I have a vague memory of the Mythbusters testing spontaneous human combustion using a pig carcass, but my google-fu fails me and I can’t find it anywhere. Is this a faulty memory on my part, or did they actually test this?
Thanks,
J.
Um, I think you’re thinking of the CSI episode Adam and Jamie guest-starred on, where the experiment was done by Sara and Warrick.
Closest the Mythbusters came was the Build Team checking out a legend about exploding pants (they found it could happen).
To be fair, it’s been a long time since I watched that episode but IIRC, what they tested on CSI was alternate theories besides spontaneous human combustion to explain what happened to their victim (they settled on the wick effect).
They never actually tested “spontaneous human combustion”; I’m not sure how one would even begin to approach that.
You have a bunch of people doze off in chairs, and see if any of them spontaneously combust? You also have a control group doze off in chairs while smoking cigarettes and see if any of them non-spontaneously combust?
I saw this semi-related article this week:
ETA: While the above article doesn’t suggest much in the way of causality, this article:
says, Soil-free potting mixes have been around for over 40 years, but I suspect this uptick in fires being caused by them is the result of more and more smokers being asked to smoke outside the house. This is better for the health of nonsmokers, but it has created a serious fire hazard.
My understanding of human combustion is that it’s not spontaneous, but is associated with alcoholism plus smoking leading to people setting themselves afire after smoking and falling asleep. No time for a cite for that ATM, though the wick cite above points in this direction.
Don’t forget the bucket full of oily rags. That one is pretty much a classic.
I have a colleague whose new house burned down when a rag that had been used to apply linseed oil to a cabinet was left on the counter and combusted.
A web search on “spontaneous human combustion pig test”. Turned up “Debunking the Spontaneous Human Combustion Myth: Experiments in the Combustibility of the Human Body” by Angi M. Christensen
Key paragraphs:
Dr. John DeHaan took this line of inquiry one step further. In an experiment
conducted for the British Broadcasting Company’s QED program ( 1989) intended to lay
the myth of SHC to rest, DeHaan wrapped the carcass of a pig in a blanket, doused it with
gasoline and set it alight in a mock living room. Two minutes later, the petrol had burned
off, but melting fat that had soaked into the clothes and carpet continued to fuel the fire.
After three hours, the fire was still burning at temperatures greater than 800°C. Five
hours into the experiment, the carcass began to show classic signs of SHC with some
bones burning while the rest of the living room remained untouched by flame. While the
pig never actually burnt completely to ashes, DeHaan considered the experiment a
success, demonstrating both that fire can be supported by animal fat, and that these long
lasting fires can remain localized.
In a somewhat more controlled environment, DeHaan et al. ( 1999) conducted
several experiments measuring the combustion of pork tissues under a variety of
conditions. In an experiment burning cotton wrapped pork fat, DeHaan and colleagues
measured maximum flame temperatures of 911 °C using a handheld thermocouple probe.
This 120- 130kW fire, however, would quite likely to spread to nearby combustibles.
Tests involving lean pig carcasses produced fires of 40-50 kW and were thought to be
more typical of burning human remains where less efficient fuels such as skin and muscle
are also involved. This is a relatively small fire, and according to DeHaan et al., unlikely
to spread.
This is one of those things that’s likely to be resolved pretty soon with “proof by security camera”, the way that cow-tipping was revealed to be a hoax because there are no videos of someone doing it on Youtube.
There are enough houses with cameras in them that if spontaneous human combustion actually occurs, we’ll catch on camera pretty soon. Every day that goes by without video evidence gives stronger and stronger support to the claim that it doesn’t happen.
The Mythbusters later tested the myth on their own show.
That didn’t fit with SHC as commonly understood, IMO.
I was under the impression that all confirmed instances of spontaneous human combustion were caused by hardcore alcoholics who were also smoking, so the fire of their cigarettes would cause their alcohol infused skin to catch fire super easily.
Obligatory xkcd:
So… don’t leave us hanging, what thing that doesn’t happen is it commonly understood to mean?
So far as I’m aware, that would be cases where someone obviously burned up, with (allegedly) no available ignition source or damage to the surroundings, usually when the victim was presumably asleep or otherwise unaware/incapacitated. Hitting someone with electricity when they’re soaked in flammable liquid just doesn’t seem to fit, a taser being a very obvious ignition source.
I’m surprised we’ve gotten this far without this link.
I think the main reason why alcohol is a factor is that it acts as anesthesia so that the person isn’t woken up by being on fire.
I always wished they’d use that wry announcer of theirs and see if guillotined heads retain consciousness. I hated that guy.
Not necessarily.
Even taking most claims of SHC at face value, it is such an incredibly rare phenomenon that even a proliferation of cameras might need to wait several years to “get lucky.”
Over the centuries, hundreds of cases of spontaneous human combustion have been reported around the world. But is it actually possible?
And since the US Census Bureau estimates that world population in the year 1500 was in the range of 425-540 million people, we see that SHC would be, even in the “best” of circumstances, an extremely low percentage of deaths.
Even allowing for the fact that phrases such as “over the centuries” and “hundreds of cases” are rather imprecise, we can produce a rough-order estimation of 2 such cases per year.
If we scale up the occurrences to reflect a vastly-increased world population, we can estimate 30-40 cases worldwide per year, many of which would occur in countries where home surveillance cameras are rare. And remember, this is the “best case” scenario.
A further strike is that a significant percentage of such cases are reported in the victim’s bedroom, where even wealthy, security-conscious people seldom put cameras.
Thus, we see that you are quite likely being overly-optimistic in your asserted time frame.
Substitute alcohol for Vicodin and that’s how my uncle died. He passed out while smoking and burned to death in his bed.
Perhaps the OP was thinking about the Mythbusters episode where they capture and measure the components of human flatulence, which is known to be flammable (ala “Blue Flame”). It could be someone once fell asleep with a smoke after a large dinner of beans and cabbage.