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Is death by cyanide poisoning less painful than death by asphyxiation?
I wouldn't know since I've never died once, let alone twice.

I've read that death by cyanide isn't quite as quick and painless as it is in the movies. Still, suffocation is one of the worst feelings in the world.

I don't think a micrometeorite would kill instantly. Even if it's traveling really fast, they're less than a millimeter in diameter. It's like getting hit by a piece of dust.

If you where to go into space without a space suit, it would take around 13 seconds to die, in that time you would die of suffocation, extreme cold, radiation, blood loss (vacuum would cause all your capillarys to burst), and depending on if there was something betwean you and the sun extreme heat. Or if you are lucky, you could get hit by a micro meteorite and die instantly. I know way to many weird things

I don't think a micrometeorite would kill instantly. Even if it's traveling really fast, they're less than a millimeter in diameter. It's like getting hit by a piece of dust.

Considering that the guys on Apollo 13 managed to build a carbon dioxide filter out of common items, they probably didn't need suicide pills. These guys could probably just invent a way of killing themselves with a tube of toothpaste or something.

I read an interview with Arthur C. Clarke once in which he talked about what would really happen if you were sucked out into space. He said that if you exhaled all of the oxygen from your body (holding your breath would be bad news) before it happened, you could remain conscious for about two minutes, and death would follow from suffocation in the minutes after losing consciousness. The vacuum would not, he said, instantly burst your veins. I can't remember the reason why, but something prevented the extreme cold and direct sun heat from being a factor. (I think it was something about how your body heat is retained in a vacuum, and how the heat isn't enough to fry you too quickly.) They would affect you, but not until you were dead from the vacuum. It's 2AM and I'm too lazy to look it up, but I'm sure that a Google search for Clarke's name and words like "survive" and "vacuum" will get you some interesting information.




A piece of dust traveling thousands of miles per hour would still go right through you and cause plenty of damage. Instant death I'm not sure of, but I sure wouldn't want it to happen.

How exactly would a vacume like the one found in space (thats enough to burst you chest cavity (thats why you shouldn't hold your breath in space if i remember correctly)), not rupture vessel that are broken by a hickey? If you where in space, unprotected sun, you would be subject to temperatures of +260 Fahrenheit, with something between you and the sun it would be -280 Fahrenheit. And though i don't know if the radiation in space is enough to kill you before you get roasted/frozen/suffocate/bleed to death, it would more then likely get you in the long run if you managed to survive the others.

Outer space is an extremely hostile place. If you were to step outside a spacecraft, such as the International Space Station, or on a world with little or no atmosphere such as the moon or Mars without the protection of a space suit, then the following things would happen:

You would lose consciousness because there is no oxygen. This could occur in as little as 15 seconds.
Because there is no air pressure to keep your blood and body fluids in a liquid state, the fluids would "boil." Because the "boiling process" would cause them to lose heat energy rapidly, the fluids would freeze before they were evaporated totally (There is a cool display in San Francisco's science museum, The Exploratorium, that demonstrates this principle!). This process could take from 30 seconds to 1 minute. So, it was possible for astronaut David Bowman in "2001: A Space Odyssey" to survive when he ejected from the space pod into the airlock without a space helmet and repressurized the airlock within 30 seconds.
Your tissues (skin, heart, other internal organs) would expand because of the boiling fluids. However, they would not "explode" as depicted in some science fiction movies, such as "Total Recall."
You would face extreme changes in temperature
sunlight - 248 degrees Fahrenheit or 120 degrees Celsius
shade - minus 148 degrees Fahrenheit or minus 100 degrees Celsius
You would be exposed to various types of radiation (cosmic rays) or charged particles emitted from the sun (solar wind).
You could be hit by small particles of dust or rock that move at high speeds (micrometeoroids) or orbiting debris from satellites or spacecraft.

You would die quickly because of the first three things listed, probably in less than one minute. The movie "Mission to Mars" has a scene that realistically demonstrates what would happen if an astronaut's space suit were to rapidly lose pressure and be exposed to outer space. So to protect astronauts, NASA has developed elaborate space suits.

You would die quickly because of the first three things listed, probably in less than one minute. The movie "Mission to Mars" has a scene that realistically demonstrates what would happen if an astronaut's space suit were to rapidly lose pressure and be exposed to outer space. So to protect astronauts, NASA has developed elaborate space suits.

As I understood things, the Apollo 13 guys were in danger of too much CO2. They would not suffocate. They would fall asleep and eventually suffocate. I'd suspect it would be "painless."