Torture. Would you break? Could anyone withstand?

I personally think that everybody has a breaking point, probable the keep continuing

so that everybody will break at the end

For me it would depend on what kind of torture it was and who or what I was protecting. If I was a government employee that had information, I would tell them what's up before they gave me a mild poke with a stick. If it were people I loved it would be a lot harder to get me to talk.

To me the worst form of torture I could think of would be getting put on the rack. Being stretched out like that would just be too much for me. Also if they dipped me in boiling water I would probably start talking right away. They sure did have some f***ed up ways of doing people in back in the day.

I'm really not to sure how to embed a youtube video. I hope this works. I wish the video *just* included the scenes of Patrick Stewart aka "Capitan Picard".

This clip shows that pain skillfully applied with psychological techniques can and will (and almost) can break anyone.

This is also probably one of his best performances ever btw...

1. Don't get captured
2. Have your people know what to do if you are
3. Your as good as dead anyway, have a quick "out"



THERE ARE FOUR LIGHTS!

reply to post by MystikMushroom


That episode rocked!
Thanks for the input.

Give them the stash of food and then go out and get some more. Surely by now you would have acquired the skills needed to obtain enough grub for you and your family to survive.

If you can't manage to scrounge up some food in a SHTF scenario then it is only a matter of time before you are dead anyway.

If all else fails give them the food then once your free, get your hands on your weapons and make them regret ever laying eyes on you. Or...just move on and consider yourself lucky to be alive....Far too many options here.

i'd break in a second, preferably before the toture starts. theres a million and one scenarios for this subject, so i think it kinda hard to discuss.
meh i i'd spill the beans asap, i wouldnt sayi'm a wimp but if people are poking red hot things where they dont belong, i'd rather they stop sooner than later.

I have a pretty high pain threshold. I have given birth naturally, 10 hours of back labor (women who have been through this know what I am talking about) and I am suborn as heck. My family calls it my best//worst trait. I have also learned how to trick my brain when it comes to pain, how ever I am only good at it when I am well rested.
That said it depends on what reason I am being tortured for. There are things I would die for, and things that won't be worth the pain.

Originally posted by LadySkadi
IMHO, everyone will break at some point and if you really have someone to protect or something to hide, your best move is to find a way out, before you do break.

I agree with Skadi here.
Everyone has a breaking point.
For those that don't think so,
need to spend a couple weeks
at the CIA Farm.

It would be best to avoid capture.
If you have no way out of it,
think again !!!

Watch the movie "Windtalkers" with
Nicholas Cage. How the US Military
sent guardian soldiers over the code talkers
in the Pacific theater during WW2. It was
their orders not to allow a code talkers
capture even if it meant killing the code talker
themselves.

The US Navy has a similar policy today concerning
crypto analysts aboard US Navy vessels. A US Marine
is stationed with a Navy crypto analyst whose job
it is to put a .45 in the head of the analyst before
allowing him to be captured. I know this for a fact
cuz my best friend in the world was a crypto guy
on the USS Ronald Reagan before moving into
the private sector.

the best advice is:
Don't get captured,
by ANY means necessary.

Originally posted by calstorm
I have a pretty high pain threshold. I have given birth naturally, 10 hours of back labor (women who have been through this know what I am talking about) and I am suborn as heck. My family calls it my best//worst trait. I have also learned how to trick my brain when it comes to pain, how ever I am only good at it when I am well rested.
That said it depends on what reason I am being tortured for. There are things I would die for, and things that won't be worth the pain.

You gave up your weaknesses in your own statements as most people do. You referenced family and child birth that is what is important to you. Therefore exploitable. Also, sleep deprivation is the first of the techniques used. This and the maternal drive to protect your offspring would make you an easy target. Pain would likely be unnecessary.

First you will stand up for a day or so for processing in which time you will be stripped, searched (very thoroughly) and methodically cataloged. The photos will be judged and every flaw will be pointed out in conversation you can overhear. This is only the beginning - you will be showered and doused with an insecticide that will irritate your skin.

After that in processing you are put into in a cell too small to sit up in or stretch out in with a temperature too cold to sleep at night and too hot to sleep during the day with rotating very bright light and absolute darkness at irregular intervals disrupting the normal circadian rhythm till you are not even sure what day it is or what time it is or how long you have been there. Then piped in loud irregular noises and screams cycled in on a button so that every time you dose off an operator makes you hear a baby cry.... Sleep will mean infants screams and you will want to avoid that. Awake will be just white noise pumped into your cell just loud enough to disorient you.

Usually disorientation can be achieved in less than 72 hours. Women are especially vulnerable to an infant’s cry - you may be tough but biologically you are programmed to respond to it. Where are the babies what are they doing to them?

Irregular interrogation cycles sometimes once a day then once an hour then not at all...with different interrogators and the same ones in different clothes so you think a week is a month long. Some will be nice, some will be irrational and scream and ask no questions just make accusations - some will be methodical some rapid fire questions some will just stare at you while you are naked for your safety inspections.

