July 5, 2025 • 40 mins
In this classic two-parter from Stuff to Blow Your Mind, Robert and Joe discuss the chemistry, space science and mythology of burning hair. So strap in for a discussion of everything from pirates and barbecue mishaps to Latin literature and science fiction. (originally published 7/18/2024)
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Speaker 1 (00:06):
Hey, you welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind. My
name is Robert Lamb. Today is Saturday, so we have
a vault episode for you. This is going to be
Hair on Fire, Part one, which originally published seven eighteen,
twenty twenty four. There's a lot to talk about here, chemistry, mythology.
It's one of those episodes. So let's dive right in.
Speaker 2 (00:28):
Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 1 (00:38):
Hey you welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind. My
name is Robert Lamb.
Speaker 3 (00:42):
And I am Joe McCormick. And today on Stuff to
Blow Your Mind, I wanted to talk about burning hair.
That might be a kind of unusually niche or weird
thing to look into. But I was inspired to do
this a couple of weeks ago, on the fourth of
July actually, when I was making food for a for
a big family get together. You know, I was out
(01:03):
in the backyard grilling, and I did something I have
done many times before, which is burn all the hair
off part of my arm. Oh no, yeah, turn and look.
I mean like I wasn't like badly burned myself, like
on my skin. But you know, at some point I
look down and realized, like Oh, what are all these
weird little kind of pale curls?
Speaker 1 (01:24):
Oh? I see, Okay, do you say you've done this before?
Do you at least alternate arms or is it just
always the same arm that it gets?
Speaker 3 (01:32):
It's always my right arm, because that's the arm I'm
right handed doing that, you know, that's what I'm manipulating
the food with. You know. Sometimes it's more the hand,
like the I don't know if it's gross to talk
about your hand hair, like the hair on my knuckles,
the hair on my back, the back of my hand
that gets burned off. This time it was mainly along
like my forearm and the outside of my wrist. I
(01:52):
wonder if other grill operators have had similar experiences, because
I I never burn my hand or arm here when
I'm grilling a small amount of food, like a couple
of portions of whatever. It's always when I'm grilling for
a big crowd. So I guess it has something to
do with like trying to like fit a bunch of
different individual items on the grill and then go down
(02:15):
the line flipping them or moving them one at a time,
and something about that means like I'm holding my arm
directly over the hot part of the grill more or something.
Speaker 1 (02:24):
Well that that would make sense, because I was thinking
about this as like, Okay, I don't know that I've
ever done this myself, but I think look back on
all on the grilling I have done over the years,
and it is generally just grilling for probably just for
my immediate family, So it's feeling just for like two
or three people. It's probably just going to be veggies
that aren't on there very long. And yeah, for I
(02:47):
guess a variety of reasons, and luck I have not
like burnt a lot of arm here on the grill,
but I have to, so I have to ask like
the follow up questions like what you mentioned what it
looked like, but that it was was that the primary
way that you realize something had happened or was there
also like a skin level sensation And was there a smell? Uh?
Speaker 3 (03:06):
I mean, there's the feeling of heat obviously, which but
that's just naturally the air, because like I'm reaching over
a hot fire, I think there is a smell normal.
In fact, I would say that the smell is probably
the most characteristic and instantly recognizable sensory part of the
burning hair experience, right. I mean, almost anybody I think
(03:28):
can immediately think of the smell of burning hair. It
seems to stick in people's minds, even if hair burning
is like not something that happens very often to them.
It's just sort of I don't know, do you know
what I mean, Like it just sort of like sticks
in your memory. What that smells like?
Speaker 1 (03:43):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, we'd be kind of wired, I guess,
to recognize.
Speaker 3 (03:46):
It specifically in the context of grilling, though. There are
already a lot of volatiles in the air, there's a
lot of smoke, a lot of particles and everything. It's
an intense smell experience already, so I think the smell
of the burning hair, especially if there's only a little
bit of it, just kind of blends in more. You
might not notice that first. In this case, Yeah, I
remember just like looking down at my arm the part
(04:08):
that had been hot, and being like, oh, yeah, that
happened again.
Speaker 1 (04:11):
Okay that yeah, that would make sense. There are a
lot of competing smells going on there. Yeah.
