Transcript for 9/25/24: THANATORIUM – FLYING THE SUICIDE SAUCER W/ PAULA SWOPE

Many times during the pandemic there were writers and talk show hosts including myself who referenced the movie Soylent Green and how the science fiction dystopia that is in the film takes place in the year, 2022.

Well needless to say 2022 came and went and we find that we are not eating little wafers that are "people."

The film was released in 1973 and depicts a world suffering from overpopulation, climate change, and extreme inequality, where the rich exploit and own the poor, who survive on the Soylent Corporation’s processed plankton.

To make matters worse, the oceans are dying, and with them, the resources to make said plankton, the only product that can (barely) sustain New York City’s population of 40 million.

Sol, a man of who is very old wants to die in a Thanatorium because he can no longer live in the dystopian future depicted in the movie—which includes government tyranny, and a privileged life for the elite while the rest live in chaos (rampant financial corruption, and such overcrowding that all the quiet and serene nature areas are gone. Sol has solved the mystery of Soylent Green and asks his cop pal Thorn, played by Charlton Heston, to “prove” that he is right.

This clip skips the scenes after the assisted suicide, in which Thorn follows Sol’s body to a processing plant, and cuts to the climax in which Charlton Heston screams what became an iconic line in movie history.

At the end of the film, while being taken away by ‘medical’ personnel, the protagonist-detective exclaims to an indifferent crowd his discovery that Soylent Green is actually not made from plankton, but from the only resource that’s still abundant. 

This is where we get the famous line uttered by Charlton Heston "Soylent Green is people."

Catastrophic visions of the future like that of Soylent Green were common in the 1960s and 70s. In 1968, Paul Ehrlich’s book The Population Bomb became a hit, with a prediction perhaps even more drastic than the one Soylent Green dared to put on screen: all is lost, and nothing can stop a global famine that, Ehrlich believed, would kill hundreds of millions of people in the 1970s.

The global population, according to Ehrlich, would stabilize at what he believed to be an ‘acceptable’ 1.5-2 billion people by 1985. For context, in 1968, the global population was just over 3.5 billion. So Ehrlich expected up to 60 percent of the world’s population to starve to death in less than 20 years!

Before Ehrlich, there was Thomas Malthus in the late 18th century, with his Essay on the Principle of Population and the simple (and wrong) observation that the population was growing rapidly faster than available resources.

Unlike Ehrlich and science fiction authors, Malthus did not go into specific doomsday predictions, but he still argued that unless humanity limits its own growth, wars and food shortages will do so for us. To prevent this outcome, he suggested measures ranging from reproductive restraint to fining parents and mass sterilization.

From this many elites of the day supported the Eugenics programs that would contribute to depopulation -- one of those supporters of Eugenics programs was Adolf Hitler --who had his own medical agenda that included Euthanizing those who had health conditions that would put a burden on Germany’s economy.

Then came the sterilization of the mentally challenged, the gassing of the Jews, and other medical procedures not unlike what is now being called gender affirmation care. 

The story of Soylent Green is not just about the mass cannibalism being hidden from the public -- but the way the older generations decide to voluntarily end their lives by going to what is called a Thanatorium.

It literally was an assisted suicide center.

No one dreamed that less than 40 years after the movie was released assisted suicide clinics exactly like the one depicted in the movie would legally operate in Switzerland and would service hundreds of people from around the world. 

Many of us can remember a man they called Dr. Death -- Jack Kevorkian who would assist the suicides of some 130 (mostly disabled) people and while many saw him as the angel of death --others applauded him and praised him as being an angel of mercy.

We had no idea that a Dutch judge would quasi-legalize euthanasia, resulting in the Netherlands careening off a moral cliff to the point that physicians would proudly write treatises in learned medical journals, including the New England Journal of Medicine, about how they lethally inject seriously ill and disabled babies. 

Nor would we have believed that in Oregon, doctors would prescribe lethal prescriptions for patients they had never met—much less treated—before being consulted by a patient wanting to be suicide by a doctor.

But now an elaborate tool has been invented that is a smaller version of the Thanatorium called SARCO. The SARCO suicide capsule looks like something out of a science fiction film, more like a spaceship -- that you get into, press a button and nitrogen fills the suicide pod and you fall asleep and die.

