisingly fragile at one and the same time. Do some research and stop believing that what you see in fiction is the truth.

edited 16th Sep '11 7:52:59 AM by Madrugada

...if you don’t love you’re dead, and if you do, they’ll kill you for it.

On that note, there have been reports of people, normal men and women like ourselves, surviving falls from the MOTHERF&%KING SKY!

Theres sex and death and human grime in monochrome for one thin dime and at least the trains all run on time but they dont go anywhere.

^ While that's true, I think it's plausible to still have the fall kill them . As I understand it the OP's not looking for 100% chance of death, just a reasonably high one, right?

Clowns to the left of me, jokers to the right, here I am...

Yes, I realize that, but in context, this guy is going to be falling from atop a skyscraper. I don't know about you, but my definition of skyscraper generally tends to include a prerequisite of 20+ stories.

Ain't no way the average joe is surviving that unless Ol' Scratch owes him one hell of a favor.

edited 16th Sep '11 9:47:08 AM by KSPAM

I've got new mythological machinery, and very handsome supernatural scenery. Goodfae: a mafia web serial

Well, you do hear about very rare individuals surviving falls at terminal velocity. There are even tips to make it more likely, like "don't be falling at terminal velocity, because you're incredibly unlikely to survive". (In seriousness, you can actually slow yourself down to a moderately significant degree using the sorts of techniques that skydivers use, and if you aim yourself for something soft (preferably churning water) you might even survive landing. But it's not something to try at home.)

They also say "you don't need a parachute to skydive; you need a parachute to skydive twice".

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Deep snow drifts work better. The Guiness Book Of World Records notes the highest fall anyone survived from without a parachute was something like 22,000 feet and the pilot landed in a deep snow drift. (This was in World War Two also.)