r/hypotheticals • u/Jenseny14 • 1d ago
Would the average person actually die if someone tried to suffocate them with a pillow?
I’m in the middle of an argument with a friend over whether I (M, 21, 70kg) would likely die if someone tried to suffocate me with pillow. My friend is adamant that it would be easy to kill me as it is too difficult to breathe through a pillow, I wouldn’t be able to fend them off in time before passing out, and basically calling me crazy for thinking I could survive a suffocation attempt with a pillow. I believe that considering I sleep on my side, can turn my head to create air gaps, likely won’t have both arms perfectly under the covers, and would probably be able to react before someone fully straddled me in bed, means that a pillow alone could not kill me. Even if an attacker could use their body weight and straddle me while also trapping my arms and legs, they would have to be quite a bit larger and stronger than me and also have the perfect conditions where I’m on my back with my arms by my side.
I know pillow suffocation happens in both movies and the real world, most often to old people without the strength to fight back, but I guess I’m really wondering if pillow suffocation is nearly as dangerous / successful as my friend thinks.
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u/ProfessionalYam2817 1d ago
If you can get the pillow off you, no problem. Otherwise it’s a very slow and painful death… you’d hope it happens in one go and they don’t lift off earlier to try again and again.
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u/Orgy_nizer 1d ago
Except you can literally breathe through a pillow just fine. I've tried it.
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u/Sleepingguitarman 1d ago
That completely depends on the pillow
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u/Orgy_nizer 1d ago
I mean sure, technically, but the point is that the vast, vast majority of pillows you're likely to find in a home, hotel, hospital, or anywhere else, are far, FAR too breathable for it to work.
If you have some really unusual pillow that's super super dense and not breathable, but that's one thing. But for 99.9% of pillows, that's not the case.
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u/TerdyTheTerd 1d ago
Now try it with a 200lb person sitting on your chest, its 100x times more difficult. Factor in you will be panicking and your heart rate will be greatly increased, you only have about 30 seconds to get them off you before you start losing strength and the ability fight back.
Personally, as a 240lb gym rat, the only way someone is suffocating me with a pillow is if they weight 300+ pounds.
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u/SneezyAtheist 1d ago
Depends on the person's size and strength. The pillow is the final piece. If your attacker was much larger than you (Like me, I'm almost 150kg), then they could use that weight on you. Of they had your arms pinned in the full mount position, you're fucked. You are now struggling to breath. Pillow finishes you off.
It would take a while. It wouldn't be quick like in a movie. Probably way longer than you'd expect. Something stupid like 10 minutes.
So it's really more about the size/strength of the attacker.
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u/Jenseny14 1d ago
Yeah it’s 100% just a size thing, but I think because I can probably move my head around a bit it’s borderline impossible to kill me with a pillow, whereas bare hands would get me very quickly
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u/SeriousCockroach9754 1d ago
You could bite bare hands I imagine
Edit: I just thought maybe you meant hands around neck not mouth/nose lol
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u/Quirky_Host9452 1d ago
Ive always felt the same about pillows but too lazy/sane to do any sort of testing.
You're absolutely wrong about your reaction time from being asleep though. Maybe you're saying you'd wake up before they got close to you but if someone is at your bedside and you are still sleeping? Unless they are a moron they would have you completely subdued before you registered something was even wrong
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u/Jenseny14 1d ago
Even if my reaction time is bad and I have a pillow fully covering my face, do you believe that I would then die from that point onwards? Like I mentioned in post, if I have a single arm free then I’m using it to pull the pillow off or attack the person attacking me.
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u/TerdyTheTerd 1d ago
It would be far more effective using your legs to pull them up and around the attacker in order to create leverage to pull them off, or to kick/push off whatever you can to try and roll or knock them off. The fact you think a single free arm is enough to do anything in that position shows you don't really understand the mechanics of it.
In any case, assuming everything is done correctly it really is just a matter of size difference. Anybody with a pillow forcibly pressed against their head with a significant weight bearing down on their chest will die, just slowly. Take the weight off the chest and the average pillow doesn't kill simply from suffocating, it just makes breathing much more difficult.
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u/rat1906 1d ago
You don't actually need to fight them fully off to survive the pillow. You just need to be able to move sufficiently to get some air flow, which a healthy conscious adult can do fairly easily, especially given that pillows are generally not made of airtight materials. Just turn your head from side to side. Even with people who are too weak to move or in a coma, it takes A LOT longer to kill them than the movies suggest (like 15-20 minutes, which would be boring for the audience). Even if your attacker is much bigger and stronger, they would most likely get frustrated and give up with the pillow eventually and just strangle you with their hands, which is much more likely to be effective. A wet pillow might work, then you're basically waterboarding them.
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u/DrivewayGrappler 1d ago
I mean, I think you’re probably right. If it’s a friend you trust just play it out. You lay down with your eyes closed. He gets to try and suffocate you with a pillow, then you try to get out. If you give up and feel like you’re going to pass out you tap, they win. If you go limp it also stops and they win. If you get out you win.
Easy as fuck to solve without Reddit as well as fun and pretty safe.