None will hurt you but you will see and hear other's being hurt. (Again, maternal fear, who do they have what are they doing, will they do it to me...)

They will then find the right irrational fear you have to make you afraid to sleep even when you are alone... Say letting some rats, spiders, or snakes (dogs, cats, whatever it's easy to find) into the cell at irregular intervals for a week or so. Whatever that fear is be it suffocation, drowning, tight or open spaces, or even other people they will find it in a matter of hours cause they will try them all and your heart rate will betray you.

About 72-96 hours of this along with some mild dehydration and hunger and I'm just guessing that you'd be talking like everyone else. No one will have to ever physically hurt you, strike you or break the skin.

I've had the tip of my index finger cut off with a meat slicer and it was the worst pain I've ever felt in my life, but especially the re-bandaging. The gauze essentially fused with the wound and when it came time to peel it off the day after, it took me 2 hours; I can't even describe the pain it was just mind-bending. The tips of the fingers are supposed to be the second most sensitive part of the human body (tongue is first). However one thing I've thought about is torture and the types of pain that make my brain cringe; of many things the worst for me is eye-related and genital mutilation. For example having your testicles slowly crushed in a vice-grip (yea I know terrible ) Or straightened paper clips gouged through the sides of your eyesockets (Stephen King anyone?). I would like to think that it would take more than a minute for me to break under such circumstances but anyone points a sharp object down there and I would spouting off in a second.

On the torture note, does anyone watch the tv series Supernatural? Remember how both Sam and Dean went to hell on separate occasions, one for one or 2 months, and the other alot longer. Dean at one point mentioned how time "downstairs" was distorted and it was more like 40 years. He then said how the experience was basically a demon torturing him in every possible way until every piece of his flesh down to the bones was skewed from his "physical self", and at the end he was simply reincarnated to original form so the process could be started all over again. Trying to imagine how torture like that could be in a state of immortality, is confounding and something you don't want to even ponder to say the least. I don't even think a masochist of the highest degree would withstand such a thing.

Edit: Said he withstood 30 years before "getting off the rack". I don't think ANYONE could actually go that long, and not even close.

Last Tuesday I woke up from nasal surgery in intensive care at the VA hospital in Denver apparently my oxygen saturation and blood pressure were at fatal levels SO THEY COULDN'T GIVE ME PAIN KILLERS!
Good training right? Ugh,nasty wake up call there..
I'm also curious how Sodium Pentathol compares to '___'

I will not use pain don't need it to break some one.

Fear works better.

Tie someone down and Put a sand bag on his chest with just enough weight that he has to think to breath. tell him if he falls asleep he will not be able to breath.

He will believe you after dozing off a few times.


Keep it up for days and they will tell you anything just so you will take off the sand bag and let them sleep.

Why would you torture someone for their food?
Just let them go and they will lead you right to their food source.
Just keep them locked up for 12 to 24 hours then let them go, and they will run straight home.

someone heats a knife with a butane torch and sears one of your eyeballs, i don't think you'll risk your other eye to with hold your food stash.

reply to post by blend57

Not true as far as I'm concerned. Got my leg crushed and other injuries in an underground mining accident. Felt Everything , Every Minute.

Its not like the old days where peopels crazy beliefs in god meant that they withstood awful torture. Nowerdays I doubt there are many who could withstand severe torture at all. If the British SAS cracked under torture in iraq than I doubt the average person who thinks they are tough has a chance in hell.

Keep a razorblade, handcuff key and hair pin somewhere on you thats concealed would be my advice, then you can break free of almost any restrained when you are left alone.

Oh please... Now everybody in this thread is suddenly a hero who can endure the most shocking of tortures.

Let me tell all of you something. I guarantee I'll make everybody here speak. Everybody!

All I have to do is shoot you in the foot with a pistol and tell you to tell me the truth. If you don't, I'll shoot you in the other. That's it! Nothing else needs to be done.

You know how much it hurts to mess with a broken toe nail. Imagine a bullet.

I'm a wimp, I'll sing like a songbird LOL

reply to post by Ophiuchus 13


Not true! You can die from cardiac arrest due to extreme pain where the pain and stress is so intense that you die from a heart attack. The Guarapiranga rezevoiur murder victim that has been touted online as a 'ufo murder' died in this manner after having parts of his face surgicaly removed including his eye and jaw as well as his internal organs and flesh from his body and limbs sucked out by some kind of machine that only left 2.5 inch holes in the victim. The corpse was left like that and wasaparently did not decay despite being found days after the inccident.

In some rare cases pain is numbed for a short period of time by endorphines etc, sometimes when victims suffer extreme trauma like loosing multiple limbs, however its rare that it lasts long. You can detach your mind from your body though by practicing meditation. Like the monk who set himself on fire yet didnt panic or try and save himself, he merely sat and burt, other did the same thing standing and only collapsed after physically being unable to stand due to their injuries.

reply to post by beezzer


I have only read your opening post...
I don't know what I would do?I know what I would
like to think I'd do,protect my family at all costs.

The only "torture" I have endured in my life is my
husband threatening to take away my car keys and
credit cards.