What sort of damage would drag (air resistance) do to a human body that was immune to other effects?

[Omi_no_Kami]

In other words, take our test subject X (let’s call him Bob). Bob is 100% completely invulnerable to any and all sources of damage in the universe, except for that of air resistance, which he responds to like an ordinary human being. One day, a wizard decides that he wishes to kick Bob’s butt, and in order to do this he causes Bob, who up until a moment ago was standing still selling seashells by the seashore, to instantly accelerate to an extremely high velocity, winging his arse across the eastern seaboard. Assuming that the wizard, being a vindictive sort, is capable of accelerating him to any speed, what kind of injuries could we expect to see Bob sustain? Could he catch fire? Lose limbs? Spontaneously burst out singing?

Bonus points and sandwiches will be handed out to anybody who can actually furnish me with theoretical velocities at which their proposed injury might occur.

(I accept and fully expect there to be tons of problems with this setup- I’m just looking for ballpark concepts.)

[spingears]

Why do you ask? Idle curiosity?

Most likely to tear skin off first, then muscles and flesh from bones, and lastly disintegrate the bones.

[Machine_Elf]

Pilots ejecting from fighter planes at more than a couple hundred MPH suffer injuries, not just from the violence of the ejection seat (that’s a brief burst of about 10-20 g’s), but from the windblast before their parachute deploys and slows them to a safe descent speed. Think of arms, legs, and head flailing and whipping in the slipstream, much like a flag does. Expect joint damage, broken bones, ligament/tendon injury, and so on.

At 500 MPH, the stagnation pressure is about 1.3 times ambient. Stagnation pressure is achieved on forward-facing surfaces of a projectile, but not the lateral surfaces. At sea level, this means the difference between stagnation pressure (on front-facing projectile surfaces) and ambient pressure (on lateral-facing surfaces) is about 4.4 psi. If any bodily orifice is pointed more or less forward at these speeds, you should expect major barotrauma to the corresponding body cavity (lungs, rectum, middle ear, etc.).

The Concorde, when traveling at Mach ~2, reportedly reached skin temps of 250F. So if your shredded carcass is traveling at those sorts of speeds for any length of time, expect second- and third-degree burns.

The SR-71 Blackbird, when traveling at Mach ~3, reportedly reached skin temps over 1000F. Expect flesh to char at these temps.

At very high altitudes where the air is extremely rarified, the pressure/barotrauma effects can probably be ignored, since 1.3 times ambient pressure doesn’t create much of a differential at those speeds. But the adiabatic compression temps described in the previous two paragraphs would still be in effect.

This leads to an uncomfortable conclusion about the fate of the astronauts aboard the Columbia space shuttle when it disintegrated during descent in 2003. Breakup took place somewhere in the vicinity of 200,000 feet above sea level, where the ambient pressure is a fraction of a psi. Upon exposure to these conditions while traveling at around Mach 20, the astronauts would have felt very little wind blast, but the temperature due to compression heating would have been many thousands of degrees. The thin air would have meant very slow heat transfer rates: their bodies would have slowly, slowly roasted. The good news is that they were probably unconscious or even dead by the time this process began.

[Omi_no_Kami]

@Joe Frickin Friday

Pilots ejecting from fighter planes at more than a couple hundred MPH suffer injuries, not just from the violence of the ejection seat (that’s a brief burst of about 10-20 g’s), but from the windblast before their parachute deploys and slows them to a safe descent speed. Think of arms, legs, and head flailing and whipping in the slipstream, much like a flag does. Expect joint damage, broken bones, ligament/tendon injury, and so on.

At 500 MPH, the stagnation pressure is about 1.3 times ambient. Stagnation pressure is achieved on forward-facing surfaces of a projectile, but not the lateral surfaces. At sea level, this means the difference between stagnation pressure (on front-facing projectile surfaces) and ambient pressure (on lateral-facing surfaces) is about 4.4 psi. If any bodily orifice is pointed more or less forward at these speeds, you should expect major barotrauma to the corresponding body cavity (lungs, rectum, middle ear, etc.).

The Concorde, when traveling at Mach ~2, reportedly reached skin temps of 250F. So if your shredded carcass is traveling at those sorts of speeds for any length of time, expect second- and third-degree burns.

The SR-71 Blackbird, when traveling at Mach ~3, reportedly reached skin temps over 1000F. Expect flesh to char at these temps.

At very high altitudes where the air is extremely rarified, the pressure/barotrauma effects can probably be ignored, since 1.3 times ambient pressure doesn’t create much of a differential at those speeds. But the adiabatic compression temps described in the previous two paragraphs would still be in effect.

This leads to an uncomfortable conclusion about the fate of the astronauts aboard the Columbia space shuttle when it disintegrated during descent in 2003. Breakup took place somewhere in the vicinity of 200,000 feet above sea level, where the ambient pressure is a fraction of a psi. Upon exposure to these conditions while traveling at around Mach 20, the astronauts would have felt very little wind blast, but the temperature due to compression heating would have been many thousands of degrees. The thin air would have meant very slow heat transfer rates: their bodies would have slowly, slowly roasted. The good news is that they were probably unconscious or even dead by the time this process began.

Thanks, this was exactly the kind of thing I was looking for!