Electro Torture

[gowron]

The price to pay for having big tits

[localroger]

Good morning everyone, I wanted more info from the electrical device experts that are here in the thread. Mainly for narrative purposes (I write novels and short stories). Mainly I wanted to understand the difference in pain caused, effects and reactions that cause the different methods of electrical torture.

To understand the effects of electrical stimulation, we must start with Ohm's Law, which states that the current pushed through a connection will be equal to the voltage divided by the resistance. The resistance between two contacts placed randomly on human skin is usually around 1 megohm, although iit can be as low as 100,000 ohms or less if the points are close and the skin is wet, and it can be more if the contacts are poor or the skin very dry.

It is a general rule of thumb that it is voltage that hurts and current that kills, but it's a bit more complicated than that. The voltage must be high enough to push a minimum threshold current of 100 microamps or so to begin stimulating the nerve receptors. Any voltage that can push 1 milliamp through your skin will hurt like hell. Current flows of 20 milliamps or higher are dangerous, particularly if they pass through the chest cavity. Higher current flows aren't really more painful because at a certain point the capacity of your nerves to be stimulated has been saturated.

Devices designed for cattle compliance tend to be stronger because the animal is larger and they have thicker skin and fur that the current must pass through. Still these devices are generally safe, if very painful, for use on humans.

When the Argentines got tired of accidentally killing their torture victims (a problem that just never seems to have bothered the Chileans) they came up with the picana electrica, that box you see on the table next to the naked spread-eagled torture victim in all the tropes. I have good evidence that the original picana electrica were made from black and white TV chassis, which put out about 14,000 volts but limited to 1 milliamp. In practice that means with a good connection to skin the voltage would automatically drop to keep the current safe, but even a poor connection will be very painful.

Continuous current will cause any muscles it passes through to spasm, locking them up. Alternating current will cause them to vibrate but still mostly stay locked. Other devices are gated for different purposes. I once had a pet-safe electric fence controller (which I really used to keep cats away from my birds) which was gated for pulses of about 1 second, to give the animal a chance to escape once it got the hint. Tasers are gated at a high frequency designed to disrupt nervous system activity so you can't fight or run away. Real life torture has generally involved short pulses of continuous current. Continuous current eventually tires out the receptors so it starts to hurt less, although the muscles will stay locked. Tasers also put out very high voltage because their mode of usage makes the electrical connections unreliable.

High voltages can jump an air gap to make a connection, making a spark. This is not inherently more dangerous than a direct connection but the spark will generate a spot of high temperature plasma which can cause a small burn at the contact point.

Low voltage, as from a car battery, is not painful. You see car batteries used for drama because you can knock the electrodes together and make a spark, but 12 volts will not push enough current through human skin to hurt. The one exception, as many kids know, is that you can feel a tingle from a 9V battery applied to the tongue; this is because the tongue is continuously wet and has a very low resistance, so even 9V can push enough current to be felt. This is also why medical devices which might be used around open wounds or during surgery are held to much higher electrical safety standards than other devices.

Radio frequency high voltage, such as from "UV wands," tends to flow along the surface instead of through the body, and can also couple to Earth ground without a second direct connection. They tend not to push a lot of current and are fairly safe because what they do push doesn't go into the body through the muscles and heart.

I think that about covers it; let me know if you need any other info.

[moss]

Good morning everyone, I wanted more info from the electrical device experts that are here in the thread. Mainly for narrative purposes (I write novels and short stories). Mainly I wanted to understand the difference in pain caused, effects and reactions that cause the different methods of electrical torture.

To understand the effects of electrical stimulation, we must start with Ohm's Law, which states that the current pushed through a connection will be equal to the voltage divided by the resistance. The resistance between two contacts placed randomly on human skin is usually around 1 megohm, although iit can be as low as 100,000 ohms or less if the points are close and the skin is wet, and it can be more if the contacts are poor or the skin very dry.

It is a general rule of thumb that it is voltage that hurts and current that kills, but it's a bit more complicated than that. The voltage must be high enough to push a minimum threshold current of 100 microamps or so to begin stimulating the nerve receptors. Any voltage that can push 1 milliamp through your skin will hurt like hell. Current flows of 20 milliamps or higher are dangerous, particularly if they pass through the chest cavity. Higher current flows aren't really more painful because at a certain point the capacity of your nerves to be stimulated has been saturated.

