This is a question I’ve entertained for a long time, probably because I’m preoccupied with death. But I was curious about what would happen if astronauts, like the ones going around the Moon now, found themselves stranded in space with no way to get home, facing death from oxygen depletion or starvation. Or what would happen if the astronauts who were on the Moon years couldn’t start up the Lunar Module to get back to the Command Module and then back to Earth? Would they have been carrying something that would allow them to commit suicide quickly, avoiding a prolonged death?
I asked Jim Batterson, our resident NASA expert, and he didn’t know the answer. I then turned to the AI bot Grok, which I got for free when X (“Twitter”)—for reasons unknown—gave me a free blue checkmark.
My question to Grok is in bold below, and the short answer (indented) is that no, American astronauts don’t carry anything to do themselves in, though one Russian astronaut did. Grok went though the data in 11 seconds, and spat out the following. Note that there are references (the bot gives you the links, which I haven’t included) to check the statements.
Thought for 11s
No, astronauts do not carry cyanide capsules or any dedicated suicide pills as standard equipment.
iflscience.comNASA has never issued suicide pills (sometimes called “L-pills” or cyanide capsules) to its astronauts, including during the Apollo lunar missions or on current ISS and Artemis programs. Astronaut Jim Lovell (Apollo 13 commander) explicitly debunked this long-standing rumor: “Since Apollo 13 many people have asked me, ‘Did you have suicide pills on board?’ We didn’t, and I never heard of such a thing in the eleven years I spent as an astronaut and NASA executive.”
iflscience.comThe idea appears to stem from spy-movie tropes, urban legends, or sci-fi (e.g., the film Contact), but it has been consistently denied by NASA and astronauts. Multiple sources, including direct statements from astronauts, confirm that no such pills have ever been part of U.S. spaceflight medical kits.
quora.comWhy the rumor persists, and why pills aren’t needed anywayIn a worst-case scenario of being stranded in space with no rescue possible (e.g., a failed re-entry or detached during a spacewalk), astronauts have pointed out that the vacuum of space itself provides a relatively quick way to end life if someone chose to—by simply opening a suit valve or venting the spacecraft’s atmosphere. This would cause unconsciousness in seconds and death shortly after, making a pill unnecessary.
theguardian.comNASA’s focus is on prevention and survival: rigorous psychological screening, crew training, rescue protocols (e.g., multiple docked return vehicles on the ISS), and detailed medical kits. Those kits contain painkillers, anti-nausea drugs, antibiotics, etc., but nothing lethal like cyanide.
nasa.govIf an astronaut were to experience a mental health crisis in space (e.g., becoming suicidal or psychotic), NASA has written procedures: crewmates are instructed to restrain the person with duct tape and bungee cords, monitor them, and administer sedatives like Haldol or Valium (orally or by injection if needed). The goal is stabilization, not euthanasia.
cbsnews.comOne historical exception (Soviet side) The only verified case involves Soviet cosmonaut Alexei Leonov (the first person to spacewalk, in 1965 on Voskhod 2). He stated that he was issued a suicide pill for that specific high-risk mission—in case he couldn’t re-enter the spacecraft and his crewmate had to leave him behind in orbit. His suit ballooned during the walk, and he barely made it back inside after partially depressurizing it. This was not standard practice for the Soviet program overall, and no evidence exists of it being routine for cosmonauts then or now.
iflscience.comIn short, modern astronauts (NASA, ESA, Roscosmos, etc.) rely on engineering, training, and international rescue plans rather than personal suicide options. No agency equips crews with cyanide or equivalent for “stuck in space” scenarios.
Death by hypoxia is definitely the way to go. Let some of the atmosphere out of your suit, become euphoric, have a little giggle, and drift away.
The gasping-for-air-and-panicking thing is actually a physiological response to having too much carbon dioxide. Just inhaling insufficient oxygen doesn’t have that effect at all.
Exactly. That’s why you shouldn’t carry liquid nitrogen on elevators and such. A spill can displace any oxygen, but you won’t feel out of breath. You’ll just get lightheaded, pass out and…well, hopefully you’ll reach your floor in time.
That is interesting — about liquid N2. I recently had an elevator ride with some facilities guy in our building who was carting around a very large N2 tank. When he exited over the threshold, the bump over the gap caused the tank to loudly emit a blast of gas, which just as quickly stopped.
I surmised that the bump caused some liquid N2 to convert to gas, and the spike in pressure triggered a release valve to re-set the pressure.
I have spent an unhealthy amount of time imagining the scenario where an astronaut on a spacewalk is unable to return to the ship and knows for a fact that they are doomed. It doesn’t help that a lot of SF movies include that nightmare scenario. E.g., Armageddon and Europa.
