While I also don't think shotgun CTB takes 1.7 minutes, it does not mean that the entire table is wrong. The table is probably backed up by the "
Dimensions of suicide: perceptions of lethality, time, and agony" (though it's a paid article and I can't read it). If either this study or a random remark by a random guy on the internet is bullshit, it's most likely the latter.
Anyone who has some critical thinking and at least a little understanding of how CTB methods work can tell you with absolute certainty that the mentioned table has little to no relation to real science (despite possible publication on an authoritative website) and little to no usefulness for those who are planning their own suicide.
First of all, the "methods" presented there are way too vaguely defined. For instance, what is "Plastic bag over head"? There is a plenty of options (or submethods) with use of plastic bags that differ from each other by at least one parameter:
- bag size: small, medium, or large bag;
- use of sedative drugs:
- none,
- benzodiazepines (e.g., nordiazepam),
- opioids,
- other;
- use of gas inside the bag:
- plain air,
- toxic or anesthetic vapors (e.g., benzene, acetone, toluene, chloroform, ether, ethyl chloride),
- simple asphyxiant (e.g., nitrogen, propane-butane),
- chemical/systemic asphyxiants (e.g., carbon dioxide, hydrogen sulfide);
- type of securing around the neck:
- untied/unsecured,
- tied/secured.
The lethality, time to LOC, time to death, peak and overall distress can vary in wide ranges depending on the chosen parameters. Any average statistical data on "plastic bag over head" (even if it's accurate) would not give you an adequate estimation for your particularly chosen submethod that determines the specific conditions.
Time to death in 7 minutes from plastic bag suffocation (as suggested in the table) seems rather small for an average use of plastic bag for CTB. For example, these two old women died in more than 8 and 11 minutes from breathing helium
tesble.com
Rebreathing plain air without use of any toxic substances would likely take much longer than 7 minutes before death happens. This could be a threshold for some irreversible damage though.
As for agony ranking, what is "The amount of pain and discomfort you would expect from the use of the particular method"? Is this the intensity of immediate discomfort or some total amount of accumulated discomfort over the whole period of experiencing unpleasant perceptions? This is a very important distinction: experiencing acute pain for 10 seconds is much better than experiencing acute pain of the same intensity for 10 minutes, which, in turn, is much better than experiencing such acute pain for 10 hours or for days.
If by "Agony" they mean discomfort intensity, then ranking electrocution below drowning on the scale of discomfort is just an utter BS. I have experienced electrical shock, thermal and chemical burns of various degrees. Electricity delivered the strongest acute pain I ever had. I can bet that any drowning-induced discomfort wouldn't worth even 1/10 part of that immense pain I had from the discharges.
"Shotgun to head" actually causes instant death, such that your brain won't even have time to process pain. Its rank on the Agony scale should be zero in any possible interpretation, with exception for cases of misfire.
As for accumulated discomfort, there are methods that would leave you in excruciating pain for hours or days, so it's rather hard to tell what 100 of 100 points on that scale could mean, since suffering can be prolonged for indefinite time. Most of the mentioned methods cause unconsciousness too quickly to deserve their high agony ranks in that table if they are interpreted as amounts of accumulated discomfort.