Devices designed for cattle compliance tend to be stronger because the animal is larger and they have thicker skin and fur that the current must pass through. Still these devices are generally safe, if very painful, for use on humans.

When the Argentines got tired of accidentally killing their torture victims (a problem that just never seems to have bothered the Chileans) they came up with the picana electrica, that box you see on the table next to the naked spread-eagled torture victim in all the tropes. I have good evidence that the original picana electrica were made from black and white TV chassis, which put out about 14,000 volts but limited to 1 milliamp. In practice that means with a good connection to skin the voltage would automatically drop to keep the current safe, but even a poor connection will be very painful.

Continuous current will cause any muscles it passes through to spasm, locking them up. Alternating current will cause them to vibrate but still mostly stay locked. Other devices are gated for different purposes. I once had a pet-safe electric fence controller (which I really used to keep cats away from my birds) which was gated for pulses of about 1 second, to give the animal a chance to escape once it got the hint. Tasers are gated at a high frequency designed to disrupt nervous system activity so you can't fight or run away. Real life torture has generally involved short pulses of continuous current. Continuous current eventually tires out the receptors so it starts to hurt less, although the muscles will stay locked. Tasers also put out very high voltage because their mode of usage makes the electrical connections unreliable.

High voltages can jump an air gap to make a connection, making a spark. This is not inherently more dangerous than a direct connection but the spark will generate a spot of high temperature plasma which can cause a small burn at the contact point.

Low voltage, as from a car battery, is not painful. You see car batteries used for drama because you can knock the electrodes together and make a spark, but 12 volts will not push enough current through human skin to hurt. The one exception, as many kids know, is that you can feel a tingle from a 9V battery applied to the tongue; this is because the tongue is continuously wet and has a very low resistance, so even 9V can push enough current to be felt. This is also why medical devices which might be used around open wounds or during surgery are held to much higher electrical safety standards than other devices.

Radio frequency high voltage, such as from "UV wands," tends to flow along the surface instead of through the body, and can also couple to Earth ground without a second direct connection. They tend not to push a lot of current and are fairly safe because what they do push doesn't go into the body through the muscles and heart.

I think that about covers it; let me know if you need any other info.

Hi there, Very succinctly put. I was wondering to myself, how long the gap should be between each shock. I was thinking if you had an electronic switch on which you could change its on/off/on timing, that you could change the effect. Perhaps from 0.5 second for keeping the victim vibrating quickly, to maybe 2 seconds making them spasm/relax/spasm etc. I wondered too if you made the actual shock of variable length to the off position that might be more tiring and unpredictable to the subject. All these little tweaks and changes are obviously dependant on what you want to achieve. What would be the longest time you could keep a body under continuous current? Would that be related to how long one can hold their breath as it were?

[Darkseid]

I think that about covers it; let me know if you need any other info.

Thank you localroger, you were very clear.
The thing I would like to understand is the reaction that a picana or a stun gun would provoke. For example the gif posted by gowron, I think it is unrealistic: would the girl have these trembling spasms as you see (and as you see in many films) or would she remain stiff for a long time arching her body painfully? Ditto for stun guns, for example as seen in the scene in The Suicide Squad where they torture Harley Quinn, or as in 2010's I Spit on your Grave. How would the human body react to being tortured with this instrument? Would it remain rigid as with a taser or would it spasm and tremble?

P.S: I'm very interested too to moss's question.

[theelectrician]

I think that about covers it; let me know if you need any other info.

Thank you localroger, you were very clear.
The thing I would like to understand is the reaction that a picana or a stun gun would provoke. For example the gif posted by gowron, I think it is unrealistic: would the girl have these trembling spasms as you see (and as you see in many films) or would she remain stiff for a long time arching her body painfully? Ditto for stun guns, for example as seen in the scene in The Suicide Squad where they torture Harley Quinn, or as in 2010's I Spit on your Grave. How would the human body react to being tortured with this instrument? Would it remain rigid as with a taser or would it spasm and tremble?

P.S: I'm very interested too to moss's question.

If you are after visuals, look at police videos showing the use of tasers.Should be plenty available from the US of A. The closest you'll get to actual torture sessions are gay BDSM videos involving hand cranked field telephones / magnetos. Pretty ruff stuff, there is nothing comparable involving females save for maybe a few INSEX videos . Google "hand crank bdsm" or sth similar, plenty of material.

