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Would it be ethical to ask death-seeking people to go work in dangerous situations? (sh.itjust.works)
submitted 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) by to c/asklemmy@lemmy.world
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To be clear, I’m not suggesting we do what I’m about to propose, I just think it’s an interesting ethical/moral thought experiment.

If we could find a lot of people who want to unalive themselves, and say to them: there’s been a disaster and there are a lot of people who are stuck (e.g. a mine collapse, or 9/11 or something like that) and it’s a dangerous situation for rescue workers to go into, since you don’t care if you die we’re gonna send you in… would it be an ethical or moral thing to do? To ask or make people who don’t care if they live or not, to go into a situation that there’s a known high risk that they won’t survive?

(Also, I not asking wether it is a good idea to send such people in or wether it would be effective — I’m only interested in the ethics/morality of such an idea)

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[–] 2 points 1 day ago (1 child)

I'm kind of surprised in all the discussions I don't see where anybody mentioned recent history in Japan where it wasn't directly asked but a few cultural aspects led to exactly what you're talking about happening. Old people took up working in Fukushima nuclear reactor because they knew the radiation would likely harm them and they wanted to spare the young.

Like a modern day practical Ättenstupa.

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  • [–] [S] 0 points 1 day ago*

    Have you ever read about the K-19 sub disaster? I like to contrast the two examples:

    When the sub began to experience a meltdown, the captain got suicidal thoughts:

    “At one point, I thought of going down to my cabin, drawing my pistol and finishing all my problems at once,” he said.

    But rather than go himself into the reactor, he got ‘volunteers’ to sacrifice their lives to go in and repair.

    Also, if you read the entire comments section, you’ll see that others have in fact already mentioned that example.

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