Anyone who's used this site for more than a week or two comes to realize that many--if not most--posters are not willing to spend the time reading a thread from the beginning.
For most of the threads here, personal stories and problems, it's no big deal you can jump in any time.
For the occasional informational thread--the mega-threads for each method--this can cause problems. The same question is asked over and over because the person didn't read the answer in an earlier post.
Stan realized this with the ridiculously bloated original SN mega-thread, so he wrote a condensed version.
The following is from a technical paper written years ago on an earlier version of the Debreather. (I'll also include a link to the entire paper for those really interested.) To understand how it works you need just a basic understanding of human respiration:
"
Air is composed of about 79%nitrogen and 21%oxygen.During the human breathing cycle, air inflates the lungs and
oxygen is passed to the heart and then circulated throughout the body. A waste byproduct of cellular respiration is carbon dioxide, which the heart pumps to the lungs for exhalation. An exhaled breath is approximately 79%nitrogen, 17%oxygen, and 4%carbon dioxide.The need to eliminate carbon dioxide is what triggers the impulse to breath."
Combining Xali1970 and my summary, with the Debreather:
The user puts on the half-mask and breathes normally. He breathes in a closed loop. Your exhaled breath is scrubbed of CO2. Each breath you take contains less oxygen and more nitrogen, a disruption of the body's oxygen cycle. Eventually you lose consciousness and die from oxygen deprivation.
Here's a link to a very old paper describing the oxygen cycle, the principle of a scuba
rebreather, the principle of the
debreather, and the results from early field testing (actual observed--and somewhat assisted--suicides.)
PDF | In response to the general prohibition of euthanasia and assisted suicide, some right-to-die activists have developed non-medical methods to... | Find, read and cite all the research you need on ResearchGate
www.researchgate.net
No, it is a closed system. Read the explanation I just posted.
You've got it!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Eventually it will be available from Exit pre-assembled, that's the idea, make things easier for people in need.
No, incorrect.
I want to add that I'm leaving this site as of today, switching over to the Exit International forum. I'll monitor and answer PM's for today. Best of luck to those here, please read and contemplate my signature quote from the great poet Rilke. For all you younger posters especially--yes, you're right, life is unfair--and amazing and difficult and easy and terrible and wonderful and the whole mystifying frustrating challenging mess is here to be experienced.