Speaker 3 (04:15):
But anyway, this experience got me wondering about the science
of burning hair. I started to wonder, you know, some
questions about the basic science and chemistry involved here, like
how flammable is human hair and why does it smell
that way? And so forth. I was looking around for
good sources on the question of the sort of the
(04:39):
underlying chemistry of the smell of burning hair, and basically
the best sources I found pointed me to the presence
of sulfur. Of course, hair is mostly made of keratin,
which is primarily protein, and of course those proteins, when
they're burned, release their own sort of there are characteristic
(05:01):
protein burning smells that we might associate with the burning
of other types of skin and even fingernails and things
like that. But a big thing is the presence of sulfur.
According to a paper that I'm going to mention in
a little bit, human hair is approximately five percent sulfur,
(05:22):
and that sulfur content is largely responsible for the characteristic smell.
And this is interesting to me because it explains a similarity,
at least as far as I can remember. That burning hair,
to me, smells a little bit like lighting a match.
Lighting a match produces the distinctive smell of sulfur dioxide
(05:43):
or generally sulfur compounds, which happened because there is usually
sulfur content in a match head. It's part of what
burns to set the match alight. As a side note,
apparently it is kind of known that you can temporarily
mask other unpleasant smells. A commonly referenced one is the
(06:04):
smell of feces by striking a match. Have you ever
heard this before?
Speaker 1 (06:08):
Rob, Oh, yeah, yeah, of course, you know. I mean
sometimes you even see that in at least residential bathrooms.
You know, there will be like some matches out by
the bathroom facilities, that sort of thing.
Speaker 3 (06:22):
Oh, that's interesting. I don't know if I ever made
that connection, I would have assumed that if there were
matches out, they're usually paired with the candle, and the
idea is that you would use the matches to light
like a pleasantly scented candle. And I always understood that
as the ideas you would use a pleasantly scented candle
to mask the smell of feces in a bathroom or something.
Speaker 1 (06:41):
I guess often but not always, I guess. And then
there is also like the kind of just a saying
right like, oh, there's a bad smell that may be
associated with digestion. Someone will be like, oh, somebody light
a match, you know.
Speaker 3 (06:55):
Oh okay, well, I may have misunderstood those sayings as well.
I probably would interpret that as like, I don't know,
what's the polite way of putting it, lighting afart kind
of comment.
Speaker 1 (07:05):
Well, I don't Well, I'm not sure that that was
the level of excitement, Like it's a bad smell in here,
let's see if it can busts. It's more like there's
an unpleasant odor. Let us light a match so that
the smell of that struck match might mask the stink
that has enveloped us.
Speaker 3 (07:21):
Yeah, okay, Well, so now I'm understanding several things about
the world differently than I did before this conversation. But anyway,
so it makes me think about I see like a
candle in the bathroom and some matches. Maybe I'm thinking
about the mechanism differently. It's actually the lighting of the
match more so than the candle that helps, sort of
like calm your mind about the smells in there. But anyway,
(07:42):
the idea is that the sulfur compounds released by striking
a match overpower other smells in our olfactory recognition. I
have seen it written in a couple of places that
the idea is when you strike a match, like it
burns up the bad gases responsible for causing the smell
in the air. That does not seem to be true.
It's more kind of like your your nose and your
(08:04):
brain are primed to just let the smell of the
struck match. I think this will be primarily the smell
of sulfur dioxide. It just take over your smell sensing abilities.
But it makes me wonder if the burning of hair
also releases these sulfur compounds that are responsible for the
characteristic smell, if you could likewise cover up the you know,
(08:24):
these unpleasant body body aromas, fecal smells and stuff by
burning hair.
Speaker 1 (08:29):
Well we're not advising that, no, no, but but just
from like a chemical standpoint, okay, perhaps so.
Speaker 3 (08:48):
One of the most surprising and interesting things I discovered
by looking into these questions about about the science of
burning hair was that some of the best research I
could find on this came from studies about hair catching
on fire in spaceships.
Speaker 1 (09:05):
Yeah yeah, attack ships on fire off the shoulder of.
