I once sent a suggestion to Mythbusters that they test a “bloated corpse raft” like that depicted in the comic book Watchmen and reportedly in real life during the Vietnamese “boat people” exodus. My suggestion was ignored.
Surely basic physics debunks SHC entirely? The human body at max only ever generates an internal temperature of, say, 110 F on the highest of fevers. That’s still many hundreds of degrees below what it takes to ignite anything.
Do the SHC-proponents really think the body works itself up a furious fever?
Yes.
As a long-term fan of paranormal shows, such as In Search Of (Spock wouldn’t lie to me!), SHC was combustion without external ignition source. Whatever was igniting people was driven by the body itself. Howver, in all these years, no actual combustion methodology was ever convincingly proposed.
What we see now is that humans can and do burn in a manner consistent with cases previously attributed to SHC, but due to scientific and repeatable physics. So what is actually going on is NHC (normal human combustion). But that’s boring.
I have a vague memory of either Adam or Jamie mentioning on the show that spontaneous human combustion was something that viewers commonly ask them to test, but that they can’t or won’t test it, IIRC because there isn’t really a good way for them to test it on the show.
That’s a thing?
Which one - the American or the Brit?
The American. Hated his narration.
This is why Mythbusters couldn’t test SHC.
The way the show worked was that they took a theory and tested it. They didn’t just test whether something has ever happened or if something was possible, but whether something was possible using the parameters of the myth. The myth needed to have an element of “this is why this happened” in it in order for it to be something they could test. Either that, or the mechanics had to be obvious on its face.
As an example, when they tested making a boat out of Pykrete, they already had a proposed method to make it and a formula (86% ice to 14% sawdust). They also had a proposed “Super Pykrete” that uses shredded newspaper rather than sawdust. That gave them something to work with.
There was also the episode where they tested whether a lead balloon could float (it could). They came up with the idea of using very thin sheets of lead to form an airtight bag and inflate it. Or another challenge where they tried to “polish a turd”. (They were also successful in that.) Or the “needle in a haystack” challenge (I believe a conveyor belt and a magnet was used). For those myths, they took a common saying which described something presumably impossible and challenged themselves to make it possible.
With spontaneous human combustion, what you have is a myth about something happening but with no real theory as to why. There would have been nothing to test, unless someone proposed a theory that took hold and became popular, or if one of the cast members had their own theory. As it is, it is a subject that wouldn’t have been doable for the show.
I canNOT wait for the two-day Mythbusters Marathon… 48 cameras following 48 people for 48 hours straight. Maybe displayed Zoom-like for the television public.
And all of the world watching and waiting and watching, to see… nothing happening. None of the four dozen ordinary people will combust, spontaneously or not.
Although you know how at the end of a “Guess it won’t explode” episode, Jamie always decides to blow up something anyhow? … hmmm …
“Guys? Why am I not on the other side of that shield thing with you all?!”
“And why is there a wire attached to this baton?”
The first test I saw of the “wick effect” to explain SHC that was this one from 1999, I think.
I mentioned it on the SDMB here.
It seems a plausible explanation of SHC, but in the sense that it isn’t SHC. The point of SHC is that the human body combusts due to no external heat source. For the wick effect to occur, a person is set on fire externally somehow. In a couple of cases where this was believed to have occurred, one was a person who presumably set herself on fire while falling asleep with a lit cigarette. Another was a woman who was murdered, doused in gasoline, and then set on fire. Clearly, none of this is spontaneous human combustion, but the explanation shows how something other than SHC occurred yet left remains that have led some people to conclude it was SHC.
Just a minor clarification, otherwise I agree with you. People just suddenly cremating themselves out of nowhere is fantasy. People being burnt with an extreme heat in a situation where you wouldn’t expect it (in the middle of the woods, in a living room armchair) is an observed phenomenon that we have a rational explanation for.
Those interested in SHC shouldn’t miss out on Joe Nickell’s articles, including those in the Skeptical Inquirer. Nickell’s debunkings of credulous SHC advocates make for entertaining reading.