# Did the mythbusters ever test spontaneous human combustion?

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-the-mythbusters-ever-test-spontaneous-human-combustion/971009>\
**Category:** Cafe Society\
**Tags:** documentary-bio\
**Created:** [September 5, 2022, 7:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-the-mythbusters-ever-test-spontaneous-human-combustion/971009 "2022-09-05T19:02:28Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 1\
**Showing post:** 32

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![rowrrbazzle](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/rowrrbazzle/32/414_2.png) [@rowrrbazzle](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/rowrrbazzle)\
**Post date:** [September 8, 2022, 7:22am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-the-mythbusters-ever-test-spontaneous-human-combustion/971009/32 "2022-09-08T07:22:35Z")

</div>

The first test I saw of the “wick effect” to explain SHC that was this one from 1999, I think.

> **["Supernatural Science" Spontaneous Human Combustion (TV Episode 1999) |...](https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1818251/?ref_=ttep_ep4)**
>
> Spontaneous Human Combustion: Directed by Jan Klimkowski, Stephen Leslie.

I mentioned it on the SDMB here.

> [@Spontaneous Human Combustion - "Wicking"](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/spontaneous-human-combustion-wicking/180672/9):
>
> I’ve seen that documentary, too. It aired on the Discovery Channel and was narrated by Jonathan Pryce. It was so good I sent an email to the channel praising it very highly and received a nice reply. As jonbrawn said, the hypothesized wick effect was demonstrated to be correct. One other very interesting point was that the bones were being burned to ash as well due to the burning of the fatty marrow within them. I think Cecil should do another update referring to this experiment.

---

_[View the full topic](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-the-mythbusters-ever-test-spontaneous-human-combustion/971009)._