Spontaneous human combustion

robfosters

robfosters

robfosters

Caporegime
Joined
1 Dec 2010
Posts
53,766
Location
Welling, London
this has freaked me out a bit. A 70 year old man randomly burst into flames while walking along the street and burnt to death. No reason for the fire can be found by the investigators!

I’ve heard of human combustion before, but always seemed pie in the sky to me. Could it actually be true? If so, what are the mechanics of it.

Come on then GD boffins, for what reasons could a terrible incident like this occur?

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-5182625/Man-catches-fire-dies-Tottenham-northLondon.html

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/u...-age-police-appeal-metropolitan-a8111901.html

https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/51458...combustion-john-nolan-tottenham-london-death/
 
Or rather than jumping to silly conclusions wait for a full report.

And the general spotanouse human combustion, where very little of the body remains, is actually extremely slow and uses the fabric like denim as a wick and body fat as fuel, leaving only things like feet unburnt and downstream burn the surrounding inviroment.
 
Wick effect baby!

It's basically impossible to actually spontaneously com-bust, as there is nothing to randomly ignite r spark in our bodies, let along a 'proper' fuel source
 
Awaiting the resident OCuk conspiracy theorists.

Also:

Larry Arnold, a self-proclaimed expert on spontaneous human combustion, believes that the phenomenon is the work of a new subatomic particle called a pyroton. He says that this interacts with cells to create a mini-explosion, but there is no scientific evidence available to back up his claims.
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LOL

I'm sorry, anyone who is described as a self proclaimed expert, is most definitely NOT an expert. Pyroton. Wat
 
robfosters said:
Still, very mysterious as to why this man went up. There was nothing found that could have caused it.
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it says no accelerant found.

there's 1001 reasons, before we go to BS mystical reasons. I mean in the past there's been a case when a guy managed to accidentally turn this clothes into fire starter(forget what its actual name is).
 
Glaucus said:
it says no accelerant found.

there's 1001 reasons, before we go to BS mystical reasons. I mean in the past there's been a case when a guy managed to accidentally turn this clothes into fire starter(forget what its actual name is).
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Do you have to be so scathing about everything? Sometimes you make me feel guilty for actually posting something. I’m not saying that you are wrong, but you do tend to word your posts in an aggressive manner quite often.

Until we know different, we have to leave our minds open to every possible explanation.
 
Delvis said:
Wick effect baby!

It's basically impossible to actually spontaneously com-bust, as there is nothing to randomly ignite r spark in our bodies, let along a 'proper' fuel source
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You do realise that our heart contains what can essentially be described as a spark plug don’t you?
 
read a book called "the entrancing flame" many years ago, very interesting. rubbished the wick effect and proposed an alternative that seemed very plausible/reasonable ~ to a non-scientist like me anyways. author was a police crime scene/forensics guy who seemed to know his stuff.
 
So someone's clothing caught fire and they died because getting burnt can kill you.

Sounds like how it's meant to work. Now the tedious part of finding out how the clothing was set on fire.
 
Hotwired said:
So someone's clothing caught fire and they died because getting burnt can kill you.

Sounds like how it's meant to work. Now the tedious part of finding out how the clothing was set on fire.
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Presumably it wasn’t anything simple like matches in his pocket as they would have been found at the scene.

Might sound crazy, but could a car wheel go over something, like a certain type of stone that could send a spark flying?
 
Yes, the wick effect where a clothed person is consumed [ slow cooked really ] fuelled by their own
fatty tissue, usually started by a cigarette or falling into a hearth.

A TV documentary tried it with a dead pig, and the results were interesting.
I'm not that convinced that such high temperatures that can dissolve bone can be reached by just
smouldering, but there are police pictures where the poor person's lower half is a pile of ash except for the feet [ still wearing slippers ].
 
Tunney said:
Why does this only happen to humans? You never hear about spontaneous badger combustion, do you?
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Must be caused by something only appertaining to humans. There’s been some theory about it being caused by ketosis, which, I think, is basically something that often to happens to alcoholics who don’t eat properly. The body starts producing energy from body fat and this can cause the necessary energy for combustion to begin aided by a high ethanol content in the body.
 
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