In the last few weeks, my late-night channel-surfing has treated me to Journey to the Center of the Earth, The Lost World, Return of the King, and Joe Versus the Volcano. Which set me to wondering:
Let’s assume a Hollywood-style volcano, with steep cliffs surrounding the crater, and a pool of magma below.
It’s Hollywood-style magma, thicker than water, thinner than molasses, and hot enough to glow in the orange-to-yellow range.
If you slipped, or a rival scientist pushed you, or a tribe of natives sacrificed you to their deity, what would happen?
Would you be poisoned by toxic gasses?
Would you die of asphyxiation when hot gasses seared your lungs?
Would you be alive when you hit the magma?
Would you be conscious when you hit the magma?
When you hit the magma, would you splatter across the surface, or would you plunge into the depths?
Would you sink or float?
How long would it take for you to burn?
If you were still alive and conscious when you hit, how long would you last?
Thank you. The bit about the Leidenfrost Effect was interesting.
I figured when the water in your body turned to steam, it would be explosive, but the explosion in your first link was a lot bigger than I would have guessed.
The question has been analyzed more than I care to think about. You wouldn’t sink like Gollum did but various unpleasantnesses like toxic gases would fry and poison your lungs while you were burning up. So it would be a relatively quick but not very desirable death.
I’ve been on active volcanoes, and at the right time and place the fumes will kill you before you get to the rim. But if you’re unfortunate enough to fall into a red-hot magma reservoir, you’d probably remain conscious until you hit the magma, then you’d die VERY quickly.
If you were lucky, the impact of hitting the magma would knock you out. It would, after all, be a rather sudden stop. So a long fall might not be too painful.
If you are unlucky, it won’t. Your death would be quick but exceedingly awful.
Although Gollum’s death scene is cool looking, it always bothers me since I know he should be sizzling like Mongolian barbecue on top of the lave and killed almost instantly instead of sinking gradually while remaining conscious until the moment his head submerges.
It also annoys me when people almost fall into a lava lake, or have to make their way across one on a thin bridge just a short distance above it. Aside from the fumes, the intense heat should cause them to pass out and tumble in.
My heart would probably give out long before I hit the surface; something that has comforted me flying and in high places as well. There are times when a cardiac condition can be a plus.
That’s exactly one of the scenes I had in mind. They’re fighting just a few feet above 1,800 degree rock, and have hardly broken a sweat.Basically they are fighting inside a blast furnace while hardly noticing it. Jedi or not, they should have been flash-fried.
Why would he be killed “almost instantly?” The skull provides some pretty good thermal protection for the brain, at least for a few seconds. He would be conscious for a few seconds, probably, in extreme agony.
Most people would consider “a few seconds” to be “almost instantly.” In any case, as RickJay said, just the fall, hundreds of feet onto rock, would probably be enough to kill him. But Gollum is still alive,with his eyes open even when his head is almost entirely submerged in molten lava. Your skull isn’t going to protect your brain from a temperature of 1,800 degrees “for a few seconds” when it’s nearly immersed.
I’m not sure a not-human-to-begin with creature that has survived far more lifetimes than he should due to the influence of an evil magic ring being killed in a possibly-evil volcano used by a fallen angel to craft said magic ring is a good standard of comparison for what would happen in reality.
More likely the skull will burst from steam pressure, but that’s besides the point because he’d be death from trauma from falling several hundred feet into plain water let alone molten rock.
There is one volcano where you might survive in agony for a little longer than most…not much longer. mind you. But you might pierce the surface (the lava can be less viscous than water), and be boiled rather than flash-burned.
In Fantasy and sci fi, the impossible is easier to believe than the implausible. Gollum temporarily surviving the fall and the heat due to the ring, sure. Sinking down into rock, not so much. That said I didn’t notice it up until this thread.
