# Physiologically, how does boiling alive kill someone? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [July 15, 2008, 2:45am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/physiologically-how-does-boiling-alive-kill-someone/456537 "2008-07-15T02:45:20Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 11\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![NinjaChick](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/71c47a/32.png) [@NinjaChick](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/NinjaChick)\ **Post date:** [July 15, 2008, 2:45am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/physiologically-how-does-boiling-alive-kill-someone/456537/1 "2008-07-15T02:45:20Z")
The [Wikipedia](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boiling_to_death) page is sadly lacking. I know that - obviously - being immersed in boiling water is not healthy. But what exactly would happen to the human body that causes death? This popped into my head as I was waiting for the bus earlier today, and (after considering the fact that sometimes I really am afraid I’m a psychopath) I know I won’t be satisfied until I find an answer. ---
**Author:** ![Q.E.D](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/q/51bf81/32.png) [@Q.E.D](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Q.E.D)\ **Post date:** [July 15, 2008, 2:52am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/physiologically-how-does-boiling-alive-kill-someone/456537/2 "2008-07-15T02:52:58Z")
Boiling (well, really, any strong heating) coagulates proteins. Coagulated proteins don’t function so organs shut down and you die. ---
**Author:** ![Diogenes\_the\_Cynic](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/e99b99/32.png) [@Diogenes\_the\_Cynic](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Diogenes_the_Cynic)\ **Post date:** [July 15, 2008, 2:57am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/physiologically-how-does-boiling-alive-kill-someone/456537/3 "2008-07-15T02:57:33Z")
In other words, it cooks the internal organs, but you probably die of shock before it gets to that point. ---
**Author:** ![Q.E.D](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/q/51bf81/32.png) [@Q.E.D](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Q.E.D)\ **Post date:** [July 15, 2008, 2:59am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/physiologically-how-does-boiling-alive-kill-someone/456537/4 "2008-07-15T02:59:43Z")
[QUOTE=Diogenes the Cynic] In other words, it cooks the internal organs, but you probably die of shock before it gets to that point. [/QUOTE] I think that’s going to depend on whether you’re dunked straight off into boiling water or just put in a nice, warm bath and have the heat turned up gradually until it boils. ---
**Author:** ![NinjaChick](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/71c47a/32.png) [@NinjaChick](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/NinjaChick)\ **Post date:** [July 15, 2008, 3:04am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/physiologically-how-does-boiling-alive-kill-someone/456537/5 "2008-07-15T03:04:38Z")
[QUOTE=Q.E.D.] I think that’s going to depend on whether you’re dunked straight off into boiling water or just put in a nice, warm bath and have the heat turned up gradually until it boils. [/QUOTE] I was thinking more the latter; it seems pretty obvious that a sudden dunk into 212-degree water is going to screw you up quite quickly. So basically, the proteins floating around your body that makes cells work get all glumpy and stick together, and so things don’t function properly on a…cellular level? ---
**Author:** ![RickJay](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/bb73d2/32.png) [@RickJay](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RickJay)\ **Post date:** [July 15, 2008, 3:24am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/physiologically-how-does-boiling-alive-kill-someone/456537/6 "2008-07-15T03:24:55Z")
[QUOTE=Q.E.D.] I think that’s going to depend on whether you’re dunked straight off into boiling water or just put in a nice, warm bath and have the heat turned up gradually until it boils. [/QUOTE] In “Shogun,” they cook poor Pieterzoon up nice and slowly. It was a pretty memorable part of the book. I cannot think of a worse way to go. ---
**Author:** ![Wile\_E](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/c37758/32.png) [@Wile\_E](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Wile_E)\ **Post date:** [July 15, 2008, 3:27am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/physiologically-how-does-boiling-alive-kill-someone/456537/7 "2008-07-15T03:27:56Z")
My guess would be a quick dunk would cause death from shock. A slow boil would cause heat stroke then death. In both cases I think you’d be unconscious before you actually died. ---
**Author:** ![OtakuLoki](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/ac8455/32.png) [@OtakuLoki](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/OtakuLoki)\ **Post date:** [July 15, 2008, 3:52am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/physiologically-how-does-boiling-alive-kill-someone/456537/8 "2008-07-15T03:52:31Z")
For the slow heat, I’d go with **Wile E** ’s suggestion about heat stroke incapacitating the victim, before killing them. Here’s the wikipedia article on [heatstroke](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heatstroke): Note that a core temperature of 104 F is dangerous, and that brain death begins at 106 F. This is also why hot springs and saunas are dangerous, if a person cant or won’t get out after a certain period of time. Now, as the fluid around your victim heats up, the core temperature will lag behind. And depending how hot quickly one heats the water around the victim would have a good deal to do with how much pain the victim suffers. ISTM that if you kept someone in 110 F water indefinitely, they’d die after several hours, but not feel pain, once they’d gotten used to the water. (Isn’t the upper limit for a hot bath about 120 F?) Contrarily, if you heat the water as quickly as possible, your victim would have time to feel the searing heat damaging and cooking outer tissues, at least until the nerves were destroyed. From Norman MacLean’s Young Men and Fire, one of the effects of massive burns is a sense of euphoria as the destroyed nerves and muscle tissues start flooding the blood stream with odd compounds. Until those compounds overwhelm the kidneys, and the victim dies. A process that took about 24 hours, with the Mann Gulch victims who lingered beyond their original injuries. ---
**Author:** ![Duckster](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/duckster/32/1244_2.png) [@Duckster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Duckster)\ **Post date:** [July 15, 2008, 4:18am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/physiologically-how-does-boiling-alive-kill-someone/456537/9 "2008-07-15T04:18:54Z")
I’ve reported [on this story before here](http://www.snopes.com/horrors/freakish/hotspring.asp) as I was an active participant in the attempted rescue. The Snopes article I linked is very mild compared to what actually occurred. ---
**Author:** ![mks57](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/b9bd4f/32.png) [@mks57](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mks57)\ **Post date:** [July 15, 2008, 4:52am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/physiologically-how-does-boiling-alive-kill-someone/456537/10 "2008-07-15T04:52:12Z")
Wouldn’t it be almost instant third-degree burns to all exposed tissue? What if you tried to walk through/over a lava flow, like in that silly movie where a volcano erupts from the La Brea tar pits in Los Angeles. I’ve often wondered what happens when someone gets splashed with molten steel in a steel mill. Are their clothes thick enough to protect them from serious injury? ---
**Author:** ![Shamozzle](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/9f8e36/32.png) [@Shamozzle](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Shamozzle)\ **Post date:** [July 15, 2008, 9:53am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/physiologically-how-does-boiling-alive-kill-someone/456537/11 "2008-07-15T09:53:11Z")
[QUOTE=Duckster] I’ve reported [on this story before here](http://www.snopes.com/horrors/freakish/hotspring.asp) as I was an active participant in the attempted rescue. The Snopes article I linked is very mild compared to what actually occurred. [/QUOTE] Wow, that’s crazy. Reminds me of a guy I encountered walking on a rural road one day. \*Graphic text to follow: \* He had just been welding on an underground propane tank when it exploded, leaving a crater in his front yard. The clothes and top layers of skin had been blown right off his upper body and both were hanging in ribbons to his knees. The skin on his arms had been shed in intact tubes and his arms would twist inside them while the tubes remained stationary. His face looked like a cheese pizza and I couldn’t tell if he was 18 or 80. His hair had fused into a legoman-type one-piece helmet. Real, real bad.