Anyway, as for the solution of letting the air out of the suit, that’s not possible, since the suits are impossible to open without help. The upshot is that I think an astronaut would be helpless to do anything but dwell on the certainty of their impending demise. It would be awful if they still had hours of oxygen.
Thanks for the information about space suits, Brooke.
Alexi Leonov had 45 minutes of oxygen in his suit pack (which also pressurized his suit.) He would have passed out from anoxia shortly after his last breath of oxygen. (The residual but rapidly depleting oxygen in his exhaled breath would have sustained him for a short time.) Would contemplating this be terrifying to a trained fighter pilot with “the right stuff” to be a cosmonaut? Or an opportunity to reflect and contemplate the majesty of the cosmos — he was a talented painter –, or wish he had a woman, or make peace with God? Or would he find it just tedious, preoccupied with itches he couldn’t scratch?
His suit pressure was maintained by the oxygen from his pack. When that ran out, his suit would have slowly depressurized from leaks (and from CO2-scrubbing) but he would be by then long dead. Weatherjeff makes a useful distinction between anoxia at sea level and hypobaric anoxia during exposure to the hard vacuum of space. Perhaps a kindness would be to arrange for a small canister of (volatile liquid) ether to inject into the space suit once the oxygen ran out, to anesthetize away any distress that might result from either anoxia or hypobaria.
We should mention carbon dioxide, which came closer to killing American astronauts than hypoxia did. It has to be scrubbed out of the astronaut’s atmosphere (suit or spacecraft) by one of several mechanisms. We assume that if an astronaut has 45 minutes of oxygen, the medium in his suit that absorbs CO2 will remain active at least that long. But over longer terms systems in spacecraft can generate O2 through electrolysis of recycled water. CO2-scrubbing then becomes limiting, as during the Apollo 13 mishap. The engineers had to jury-rig scrubbers to prevent the three astronauts from dying from CO2 poisoning during their swing around the moon and home.
Acute hypercarbia is intensely distressing as when you try to hold your breath. When scrubbing fails, the partial pressure of CO2 in your sealed atmosphere rises slowly but inexorably. Hyperventilation occurs early allowing the crew to be fully aware of the problem and anxious, but the brain loses awareness of hypercarbia after some hours and then somnolence sets in. Eventually the heart arrests from acidosis.
Right? Just open the window!
I’d like the pill also, though: optionality.
D.A.
NYC
I’m afraid the “drifting off with giggles” idea is a tad optimistic. This assumption is often based on the idea that breathing pure nitrogen leads to such an end (which is itself an oversimplification, as panic and distress can occur), but partial depressurisation is a very different physiological scenario. The alveolar gas equation shows that oxygenation depends on the product of oxygen fraction and ambient pressure. Pure nitrogen at normal pressure eliminates alveolar oxygen while maintaining CO₂ elimination, resulting in rapid hypoxic incapacitation without the classic CO₂-driven “air hunger.” However, in partial depressurisation, ambient pressure falls, and by Boyle’s law, gases expand rapidly, forcing air out of the lungs and expanding gas in the gastrointestinal tract. Even if a suit contains high concentrations of oxygen, alveolar O₂ can fall to critically low levels if pressure drops sufficiently, and this is not just “clean hypoxia.” The rapid gas expansion, airway drying, and mismatch between breathing effort and perceived adequacy are intensely uncomfortable and anxiety-provoking. With faster depressurisation, the sudden sensory disturbance and dyspnoea are likely to trigger an immediate autonomic stress response (panic, tachycardia, air-seeking behaviour) before hypoxia can impair consciousness. If an inert gas is present, decompression effects may occur, and at sufficiently low pressures, ebullism begins, producing rapid tissue swelling and mucosal boiling/bubbling. Brief survival of ebullism has been documented, but reports consistently describe it as a bizarre and distressing experience rather than anything resembling a calm or euphoric drift. It’s not how I would choose to go!
Yeah, cyanide poisoning can be a HORRIBLE way to die, whereas asphyxiation is very fast and more or less painless, as the nervous system shuts down remarkably quickly without oxygen.
Well, I never thought about that. And if it applies to astronauts, then the same question should be asked of anyone working in potentially dangerous situations, such as sailors on submarines. It’s very unlikely that they have suicide options.
Well, submariners don’t carry L-pills, so it’s probably true that astronauts don’t either.
Interesting question. I would automatically think that, no, they wouldn’t take suicide pills with them. At least in the old days, whether true or merely myth, people made of “the right stuff” wouldn’t take suicide pills with them because they would think that they could extricate themselves from any potential calamity. Or, if not that, they would think that suicide pills might bring bad luck.
Suicide pills? Nyet.
