dead head dread

I remember trying to imagine when i was a kid what it would be like to have my head chopped off... whether or not you would feel it, if you would remain conscious for any amount of time after the blow or if time would grind to a halt while still in the throws of the experience... prolonging the panic and terror..
hopefully i will never know, but mad things happen and lots of people still die by beheading. it's just mental to think about it actually happening to you! aagh!

i found this quite creepy...

"Following executions in Elizabethan England the severed head was held up by the hair by the executioner. This was done, not as many people think to show the crowd the head, but in fact to show the head the faces of crowd and it's own body! Killing by beheading is not immediate. Consciousness remains for at least eight seconds after beheading until lack of oxygen causes unconsciousness and eventually death. The punishment by beheading therefore even continued after 'death'. The Heads of Elizabethan traitors were placed on stakes and displayed in public places such as London Bridge.

Countries such as Saudi Arabia still use public beheading as the punishment for murder, rape, drug trafficking, sodomy, armed robbery, apostasy and certain other offences. 2007 was the record year for executions with 153 men and three women executed. 102 people were executed in Saudi Arabia during 2008 but it is thought that two of these were by shooting in Asir Province.
The condemned of both sexes are typically given tranquillisers and then taken by police van to a public square or a car park after midday prayers. Their eyes are covered and they are blindfolded. The police clear the square of traffic and a sheet of plastic sheet about 16 feet square is laid out on the ground.
Dressed in either a white robe or their own clothes, barefoot, with shackled feet and hands cuffed behind their back, the prisoner is led by a police officer to the centre of the sheet where they are made to kneel facing Mecca. An Interior Ministry official reads out the prisoner's name and crime to the crowd.
Saudi Arabia uses a traditional Arab scimitar which is 1100-1200 mm long. The executioner is handed the sword by a policeman and raises the gleaming scimitar, often swinging it two or three times in the air to warm up his arm muscles, before
approaching the prisoner from behind and jabbing him in the back with the tip of the blade, causing the person to raise their head. (see photo) Then with a single swing of the sword the prisoner is decapitated.
Normally it takes just one swing of the sword to sever the head. Paramedics bring the head to a doctor, who uses a gloved hand to stop the fountain of blood spurting from the neck. The doctor sews the head back on, and the body is wrapped in the blue plastic sheet and taken away in an ambulance. Burial takes place in an unmarked grave in the prison cemetery.
Beheadings of women did not start until the early 1990’s, previously they were shot. Forty three women have been publicly beheaded up to the end of 2007. Saudi executioners take great pride in their work and the post tends to be handed down from one generation to the next."