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Comment by gene-h | Hacker News Reader

I once scanned myself at a maker fair in a similar manner. A swimming pool of blue dye with a camera facing above was used so that objects could be scanned by looking at their outline in the blue dye as they were dipped in(a different approach to the volume transforms presented here). Now to do this with a person involved strapping that person to a board and slowly dunking them in. Overall, the experience was unpleasant and what I imagine waterboarding is like, but hey at least I got a 3d scan of myself.

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From what I understand, which is admittedly not very much, waterboarding is a lot worse than being submerged. It's not so much dunking you into water as it is pouring water up your breathing passages.

The approved method is to hold the person down on his back, then quickly apply a sheet of Saranwrap over the face followed by a washcloth, followed by many five gallon buckets of water. The drowning reflex is elicited long before a typical breath hold time. If water gets into the breathing passages, that's very bad - it means the procedure was done incorrectly.

The procedure is terminated quickly once the person is entering distress due to lack of oxygen.

The first few times it's done on a person, it's very frightening. Later, it becomes very annoying, especially if they wake you up at 4 AM for another go.

Opinions differ about the adjective 'approved'. I also doubt that, in practice, the procedure is "terminated quickly once the person is entering distress".

You make it sound like the DoD, Amnesty International and the Red Cross had a couple of meetings on this and came up with a humane way of doing this.

Being submerged wasn't bad, it was the water that flowed into my nose near the end of the scan that was bad. It was in no way as bad as waterboarding(especially since I was able to immediately get out), but enough to throw me into a bit of a coughing fit.

you are being submerged in liquid? therefor holding your breath? therefor all together avoiding any of the torture induced by waterboarding?

if you're interested in hammering out some science for us, waterboard yourself and report back. i think you might be surprised.

I did not mean for my post to make waterboarding seem to be simply unpleasant. It is not, it is horrible and inhumane practice whose use cannot be justified.

That being said getting a good scan required me lying on my back holding still as I was slowly lowered into the water. At the end of the scan I had water going into my nose. Holding my breath was unable to prevent this. Certainly not as bad as waterboarding, but certainly enough to elicit a coughing fit.

got it. thanks mate. was an honest question. maybe negligent on my part, but i had something like a dunking booth in mind. wasn't considering a rush up the nose. definitely at least a bit closer to waterboarding than what i'd imagined. :)

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