Speaker 3 (09:08):
Orion, right, yeah. Yeah. So the main paper I was
looking at is called the Flammability of Human Hair in
Exploration atmospheres from the year two thousand and nine in
the SAE Journal International Journal of Aerospace by Sandra L. Olson,
Devon W. Griffin, David L. Urban, Gary A. Ruff, and
Elizabeth A. Smith. And so the authors here begin by
(09:33):
referencing an older study that I'll mention in a second
that says, the flammability of both skin and hair has
actually been a subject of major concern since the early
stages of the US base program. And they refer back
to an older paper, one from nineteen sixty eight by
Robert L. Durfey, called the Flammability of Skin and Hair
(09:55):
in Oxygen Enriched Atmospheres. This was published in in the
Or as part of a USAF School of Aerospace Medicine
technical report. This was from December nineteen sixty eight, and
durfy begins this study from sixty eight by saying, quote,
observations after recent fires involving human subjects in oxygen atmospheres
(10:19):
indicate that the humans may have contributed to the spread
of fires through combustion of their skin and hair. So
obviously that's quite morbid. But I was wondering what this
refers to, and I figured that since this was published
in nineteen sixty eight. I think it almost certainly must
be referring, at least in part to the tragedy of
(10:39):
the Apollo one fire, which killed three astronauts on January
twenty seventh, nineteen sixty seven. Those astronauts were Gus Grissom,
Ed White and Roger B. Chaffey, and they died during
a launch test that was less than a month before
the scheduled mission, so they weren't actually in space. It
was a ground test on Earth before the launch of
an orbital mission. And the tragedy was that a flash
(11:02):
fire broke out inside the cabin of the command module.
The fire probably started with There could have been several
ignition points, but it may have been an electrical arc
from faulty wiring, maybe connected to some kind of chemical present,
like a volume of anti freeze fluid called glycol. But
however it started, it spread very rapidly due to the
(11:25):
enriched oxygen atmosphere pressurized inside the cabin. It was basically
pure oxygen in there, and due to a variety of
combustible materials spread throughout the cabin interior. Now, remember, as
we've talked about on the show before, fire needs three
things to burn, it needs heat, it needs fuel, and
it needs oxygen. Obviously, in this scenario there could have
(11:45):
been an initial heat source, some kind of ignition point.
There would have been lots of oxygen because it was
a pure oxygen atmosphere inside the command module. And so
the question is what was the fuel and what was
the fuel roll of very substances, including parts of human
bodies inside the command module. And so this study was
(12:06):
looking into human hair and skin, and so one thing
it says that is that taken as a whole, even
with enriched oxygen around, human skin is not especially flammable
because it has a lot of water in it, right,
So there is a major heat sink in human bodies
where heat has to be continually applied from the outside
(12:29):
in order for it to burn. There's a lot of water.
That water must be turned into water vapor, so it
doesn't catch fire easily. However, there are sort of little
layers on the outside of skin and also hair, which
can catch fire in enriched oxygen environments much more easily.
This study from sixty eight found that a high concentration
(12:50):
of inert helium in the air in an environment, in
this case seventy five percent helium would prevent hair from
burning at regular atmospheric pressure. And the study also tested
various protective measures such as smearing the skin and hair
with protective lotions and greases and covering it with flame
repellent cloth.
Speaker 1 (13:09):
Was just shaving off all the hair just not an option?
Seems like if I got to choose between the two
for my space mission, I would just say, well, can
we just buzz it all off?
Speaker 3 (13:19):
That is an option that is discussed in the two
thousand and nine paper, which I'll come back to now.
So yeah, So initially they cite the Durfy study and
they say, as a general matter, there are several factors
to consider that could increase the risk of fires within
spacecraft or space exploration testing environments. And a big one
(13:39):
they call out is the same thing we were just
talking about, elevated oxygen levels. So in some cases ambient
within spacecraft, but also in cases where supplemental oxygen is
being provided through a mask. Now, when would there be
supplemental oxygen inside a spacecraft? You could say possibly in
a medical intervention for ill or injured crew member. They
(14:01):
might have extra oxygen supplied to them. This is common
in hospitals on Earth as well, or possibly during emergencies
such as the leak of toxic chemicals or in fighting
a pre existing fire. Now, the authors point out something
interesting about the case of breathing pure oxygen through a mask.