Yes Norman, my experience with our test pilots and I think all of our astronauts have a similar make up is that they are incredibly focused problem solvers. If it does not happen quick, then they would be using every available second analyzing the situation and trying to construct a solution. Think Apollo 13. Or as we all watched When Shuttle Challenger had a clear anomaly at 73 seconds after launch, we all expected to see Mike Smith and Dick Scobee flying the orbiter out of the smoke and returning to the Kennedy runway. But after a few long seconds we knew all was likely lost. These guys and gals are incredibly good! Though as I answered Jerry, I really do not know as a fact one way or another.
How would Leonov have taken the pills on his spacewalk?
You can do what some of the Nazis did who were captured: they carried a cyanide capsule hidden in a tooth cap, and if you crunch down on it, you die. There are of course better ways and better drugs; I’m sure that if NASA wanted this as a possibility, they could have designed it.
Two North Korean agents bombing a plane in the 1980s carried them. If captured. They were.
The cyanide was in crunchable glass within the cigarette filter. He took it, and died, and they nabbed her so she couldn’t (this was in the UAE).
D.A.
NYC
Seems unnecessarily baroque. Venting the rest of the air/pressure from his space suit into the vacuum of space would have consequences intimately familiar to a fighter pilot and cosmonaut. Either slowly (as Ruth and I would do) or quickly (if nearly instantaneous unconsciousness to get it over with was desired, as fast as cyanide) would work. Additionally the hard vacuum of space would inflict grievous decompression damage to his unprotected body but he’d be unconscious by that time. The danger of slow euphoric venting would be that if “the bends” set in, Lt. Leonov would likely have already lost situational awareness and problem-solving ability, — this insidiousness is what makes hypoxia so dangerous. He’d only be feeling pain and shitting himself inside his suit but unable to figure out the solution: vent the rest of the pressure immediately.
My understanding of cyanide and other rapidly acting poisons is to forestall an even worse death: a spy who worries about torture if caught, Hermann Goering cheating the hangman, all the Australians in On the Beach being given access to cyanide pills piled on the floors of abandoned drug stores near the end to forestall the otherwise inevitable ugly deaths from radiation sickness. I suspect the reason the fictional Australian government didn’t distribute morphine was that they knew it would be stolen for recreational use by hoarders betting that the catastrophe about to befall Melbourne was fake news.
Speaking of Australia, “take your helmet off in outer space” is one of the Dumb Ways to Die featured in the be-safe-around-trains song commissioned by Melbourne Railways.
Although prolonged, starvation is a peaceful way to go by most credible accounts and increases the opportunity for a solution to be found.
From the accounts I’ve read, starvation is an awful way to go, since it takes weeks, and people experience unrelenting, gnawing hunger the entire time.
We’ve been reading different literature then Brooke. I’ve mostly depended on reports from palliative caregivers, like nurses. The negative reports I’ve seen have concerned use of self-starvation as protest and might be a special case. For example, Bobby Sands took 66 days without food to die, which is much longer than typical for Voluntary Suspension of Eating and Drinking. Perhaps hard to say in the astronaut scenario since that involves healthy adults, like Sands, rather than much frailer people near end of life.
https://endoflifechoicesny.org/vsed-voluntarily-stopping-eating-drinking/
yes. From my readings it is HORRIBLE. as your body eats itself, then your organs shut down so your “poisoned high”.
No way, sir, I’ll take the cyanide pill/ciggie filter.
D.A.
NYC
Any serious medical kit would contain morphine. The question is if enough for lethal doses.
Almost certainly NOT.
Absent some other chemical, like alcohol, barbituates or diazepam in your system it is very difficult to O/D on morphine.
You’d have a pleasant sleep and wake up to…. your problems.
D.A.
NYC
Somehow inspiring – the total focus on life – viability, not morbidity, or even mortality. Great positivity. Naive? Maybe – but the enthusiasm for success boosts my spirits – at 83 all too aware of life’s trials.
It’s quite easy to end oneself up there, just open a few valves and let the air pressure drop, taking a load of the drugs would help.
The funny thing about the restraining drill is it’s one of the few accurate aspects of that film “Armageddon”, as they do beat up and tie up one of the characters in it.
What would survivors do with a body?
Perhaps they have signed legal documents to cover such scenarios.
For whatever reason, I thought of Major Tom…apperently, he was a junkie, but how could he get drugs into space? 😉
That take-off was fun! It’s strange to think there are 4 humans out there, hurtling to the moon and back. What a trip. Pun intended.
my dad was a stretcher bearer in ww2.he could only carry so much medical equipment on him and his training was limited. .I always wondered, what would he do with somebody who was in agonizing pain, was going to die, would he waste morphine and medicine on the guy, knowing that the medicine might save another wounded soldiers life. I thought maybe he had a pistol to shoot the soldier and end the agony.But I think it is more likely that he had a special shot,kept in a special bottle for that situation, but I don’t know, He didn’t talk about the war much but he mentioned soldiers with awful abdominal wounds, and I won’t go any further.
BTW, this is all on a guy who was 21 yrs old at the time.