Maybe this video will be of help. They try a few different nasty toys incl a cattleprod on a girl who describes the effects on her. Fun to watch. https://hitbdsm.com/electrical-demo-par ... ectricity/

[localroger]

On the matter of duty cycle -- that is, pulse width and rest period between pulses -- that is very much a matter of style. There is some lore suggesting that in the Americas some torturers were recognizably "better", that is more effective, than others, ironically probably because they had a sense of empathy with their victims. I would tend to think a ratio of about 1/4 would be believable, maybe 1 second on / 3 seconds rest or 1/4 second tap / 1 second rest. More or less might be appropriate for a particular subject or to emphasize a point of control. Short pulses would probably feel a lot like the blows of a harsh whip like a cane or bullwhip, but without the effort or damage associated with the whip. It was very common for the juntas to insert one electrode into a woman's vagina or, with a wire, a man's urethra, and make the other a metal rod with which to explore the victim's body. They did not seem to automate such things. The main reason for automating the interval would be to leave a victim alone for awhile to contemplate the pain while awaiting the torturer's return. Again, the people who actually did this didn't seem to bother with such things very much.

The effect of continuous stimulation with DC will be to keep the muscles locked. With AC the muscles will stay locked but vibrate a bit with the current alternation. This could stop breathing or heartbeat but that would require passing a lot of current through the chest cavity.

Spasms are generally created by devices like tasers which gate the current in order to disrupt neural coordination. Such devices are really not very good torture devices, since if the aim of the torture is to coerce compliance their action prevents compliance. As a sheer instrument of terror and pain they are believable but probably not as good as a well wielded picana wand. At least IMO

As long as you don't pass too much current through the chest stopping the heart or paralyzing breathing, there is no reason continuous current could not be applied to a person for long periods of time. This would be less productive as the nerves will eventually tire of responding to the stimulus without a relief period and it will eventually hurt less, but it could emphasize that one is utterly without mercy to the victim. You will not get convulsions and such unless the supply is gated to create the effect, as by a taser. Cattle prods, line cords (also called picana like the cattle prods) and the picana electrica were not gated. Alternating current, including line cords, simple electric fence transformers, and field dynamos, will create a slight vibration in the seized muscles but not full convulsions.

Hrm. Did you ever get the feeling you know entirely too much about something?

[localroger]

A brief side note on the video that theelectrician linked: Neither of the picana-like e-stim devices Princess Donna uses on Lorelai would be considered actual torture devices by, well, actual torturers. They are play devices whose current is modulated and gated to create play effects such as exaggerated convulsions. It is a good vid and well worth a look, but pay particular attention to ms. Lee's reaction to the cattle prod, which is the actual device used by the Chileans for real torture. Observe how she recoils from it and imagine being completely immobilized while that is dragged slowly across your body. That is how it was actually used.

[Edukator]

Very interesting and useful informations in your above posts localroger. It looks you have some good experience and knowledge to share in this field.

Since I have too (I'm an electronic engineer myself), I think it would be nice to start a separate thread about electro-stimulation/play/torture intended to people interested to use it in real (non lethal !) bdsm games. This current thread is most about fantasized situations, mostly unrealizable in real, or worse: potentially dangerous to health or even lethal !

I don't know if this forum is the right place to discuss about this topic but there are many interesting advices and tips to be shared, not to forget the most important one: the safety aspect. ( I guess nobody here want to actually kill his partner or cause permanent physical damages to her)

What do you (and other members) think about this suggestion ? Anyone interested ?

[localroger]

Edukator, that sounds like a worthwhile idea (and within the purview of your nick, I notice). The original question here was more about how actual torture would go for the purpose of writing stories about it. BDSM play is of course different, but might not be "Girls In Mortal Peril." I think that might be a Ralphus call. It really isn't that hard though; there are numerous commercial toys now, such as the ones Princess Donna used on Lorelei Lee, and the basic rules of keep it under 1 milliamp and don't pass it through the chest cavity will keep most people out of trouble. As for the rest it's individual; some people want a rough ride, others much less. Only the individual players can work that out between themselves.

[localroger]

On reflection, I think a section for practical techniques for play GIMP-age might be a worthwhile side forum. It's certainly a thing a lot of people who land here would be interested in, but not quite the forum main topic as it's been developed over the years.