They say, quote, for every breath of pure oxygen breathed in,
(14:23):
the exhaled breath still contains ninety five percent of the oxygen.
This creates an environment of increased oxygen near the head
and chest. Now, I did not know that, and don't
think I would have thought about that before, but from
what I looked up in other sources, yes, this seems right.
In breathing say normal air on Earth, which is roughly
(14:46):
twenty one percent oxygen and the rest is mostly nitrogen.
In rough terms, that air on Earth. You know, if
you say twenty percent is oxygen, about fifteen percent of
the air you breathe out is oc oxygen. So what
happened to that missing five percent of the air? Well,
about five percent of the air is oxygen that is
(15:07):
absorbed by the lungs. So when you breathe in, you
absorb about five percent of the air, about a quarter
of the total oxygen content of the air. And then
that oxygen is replaced mostly with carbon dioxide when you
breathe out, so that leaves you with what the author said,
if you're breathing pure oxygen, say through a mask, in
one of these scenarios, what you breathe out would be
(15:27):
roughly ninety five percent oxygen, So the area around your
head as you're exhaling is going to have a lot
more oxygen in it than it normally would. Now note,
with regard to ambient oxygen, the oxygen levels used in
like different space exploration and environments have varied. The International
Space Station actually maintains roughly the Earth's atmosphere mixture of
(15:51):
gases in the air, so about twenty one percent oxygen.
The rest is nitrogen, but the nitrogen has to be
supplied through through like bringing up tanks of nitrogen to
make up that difference. So that and other considerations have
led people to plan that in some other cases there
might be higher levels of oxygen in the atmosphere breathed
(16:14):
within space exploration contexts in the future. The authors cite
a few other examples. They cite past examples as well.
They say the Apollo missions and sky Lab used higher
oxygen levels, and as of the time of this paper,
there were plans for other missions that the authors say
would have used higher oxygen concentrations. They cite the Orion
(16:34):
Crew exploration vehicle. They cite the Altai Lander, which would
have been at the time this mission was planned, would
have been a landing vehicle for a US mission returning
to the Moon. And they also talk about higher oxygen
concentrations in possible lunar surface habitats. So there would be
numerous scenarios where you're in a space exploration context and
(16:57):
you would have increased oxygen levels. Either there's just ambiently
increased oxygen in the particular mission or vehicle you're talking about,
or you might be needing to give somebody oxygen for
some reason, in which case there would be in much
increased oxygen around their head and chest. The authors also
point out that certain medical interventions could provide ignition points,
(17:19):
such as you could potentially start a fire during defibrillation,
and this could happen even on Earth, And I was like, really, yes,
I went and read about this. It seems to put
some fears at rest. It is very rare. This is
not something that commonly happens, but there have been reported cases.
For example, the following study. I was looking at a
(17:40):
study published in the Journal of the American College of
Cardiology by Sanchez at All from the year twenty twenty three.
It talks about a case where a seventy two year
old male showed up at the emergency room. He was
suffering atrial fibrillation, an erratic elevated heart rate, and there
were several interventions, including the use of a defibrillator to
(18:02):
stabilize the regular heartbeat. So they put the leads on
your chest and they send a charge to try to
synchronize the muscles of the heart. The report says, quote,
the defibrillator pads ignited in flames after the defibrillation button
was pressed. The betting and oxygen mask also caught fire.
Now that's something you don't usually think of happening. However,
(18:24):
the authors stressed that this is extremely rare. They say
there are only two known cases in the medical literature
that they could identify. And also fortunately the patient did
not suffer actually suffer burn injuries. What was burned appeared
to be the pads and the patient's body hair in
some parts of the betting. But they say to avoid
this happening. There are several steps you can do. Of course,
(18:47):
the increased oxygen from supplemental oxygen probably contributed here. So
they say you can remove or place oxygen masks or
nasal canul of further away from the patient's chest when
you're doing a defibrillation charge. They say that you can
prepare the pads better, make sure that they have complete
(19:07):
attachment to the chest wall. They say chest hair should
be trimmed ideally, that that helps, and they also say
avoid alcohol products during the preparation for the defib anyway,
so that was sort of a tangent. But defibrillation is
one of the scenarios the author is mentioned that could
possibly provide an ignition point in space. But coming back
(19:29):
to the burning hair in space study, the authors also
mentioned cauterization as a medical procedure that could provide increased
risk of fire in an oxygen enriched environment. So you
pair the oxygen ch atmosphere in some spacecraft and space
exploration environments with various ignitionen scenarios and you've got the
heat and the oxygen. So the third ingredient is fuel.
