QHow long does it take to kill someone with a choke hold? The assailant is standing behind or is on the victim’s back while applying pressure with the forearm to cut off blood flow. There are substantial weight and height differences between the two; the victim is five eleven and weighs 140 pounds, the assailant six two and 205 pounds.
MF
AThe various types of choke holds work not by blocking the airway but as you pointed out, by compressing the carotid arteries. The two carotid arteries supply approximately 90% of the blood to the brain, so collapsing them greatly reduces blood flow and leads to loss of consciousness followed by death. The time required is unpredictable and depends on how aggressively the hold is applied, how completely the carotid arteries are compressed, whether the arteries are continuously compressed or if the victim “breaks” or at least lessens the hold briefly from time to time, the thickness of the victim’s neck, and other things. It could take as little as twenty seconds for the victim to lose consciousness and as little as one to two minutes to die, or the struggle could continue for many minutes, allowing the victim to damage the attacker before succumbing. And anywhere in between. As we say in the South, it ain’t the size of the dog in the fight but the size of the fight in the dog.