Die Pod™ cares for your safety.

This is ironic – a suicide device that has a safety feature, a get-out clause. Continuing exploring the commodification of suicide, I felt that in developing this technology, the company ‘Die Pod International™ would also want to leave every option open to potential clients. If they’ve already supplied a comfortable, secure, sophisticated environment in which to ends one’s life; they surely wouldn’t have over-looked some safety features to reassure clients. Perhaps the panic button’s very availability would be responsible for aborted suicides and the continuation of life for a great many people.

Frequently, suicide is a cry for help; a last desperate attempt to bring great personal, internal crises to the attention of society.

The science behind Die Pod™

This is another piece in the series looking into the commodification of suicide. I enjoyed biology in school and was fascinated my the illustrations in our textbooks. The graphic, brightly coloured, yet dated illustrations, brought the workings of the human body to life. For me, it was these drawings and pictures which brought the human body to life, rather than the films or videos we were shown; they had a certain existential quality which mirrored our fluctuating teenage lives which were frequently targeted by external, dynamic forces so often projected through graphic and cartoonish means.

I suppose ‘F9’ is loosely based on the infamous Zyklon B used by the Nazis. I was totally shocked, when I learnt as a young adult that humans would use such a thing on other humans, in such a cold and deliberate fashion. In a way, exploring this also helps me to come to terms with it.