(19:53):
And here the authors point to the presence of potentially
flammable clothing and hair. Now, in addition to the medical
ignition scenarios mentioned above, like defibrillation and cauterization, the author
is note the conclusion of previous research, especially regarding Apollo one,
that it should basically be considered impossible to eliminate all
(20:14):
ignition sources in a spacecraft environment. You're always going to
have things that could generate sparks or electrical arcs or
hot surfaces. So the best way to limit the risk
of fire is to control access of those ignition sources
to fuel by removing combustible materials or making them less combustible.
Speaker 1 (20:36):
You know, I've been watching enough alien movies recently to
of course know that standard issue. If you're going on
a space mission, you have a flamethrower on board, you
have or at least a flame or unit. I don't
think it's it's necessary. It's not nothing that's supposed to
be like spitting jelly gasoline or anything like that, Like
not a military flamethrower, but still a unit that shoots
a big plume of fire at things.
Speaker 3 (21:00):
Do they have that, that's a good question. Is there
an industrial use or do they make them? Maybe they
make them now that.
Speaker 1 (21:06):
I I think sometimes that's the case, But I don't
know the best I could do putting this together, watching
the films in the back of my mind, always thinking
like flame is probably not a great idea in an enclosed,
sealed environment without even factoring in and all the stuff
we've been talking about here. But I'm guessing you could
make a case for Okay, if you are dealing with
(21:26):
some sort of a life form situa biological threat, like
some sort of a bug, not a full blown xenomorph,
you know, but just kind of whatever is expected to occur,
then I guess you can make a case for a
flame unit. And then on top of that, if you're
looking at some sort of a potential like boarding scenario,
like a boarding action, like people coming on your ship.
(21:47):
They aren't supposed to be there and you want to
encourage them to leave or to back off. I guess
a flame unit you could make some sort of a
case that a flame unit is better than a gun
could potentially puncture the whole. But I don't know. Okay,
once you factor all this in, though, is the risk
of fire greater. I don't know.
Speaker 3 (22:08):
I think we'll have to assume that, like the Nostromo
and other alien environments just use they're more like the ISS,
like they supply the nitrogen, they have a more earth
like atmosphere rather than the oxygen enriched atmospheres that would
increase the risk of using flames.
Speaker 1 (22:24):
Sure, Plus everything's a little bit wet on the Nostromo,
so maybe that helps now.
Speaker 3 (22:28):
The authors of this paper note that a lot of
individual mission durations are short enough that astronauts don't need
to cut their hair in space, but even that does
happen sometimes. The space haircuts are real. They include a
photo from the ISS of a space haircut where Russian
cosmonaut Valerie Corzun is doing a haircut for the American
(22:49):
astronaut Peggy Whitson in the year two thousand and two.
And you can see like he's got the scissors and
a comb in his hands, and she's holding a like
a hose up by her head. It's a vacuum cleaner hose.
And I guess that's to suck in all the clippings
right as their release, because man, you think hair gets
everywhere during a normal Earth haircut with regular gravity, you know,
I feel like I get a haircut and days later
(23:10):
I'm still finding hair. It's like I'm not even wearing
the same clothes. What's going on? But yeah, so in
microgravity you could imagine it's a real headache.
Speaker 1 (23:20):
Yeah, I feel like you got to make a strong
case for that haircut and or be really good with
that vacuum huze.
Speaker 3 (23:25):
But anyway, given all these considerations, it's important to know
for planning future space missions in these abnormal atmospheric and
gravity conditions, and especially in more unique scenarios where you
would need to supply somebody with supplemental oxygen, how flammable
are the fuel sources you would find inside a spaceship.
And in the case of this study, they looked into
(23:46):
how flammable is human hair with these increased concentrations of oxygen.
