Introducing the Sarco suicide pod, a gleaming and futuristic-looking death machine. The Sarco, short for ‘sarcophagus’, is the real-life, 21st-century version of critic William Archer’s fictional street-corner slot machines, ‘by which a man could kill himself for a penny’.

The Sarco, a 3D-printed death capsule, was developed a few years ago by Dr Philip Nitschke, founder of assisted-suicide advocacy organisation Exit International, and engineer Alexander Bannink. First unveiled in 2019, the Sarco works by filling its chamber with nitrogen and reducing oxygen levels rapidly once a button is activated from inside. The process would allow a person to lose consciousness and die in approximately 10 minutes. It’s cheap, at just $20 a pop. It’s disability-friendly, in that it can also be activated by voice, a blink or a gesture. It’s also environmentally friendly, serving as a coffin as well as a suicide pod.

Nitschke sees the Sarco as empowering. He claims it will make assisted suicide as unassisted as possible – or as he put it in 2022, ‘You really don’t need a doctor to die’.