It is like you are getting into a flying saucer and going out of the world Heaven's Gate style.

It has now been used for the first time on a 64-year-old woman who used the capsule to die in a Swiss woodland

Police in northern Switzerland said that several people were detained on Monday and that prosecutors had opened an investigation on suspicion of incitement and accessory to suicide.

The 'Sarco' suicide capsule is designed to allow a person inside to push a button that injects nitrogen gas into the sealed chamber. The person is then supposed to fall asleep and die of suffocation in a few minutes.

Prosecutors in Schaffhausen canton were informed by a law firm that an assisted suicide involving the use of the Sarco capsule had taken place Monday near a woodland cabin in Merishausen, police said.

The woman who died in the capsule had reportedly been suffering with 'a very serious illness that involves severe pain' and had wished to die for 'at least two years'

The Last Resort, the Swiss firm behind the Sarco, said in a statement: 'On Monday 23 September, at approximately 16.01 CEST, a 64-year old woman from the mid-west in the USA died using the Sarco device.'

It said the co-president of the organization, Florian Willet, was the sole person present for the death, contrary to police reports.

Dutch newspaper Volkskrant has reported that police detained one of its photographers who wanted to take pictures of the use of the Sarco. 

It said Schaffhausen police had indicated the photographer was being held at a police station but declined to give a further explanation. 

According to Last Resort, Willet said the woman's death had been 'peaceful, fast and dignified', taking place 'under a canopy of trees, at a private forest retreat in the Canton of Schaffhausen close to the Swiss-German border.'

The Sarco capsule is built so that it can be remotely placed anywhere --and it has a huge window so the person inside can be in a wooded area, viewing a sunset, or even a city view if wanted. This is actually eerily similar to what was seen in the Thanatoriums of Soylent Green only that the body is placed in a space-aged-looking sarcophagus that can be placed anywhere.

The inventor of the Sarco, Philip Nitschke, said his device 'had performed exactly as it had been designed to do,' saying it had provided a 'non-drug, peaceful death at the time of the person's choosing'.

Police, including forensics teams, swooped on the scene after being notified by a legal firm that an assisted suicide with the device had taken place. 

The Last Resort, who had anticipated that there would need to be an investigation after the launch of the device, said it had informed the police that it had been used.

Cops seized the Sarco capsule and arrested several people in the Merishausen area were taken into police custody. 

A post-mortem will now be carried out on the deceased person by the Institute of Legal Medicine in Zurich.

The Last Resort Advisory Board member and lawyer, Fiona Stewart said that the company was acting at all times on the advice of their lawyers.

The device was used on the same day as Swiss Interior Minister Elisabeth Baume-Schneider told the National Council that she considers the use of the Sarco in Switzerland to be illegal. 

According to authorities, it does not fulfill the demands of the product safety law, and as such, must not be brought into circulation.

The corresponding use of nitrogen is not compatible with the article on purpose in the chemicals law.

Swiss law allows assisted suicide so long as the person takes his or her life with no 'external assistance' and those who help the person die do not do so for 'any self-serving motive.

Switzerland is among the only countries in the world where foreigners can travel to legally end their lives, and is home to several organizations that are dedicated to helping people kill themselves.

Some lawmakers in Switzerland have argued that the law is unclear and have sought to close what they call legal loopholes.

Nitschke and his partner Stewart have said that they want Sarco to become an established and accessible option for euthanasia. 

Some 120 applicants hoping to use the machine to end their lives, according to The Last Resort, with around a quarter of those on the waiting list said to be British people.

Peter and Christine Scott, who have been married for 46 years, decided former nurse Christine, 80, was recently diagnosed with early-stage vascular dementia.

Like the solo pod, The Last Resort said the two-person pod would be constructed using a 3D printer, and could be ready for use as early as January.

The pods work by replacing air, which is 21 percent oxygen and 79 percent nitrogen, with 100 percent nitrogen. 

This renders the occupant unconscious and they then stop breathing in a process that its creators expected to take less than ten minutes.

A camera inside the pod records their final moments and the footage is handed to a coroner.