So the authors did some experiments. They tried to stimulate
what it's like in various space exploration environments using an
apparatus called a low speed flow tunnel, where you maintain
a forced flow of a controlled gas mixture. In this case,
it was mounted inside of a NASA Zero Gravity Research
(24:10):
Facility drop rig, so that was to simulate different gravity conditions.
They tried a few different lengths and styles of human hair,
they mounted them on a rack and they said that
basically the flame spread was pretty similar for the different
hairstyles tested different lengths. The spread was sort of quick
at first over the sort of frizzy outer layer of
(24:31):
the surface of a hair mass, and then would be followed,
especially in the cases of longer hair where there's a
lot of hair, followed by quote continued bulk burning. And
they found that, oh yeah, it is absolutely right that
increasing oxygen will increase the flame spread rate of hair significantly.
They say it's by more than an order of magnitude,
(24:54):
so it's major. And Rabbi included a couple of pictures
for you to look at here of what the hair
looked like after being exposed to fire in normal atmosphere
versus in a thirty percent oxygen atmosphere, and it's a
major difference. The thirty percent oxygen one looks way more
like a matted mass of keratin ash goo. Oh yeah, absolutely, Chris,
(25:19):
So this is something that I don't think I ever
would have thought of before, but the authors say, yes,
their findings show that quote in the elevated oxygen concentration
environments planned for future exploration missions, hair flammability becomes an
important consideration for cru safety. With the high flame spread
rates reported here, an astronaut's entire head would be engulfed
(25:40):
in flames in seconds, and serious injury could occur before
the flames are extinguished. It is suggested that acceptable mitigation
strategies such as hair coverings be adopted and shaving be encouraged.
And they talk about a number of different interventions you
could employ soul. Yeah, you could like cut hair. You
could shave parts of the body. You could shave the head.
(26:02):
You could cover the hair with flame retardant kind of
hair coverings and materials. You can put flame resistant gels
and jellies in the hair. They mentioned several of these
that in some cases are used and have been used.
So there are different interventions you could do. But ultimately
they say, if you have elevated oxygen levels and you
(26:24):
are trying to prevent fires, you really do need to
think about human hair.
Speaker 1 (26:28):
Wow, you know, I can't help but think about like
the sci fi ramifications. And on one level, I love
the idea of like hairless shaved astronauts. You know that
you have removed all their hair in order to prevent
this from happening. But On the other hand, I kind
of like the idea of a bunch of astronauts that
are using some sort of especially made palmade Yeah, and
I'll have some sort of like a maybe slicked back
(26:50):
greaser look going on with this special space space goop.
Speaker 3 (26:54):
Yeah, everybody looks like John Travolta. They in grease. They've
all got the space pompadoors that the Yeah, the flame
retardant jelly in there.
Speaker 1 (27:07):
Yeah, like the Misfits right where they have the hair
all crafted. Now, I got to keep an eye out
for it. I keep watching all these space movies, and
I have not been paying enough attention to everyone's hairstyles.
Which space movie has the has the most slicked back hair?
Where is the most palmate employed in science fiction? I'm
gonna have to be on the lookout for it now.
Speaker 3 (27:25):
So anyway, this is one of these classic rabbit holes
I love on our show that I would not have
expected to go in this direction at all. I was
initially just looking into, like what's going on with the
with the chemistry of burning hair, and I ended up
with the threats of hair catching on fire in space.
Speaker 1 (27:49):
You know, we mentioned boarding actions earlier, and one of
the first places that my mind went when we started
looking into this was what about Blackbeard the Pirate. So
black Beard the Pirate was, of course a real person
that has been mythologized and fictionalized to varying degrees over time,
(28:12):
but this was an actual pirate, Edward Teach, who reportedly
lives sixteen eighty through seventeen eighteen. And yeah, there's a
great deal of legend about this man, including the idea
that he would affix slow matches. Sometimes these are just
called fuses, but slow matches were they would have all
like coils of this stuff. They burned slow, as the
(28:35):
name implies, they burned very hot, and they're used for
igniting like the fuses for cannons, explosive materials, grenades, that
sort of thing, but also of course could be used
to like light pipes and so forth.