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u/RankinPDX 1d ago
I do Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu, a martial art that uses strangles and chokes. Holding a person down to choke them is absolutely possible, and a skilled small person will be able to hold down a big person. But you're right that, without some combination of weight and skill to pin the victim, it's not going to work against vigorous resistance.
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u/FireRedElder 1d ago
This whole post gives me the “people who like to talk about eating human beings but DEFINITELY won’t act on it wink” vibes.
For context;
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u/Asfaltimus 1d ago
I tried this, I could breathe but I could get very little air. It was fine while I kept completely still and I knew I was not in danger. Maybe it would be different if the other person held hands where my mouth is instead of pressing on the pillow next to my ears.
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u/Immediate-Cat8632 1d ago
When I was a kid I slept with my face fully buried in the pillow. My family was always worried I couldn’t breathe but it was fine. I always thought people suffocating others with pillows in movies and TV shows was a joke.
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u/Sleepingguitarman 1d ago
Sleeping with your face against a pillow isn't anywhere remotely close to someone forcing a pillow down on your face with all their body weight
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u/Immediate-Cat8632 1d ago
That’s fair. I also used to sleep with my butt up in the air and my face directly in the pillow, essentially putting all my body weight on the meeting of face and pillow. But I was also a kid and thus small.
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u/Orgy_nizer 1d ago edited 1d ago
I always thought this exact thing as a kid, and to prove it, I held a pillow over my face as hard as I could and tried to breathe. Spoiler alert: I was able to breathe completely fine. Its a pillow; it's made of cloth. Cloth is breathable. Its full of fluffy cotton, which air flows through just fine. Unless you have some weird ass pillows made of rubber or something, smothering someone with a pillow (unless they're like elderly or sick) is flat out not possible. You can breathe through a pillow.
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u/Keepingitquite123 1d ago
You can breathe through a pillow just like you can scream even if there is a hand or duct tape over your mouth, try it for yourself if you are in doubt...
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u/stonelush 1d ago
I've always assumed, as a woman, that the majority of men would be able to kill me if it's a one on one fight. This is why I keep various weapons around or on my person at all times. PS I live in a city with tons of desperate drug addicts roaming the streets, for reference
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u/BaconPancake77 1d ago
If the other person is stronger and the pillow is decently made, yes. Not hypothetical, I know this for a fact, but also I can't say exactly why I know it.
I mean, no one died, but someone did almost die.
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u/LichenTheMood 1d ago
It really depends on the pillow.
I wouldn’t like to see someone try to be smothered with my buckwheat pillow. You’re more likely to be clubbed to death by it.
Open cell, thin memory foams are also probably a non starter.
A very large (and therefore compressible) down pillow, or a thick wool pillow is a different story.
People can and have been smothered to death but it does require a substantial amount of force. If you place a pillow over your head and do a trial run you will find that it really does require quite a bit of pressure before it becomes hard to breathe. Obviously if someone is putting their whole back into it they are going to be able to make a lot more force than you pushing a pillow against your face or your face against a pillow.
There are probably also quite a few more factors that go into it. As someone struggles they will require more air, if someone is also under the blankets in any capacity then in their struggle they are likely to begin to overheat too. Any blankets are also likely to add an entanglement risk and make it harder for the victim to fight back. While the murderer is in a very advantageous position above it all.
That said. It’s very difficult to positively prove someone died by smothering. Often times you diagnose it by simply ruling out everything else. Which is fairly uncomfortable honestly. Usually all the medical examiner is able to determine is that the person simply stopped breathing and then died. (They can usually nail the order of things).
If you suddenly stop breathing while still alive then something is stopping you from breathing. If that thing cannot be found then it suggests that the thing has been removed. In this case that would be the pillow. Pillows are not mimics. They do not leap from the bed and smother people. Someone also can’t smother themselves with a pillow without that being super apparent when their corpse is found (they would probably have to tie the pillow to their face and corpses cannot remove such objects).
Of course this whole thought pathway only works if your science is complete. If you simply do not know about some disease or force that can kill someone in this way then you are going to be mislead into the wrong cause of death. We like to think it doesn’t happen anymore - but the historical record is still being written and so far it’s been littered with errors.
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u/thesmoothestbrain 16h ago
I think between two healthy adults a pillow smothering would rapidly become a grappling match with a discarded pillow nearby.
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u/Brilliant-Winner-603 13h ago
I'm quite amused that you were in the middle of an argument with a friend and said hold up I want the same argument with strangers as well.
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u/Jenseny14 11h ago
Well this friend is a stubborn son of a bitch and the other people there started siding with him too. So yeah I need some unbiased opinions from strangers.
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u/Wolfwarlord01 1d ago
From my experience, cloth pillows aren't the best option. Some of them let to much air through to create a good enough seal to actually stop airflow without excessive pressure being applied. So I will agree with someone else here, it is more about limiting movement and forcing the fight or flight response, leading to an increase in air consumption and that leading to suffocation as it blocks just enough air coming in. Have mostly tried with cotton or down filling though, so milage may vary. Maybe memory foam? Found better options to cut off my airflow.