The suicide pod for couples: Inventor of the Sarco death capsule reveals new euthanasia device that will see two people end their lives together

 In September 2024, a 64-year-old woman became the first human to experience her last moments in a futuristic killing device known as the Sarco pod.

Amid a verdant forest in Switzerland’s Schaffhausen region, she climbed inside the 3D-printed capsule, pressed a button, and took a deep breath before nitrogen flooded the vessel.

The woman lost consciousness and died within a few minutes. But the controversial Sarco pod’s first death would be its last - at least for now.

Swiss police arrived, seized the pod, and arrested the only person present during the death, the late Dr Florian Willet, co-president of the assisted suicide organisation the Last Resort. They also arrested his lawyers and a photographer who documented the woman’s arrival.



After police ruled out intentional homicide, all were released, but Philip Nitschke - the Sarco's Australian-born inventor and a pro-euthanasia activist - was startled.

He was surprised by what he perceived as the police’s overzealousness - as well bogus claims in the media about signs of strangulation on the woman’s body - and was advised by his lawyers to remain in the Netherlands until further notice.

But after being forced to halt his development of euthanasia devices, Nitschke is tentatively devising the rollout of his next range of gadgets, providing the public with innovative, and divisive, ways to die.

One is the Double Dutch Sarco pod, a new-and-improved euthanasia capsule, now augmented with AI and purpose-built for couples who want to draw their last breaths side by side.

Talking to the Daily Mail, Nitschke says: ‘I'm not suggesting everyone's going to race forward and say: “Boy, I really want to climb into one of those things.”

‘But some people do.’ The woman who tested the Sarco told the assisted dying campaigner before she died that she had read about the device, and liked the idea.

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