Speaker 3 (28:48):
I think even at the time, well I don't know
if exactly at this time, but they were used, and
even handheld firearms at the time, like muskets and stuff
would have like they'd have like a powder pan with
a slow match that ignited it.
Speaker 1 (29:00):
Yeah, and so it would be common to have these
on hand. But of course part of the mystique of
black beard, is that he wouldn't just have burning slow matches,
say on his belt or whatnot, He would have them
under his hat. And I think this sometimes gets conflated
into being like woven into his hair or even in
his beard anyway that you frame it slow matches in
(29:25):
very close proximity to what is generally described and or
depicted as wild hair and beard. You know, Like the
idea here is that he would do this before array,
before a boarding action, to make himself look more fearsome
with those smoking fuses, with like the little pinpoints of
red ember sticking out on either side of his fearsome head.
Speaker 3 (29:46):
So, of course I'm familiar with the story. I've heard
it many times, but this is one of those things
that has never made sense to me because I think, like,
how how do you actually do that and like operate
like move around and stuff with things on fire tangled
in your beard, And wouldn't it be producing some amount
of smoke or fumes at least would it beginning in
(30:08):
your face? I don't know.
Speaker 1 (30:10):
I mean, I guess it's a very just few intensive
environment anyway, if their cannons going off, muskets firing, and
then you know, folks are smoking as well. That's something
worth noting, I guess is I've never been a smoker. Smokers,
of course, by practice, are going to have frequently have
burning objects in close proximity to their hair and beard,
and may have additional thoughts in all of this, like
(30:30):
I don't know how often, how often, say, just a
smoker of cigarettes with a prominent beard would encounter some
sort of a beard burn scenario. But then again again
we have to remember that a slow match would have
I believe burnt much hotter than your average cigarette or
pipe or whatnot. Yeah, anyway, so yeah, I had questions
(30:50):
about this too, like did he really do this? Was
this safe? I mean, I'm not particularly worried about Blackbeard's
personal safety toil, but is this feasible? And so I
was looking around at some serious texts about Blackbeard and pirates,
and a number of them, number of them didn't really
(31:11):
do much deliberation on this point. They just kind of
mention it. And there's you know, there's a lot of
there's a lot more pressing history to discuss here, So
not a slide at those sources at all. I also
ran across at least a few more casual commentators who
dismissed it as a myth because they said, well, this
would have surely caught his hair on fire, so it
you know, he almost certainly didn't do it. But I
(31:33):
did finally find discussion of it in Dinnerson Little's twenty
sixteen book The Golden Age of Piracy, The Truth behind
Pirate Myths, and so he attributes, you know, a lot
of this myth making to Captain Charles Johnson's seventeen twenty
four book A General History of the Robberies and Murders
of the most most Notorious Pirates that's spelled p y
(31:53):
R A T E S.
Speaker 3 (31:55):
Gotta love pirate with y Yeah.
Speaker 1 (31:57):
And we have to note that the actual identity of
this author remains unknown. There is apparently no record of
such a Captain Johnson, and some have even argued that
the author here is actually Daniel Defoe. Yeah, of Robinson Crusoe, Yeah, exactly.
So we ultimately don't know for sure. I think historians
kind of go back and forth with different theories, but
(32:19):
it seems to be agreed upon that whoever wrote this,
they had some talent for fiction. They also had a
great love of facts and details, and the resulting work
is kind of a mix of the two. So you
have you do have some factual information that's very helpful
to the historian, but you also have plenty of just
blatant fiction mixed in as well.
Speaker 3 (32:40):
Oh well, that kind of source is in a way great.
I mean, it makes it not as very frustrating as
a historical source, but also an interesting problem for historians.
Speaker 1 (32:50):
Right right now, on the slow match in or adjacent
to the hair, in particular, the author little here adds
the following quote. Still pirates, privateers, merchant seamen and naval
seamen tasked with throwing grenades in battle sometimes carried the
burning slow match needed to light the grenade fuses in
their hats, but it was more usual to tie it
(33:12):
around a wrist or pin it to their clothing or
hat with a match case. Although one image of Jean Bart,
the famous French privateer in the service of France, shows
him with a length of lighted match held in his teeth.
Ugh and so he adds that Captain Johnson or whoever
was behind that pseudonym, would have surely seen the image
(33:34):
in question. They would have been familiar with this idea.
