How do you think, what pain-o-meter did they use to measure the agony? The value is neither 75% nor 80%, it's exactly 79%, wow! ))) I'm impressed of the precision - just 1%. Maybe it's possible to get even more precise numbers like 79.24945 out of 100 with a better measuring instrument?
Seriously, when will people stop referring to explicitly doubtful resources like that? It's pretty obvious that those numbers in the table reflect nothing but a random set of digits the author was in mood to put in there.
Even if some average level of discomfort for all cases of drowning could be measured somehow, it would mean nearly nothing when considering particular conditions that could make drowning more or less unpleasant in a wide range.
Where exactly can we find those scary stories? The first search result for "drowning experience" gave me this link:
Internationally, drowning is a leading cause of accidental death that features in many legal cases. In these cases, possible mitigations and the āpain and sufferingā in terms of the duration and subjective experience of drowning are often ...
www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov
The perceptions described there don't look very painful at all.
Do you think you can perceive any pain at all if you drown after losing consciousness?
You can't be running out of CO2 during drowning, because CO2 is produced by your cells, so you'll actually have much more of it than needed eventually.
There are 3 possible sources of pain that should be taken into account: irritation of pathways by the water, tension of the chest muscles that may be caused by hypercapnia (too much CO2), and muscle cramps in legs that may be caused by cold water. The first two conditions can be negated by stuporous state, the third one can be avoided by drowning in a warm water.