Lingchi
By: Gavin Stewart
The Myth
In China long agomit is said that they would use a method called Lingchi, or death by a thousand paper cuts. But, does this really work? Well, that’s what I’m trying to figure out.
What Are The Odds
First of all, you have to start it off with where the cut hits you. There are a few places on your body where veins and arteries are closer to the surface. If you were to hit one of those areas, you could bleed out, or be close to. And than, there’s your tongue. Since your tongue is a muscle in your body, it is possible a cut to the tongue would be fatal. But than you have to multiply the odds of hitting one of those areas by 1,000. That increases the odds by a LOT. And than, since there are so many cuts, it’s posssible to infect one of your wounds. And having 1,000 open areas of your body makes it very easy for you to get infected, especially in ancient China. And you have to factor in pain. Paper cuts surprisingly hurt more than you’d think. But, it’s only because the pain is more noticeable and lingering. But, now let’s get down to the science of it all.
The Idea
Before we get to the facts, you need to understand the setting. The victim of Lingchi would be tied to a wooden pole in the middle of town, or a public area. Townsfolk would come up an watch the execution as they passed. The reason no one objected was because it seemed like a fitting punishment for the man or woman tied to the pole.
Science
The odds of someone hitting an artery or an exposed vein is pretty low, about a 1/10,000 chance. But then multiply that 1 by 1,000 and you get 1,000/10,000. Simplify that and you get 1/10 chance of death. And than you have about a 50/50 chance of infection, or 5/10. Add that to 1/10 and you’re at 6/10. After that, you have a pretty low chance of death because of pain. Around a ten percent chance, or 1/10. After that, you add it to your 6/10 and get 7/10. So basically, you have about a 70% chance of death. But, since in ancient China the cuts were probably deeper than a paper cut, you’d have to raise 70% to around 80% chance of death. So you’re probably going to die.
How deep were the cuts?
Well, as you can assume, the cuts were pretty deep. Not deep enough to call it a stab, but deep enough that it wasn’t your average paper cut. They would use knives to cut you, and knives go a lot deeper than paper. This would make you bleed a lot more. The average human needs to lose 40% of their blood to die of blood loss. And since the cuts were so deep and there were so many of them, it is possible that you would die of blood loss. And, can you imagine the serious pain that the person would be in? It is possible that they would attempt at killing themselves in order to end the pain. So, more realistically, there is around 98.4781354% chance of death.
Lingchi Not So Fun Facts
Lingchi also means lingering death, slow slicing, or the slow process.
In some tiny areas of China, some people still use Lingchi, although it is extremely rare.
Lingchi was used around the 10th century.
END
I hope you have nightmares about Lingchi. Thank you for reading my smore.