People who use the Sarco suicide pod will hear a hair-raising eight-word message before they press a button to end their own life. 

After entering the machine, the person inside will hear a voice say: 'If you want to die, press this button."

And then you die of hypoxia.

The capsule is actually made to look like a spaceship that carries you off into heaven.

On one of the models, there is a quote from Carl Sagan:

“The cosmos is within us. We are made of star stuff. We are a way for the universe to know itself.”

Inferring that you enter the capsule and prepare for your trip into heaven -- this is eerily similar to what the Heaven's Gate cult did when they believed that through suicide they would be able to join an alien group known as the evolutionary level above human.

Usually when it comes to the idea of Euthanizing those in pain -- I believe it is a matter of body autonomy and we suspect that from time to time, increased dosages of narcotics make the patient comfortable and eventually they die peacefully.

But this capsule SARCO is most definitely something out of a dystopian science fiction story --and it is designed is literally similar to an escape pod from a mothership -- it gives it a cold science fiction vibe --where we relive the Soylent Green scenario with Sol and the Thanatorium.

Another horror to add is that now Euthanasia in places like Canada and Europe is being allowed for people with mental illness who are otherwise healthy adults.

All over Europe and Canada, euthanasia policies are seen as helping the neoliberal depopulation agendas. Thanatoriums are operating within the procedures of liberalism, following the rules and consulting the experts, pushing liberal premises to particularly ugly ends... the right to an abortion and now the right to die --are seen as liberal causes as conservatives are angry at the idea of antilife procedures are even being considered as a quick fix for everything.

But suppose you believe a legal and medical system that colludes in the suicides of the depressed is as grave an evil as any populist policy to date. When such a system emerges as a seemingly organic feature of the liberal order, what then should be your attitude toward liberalism itself?

This is crucial as it is not just the abortion issue we care about -- but in the future --will we have death panels deciding the fate of th elderly and depressed?

This is the next step in removing body autonomy in the future.

Another Eugenics directive is to encourage assisted suicide for those who just want to give up.

This problem, is the possibility that liberalism could through the working of its own principles lead to something truly evil, something that can be abused -- an edict for dying, either by their request, the globalist health departments request --or by your request. 

My Body, my choice -- correct?

This is the future as we argue further over the value of a life.

Or even life itself.

Will this be a political right or left issue in the future as we move closer to a Brave New World with all of the trappings of what Huxley predicted?

A world dominated by virtual reality and eugenics and mood-stabilizing drugs, post-familial and post-religious and functionally that is post-human. 

There is actually a cult film called Plan 75 that was produced in Japan that offers a bleak look at an inevitable future of government imposed Euthanasia.

Plan 75 is a dystopian Japanese drama about a government-sponsored euthanasia program introduced to address Japan’s ageing society. If you are Aged 75 or over and Agree to die they will give $1,000 to spend as you like in your last days.

The film is written and directed by Chie Hayakawa who was inspired – – by a mass killing in Japan in 2016 when a 26-year-old man broke into a care home, killed 19 residents, and injured a further 26, on the grounds that such people are a drain on society.

Japan is now the most rapidly ageing industrial society – 30 per cent of the population are 65 or older – and a dwindling army of younger people are expected to support them. 

It can be argued that the aging Boomer population in the US is burdening government programs and it can be terrifying to think that perhaps Covid-19 was used to thin the herd of elderly people.

It did not get them all -- and it was just afterwards we were hearing about liberal Euthanasia laws in Canada where the government has been known to recommend assisted suicide to people who are poor and unable to pay their bills.

It’s like Plan 75 become can become Plan 65 as a culture destroys its own soul.

There will be no ‘Carousel’ which will vaporize you at a certain age like in Logan’s Run or ‘Thanatorium’ where assisted suicides are turned into food like Soylent Green -- but a plan where no one has to know that the elderly have volunteered and rounded up for the greater good. 

The SARCO procedure is free , with people just paying for their body to be removed by funeral directors.

Oh and there is a fee of about 15 dollars for the use of the nitrogen.

So easy, so sanitized and bizarre that it just might be on display at a funeral home where you not only can attend the funeral of the deceased but watch the moment they press the button and travel where there are no more tomorrows.