[ANON POST] Surviving Being Burnt at the Stake

[orange_fell]

Setting: Alternate universe. The story is contemporary urban fantasy, but leaning more toward magical realism than unabashedly supernatural

Comments

[houseboatonstyx]

This would be more realistic than magical, but the executioners could be bribed to switch in a different victim, who would be unrecognizable after being genuinely burnt.

[beccastareyes]

Do you have a reason why, if the MC seems to die before he is seriously burned, the executioners wouldn't just let the fire continue to burn the 'corpse'? If there are religious or symbolic reasons to use fire -- which is a pretty nasty way to go if you don't asphyxiate* -- I presume they would extend to the disposal of the body.

If the executioners were bribed to not burn the body (for other reasons, like 'he has a rich family member who wants a nice funeral'), that could help with faking his death -- burn something else to display and slip the 'corpse' out with someone.

* I also recall from reading witnesses' accounts of burning at the state in medieval Europe, that the executioners were careful to make sure the victim wasn't prematurely killed or knocked out by smoke inhalation, and the fires were tended to make it a rather painful death.

[ioanna_ioannina]

There are three problems: asphyxation (can be helped by choosing dry wood), death by shock from pain/burns (can be helped maybe by some heat-stopping thing, but consider how long a fire used at this will be burning - hours; how big will it be - enough for a funeral fire, and the man will be in the middle of the flames, at least half a meter above the ground - that is why it's easier to let the corpse to be burnt; so you have another problem - how to take the "corpse" from the flames and how to explain that you are removing it at all, when the fire is still burning), thirdly, some victims died because the heat was so great that their blood started boiling.
All in all, I'd recommend the same as Houseboatonstyx.
Or, maybe, a fire-proof trap door under the stake - wait until the flames are up enough, open the trap door, cut the wires, catch the man and run like hell through your tunnel, because it cannot go unnoticed by the audience. I'm not sure if this is doable at all in the middle of the flames, though.

[anonymous]

You might want to check accounts of petty treason executions in England in the late 17th, early 19th C -- counterfeiting was a treasonable offence and women caught at it were sentenced to be burned. The executioners apparently strangled them with a kind of long distance garrotte rather than letting them die from the smoke and flames -- possibly from compassion, possibly because they were bribed, possibly because hours and hours of screaming and writhing in a fire made for a bad show, and tended to make people watching remember how much they actually dislike the monarchy

[lolmac]

Just a quick historical note: the actual manner of death, in this kind of execution, varied depending on how much "mercy" was being applied. When the garroting wasn't done, a "merciful" death involved the fire being built to create lots of smoke, so the victim would suffocate quickly, passing out before death. The alternative was a hot fire (but not too hot) with little smoke, so the victim actually had to feel the burning, from the feet up. The only "relief" in this case would be from passing out from agony and shock. Making a fire intensely hot and fiery (a combination of the kind of wood, and pouring various substances on the wood: oils, resins, etc.) was another option on the "mercy" scale: high flames meant scorched lungs and intense agony for a limited time, but the victim would pass out much sooner than with a slow fire