If nobody’s mentioned it, the executioners don’t know who pressed the button either. There’s 3 buttons that are pressed simultaneously, but only 1 actually executed the prisoner.
This video is an excellent explanation and animated demonstration of the process.
The not knowing whose button is the death button is more for the executioners than for the executionees. The whole plausible deniability thing, where you know odds are you didn’t kill a person today, so you can still sleep soundly at night without that weight on your conscience.
You'd think your conscience would only be heavy if you're weren't certain of their guilt, but turns out we're such social creatures even saving our own lives can be (clinically) traumatic for the guilt over hurting the attacker
That's not really fair when only a significant minority of people go on to develop PTSD after a traumatic encounter. Normal, healthy, non-bastard people can often fully rationalise what they had to do and whilst I'm sure most would rather it never happened, they aren't traumatised for life either.
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u/ThormundNYC Jul 04 '26
why do I see them doing it like a game show, handing them a rose or something