“Waterboarding: Not so bad!” -Niko Pueringer

Niko tonight asked to be waterboarded.

I’m sure by now you’ve heard all the hullaballoo about waterboarding and how it’s like the frat initiation technique that’s sweeping the nation, and also perhaps about how even the most hardest of CIA operatives only lasted for mere seconds when they subjected themselves to this technique.

Now odds are, knowing how politics and the world tends to work, it’s very likely the kind of thing that the media has latched onto and amped up (imagine! Torture that is effective in seconds and leaves no marks!) After all, I highly doubt the CIA manual on non-marking torture techniques contains a single chapter on “Waterboarding” and a glossary for terms like “inclined plane” and that’s it.

And obviously, any attempts to demonstrate it here are hindered by the fact that Niko knows us and knows we’re all just messin’ around in the loft and at any time he could quit and we could all go get Burger King double cheeseburgers for a buck no problemo.

But still, even knowing all this, we decided to give it a shot.

We went out into our hallway, filled a gallon jug with water, laid him down on an inclined plane, and, as best as we could tell based on the videos and descriptions readily available on the internet, tried it on him. I ran every iteration of the method I’ve seen, from plastic covering everything except a hole over his mouth, to the wet towel, to the wet towel in combination with the plastic.

Niko was a sly dog. He reported that the initial rush of water up his nostrils filled up his sinuses, but perhaps because he is a man accustomed to allergies or is a terrible swimmer, by simply forcing himself to relax and hold his breath, he could last as long as he could hold his breath. So in his experience, there wasn’t the instant five seconds later and you’re begging to tell the enemy everything experience that the Fox News reporter went through. Knowing what to expect and holding the breath was all it took to last until he couldn’t hold his breath anymore.

Now obviously granted he couldn’t hold out forever – he would give up eventually but simply because he needed to breathe – that’s not what we were testing. What we were wondering about was the sensation of drowning that people have reported. Niko reported everything that other sites have corroborated – he did indeed feel water in his mouth and throat, but did not experience the dread of drowning and death. Thus for him it wasn’t any different than, say, dunking his head in water or otherwise not being allowed to breathe.

So I dunno, maybe we were doing it wrong? Niko concluded that against well trained people who knew what to expect, this form of torture might not be very effective (in an oxygen deprived state and a calm demeanor, it wouldn’t be so hard to just allow yourself to pass out, he thinks), but against people who either don’t know what to expect, or non-trained folks, this technique could actually work well.

Either that, or Niko is a man who is unafraid of drowning.