This image of Bart, and so he and he also
points out that the slow match again burns slow but
very hot by design in order to light fuses that,
despite what movies and looney tune cartoons portray, can be
rather hard to light. That's why you need a slow fuse.
You can't just you know, you couldn't just strike a
(33:57):
match and so forth. You need something hot and more
or less consistent. And then this is where he finally
gets to the part. This is where Little gets to
the part that I was wondering about. He adds, quote,
slow matches could thus easily ignite hair, and a pirate's greasy, tarry,
flaming beard would have been a hellish spectacle and one
probably never repeat it. So I guess that's as close
(34:19):
to an answer as I could really find. Basically, like, yes,
slow matches on the hat, in the hat and so forth,
that's going to be expected to a degree, But there's
like a fine line. You wouldn't want to push it
too far, and if someone did push it too far,
it would be notable. You know, that pirate would ever,
(34:40):
would forever be remembered as the guy whose head went
up in a ball of fire because he was trying
to be a little bit too dramatic in the boarding action,
and other pirates would decide, well, you know, I'll just
keep it on the hat. Maybe I'll just tie it
to the wrist.
Speaker 3 (34:54):
I'm trying to think. Okay, so that's sort of a
count against this story, I guess, of black Beard putting
them in beard. I wonder is it possible that along
the lines of this, like NASA research we're looking at
where you could put some kind of gels or jellies,
you know, flame resistant gels or jellies in the hair.
There's something that would have been available in the seventeenth
(35:14):
or eighteenth century. You could like wax your beard with
a flame resistant material that would like prevent it from
catching on fire. I'm just spitballing here.
Speaker 1 (35:22):
I guess. So, I mean, two things we have to
consider about pirates without going into a deep dive on
like the actual realities of pirates, is that in some
cases these were learned men or women, you know, that
that might be pretty to information like that that would
be useful. Also, that they could just be clever enough
(35:44):
to figure out something that would work if they were
that attached to this dramatic flare they had in mind.
But On the other hand, I feel like, you know,
pirates are making bad life choices, so that can include,
you know, risk your head going up in flames.
Speaker 3 (36:02):
More thoughts about the beard, Okay, I can imagine the
plausibility of it would be affected by I think, how
long the slow match you're putting in the beard is? Like,
if it's significantly long and hanging out, that sort of
gets it away from your face. But the longer the
match you put in, the heavier it would be, in
which case I would think, how do you get it
to stay in the beard? Do you literally have to
(36:23):
like tie it inside a braid in your beard or something,
so you know what I'm saying, like just sticking it
in there? I don't know. I mean, beard hair can
be kind of thick and tangly, so you can imagine
sticking something in a beard that's not very heavy and
it stays there. But I don't know, a significant length
of something like rope or a slow match seems like
(36:43):
that would start getting heavy enough to just fall out.
Speaker 1 (36:46):
Yeah. Going back to some of these illustrations, these classic
illustrations of black Beard, I guess the idea is that
he would take a length of slow match like place
it over his head and then put the hat on
top of it, and then you have either end of
the slow match sticking out on each side. Still I
think too close for comfort to the rest of his
(37:07):
hair and his beard. But the way it's physician, maybe
it has the burning tips of the matches sticking out
to either side.
Speaker 3 (37:16):
Ah yeah, Okay, I guess that's more plausible because I
was imagining it literally being just in the beard, tangled
in the beard.
Speaker 2 (37:23):
Man.
Speaker 1 (37:23):
I think it sometimes gets conflated to that, either through
storytelling and embellishment or just by looking at a picture
like this, where like the famous illustration in question, it's
like his beard is already in kind of like squidlike arms,
like like dreads, and then the slow match also looks
like a dread coming out on either side of his
head that is then producing smoke.
Speaker 3 (37:45):
Okay, but I see I was mentally personally supplying some
of the more implausible elements myself there that it was
like necessarily said to be in the beard. That's maybe
a less common variation on the idea, but.
Speaker 1 (37:58):
I think it's out there. Like I said, there's so
much you know, myth making and an exaggeration in pirate
mythology that I think it just inevitably goes there. All right. Well,
on that note, I think we're going to go ahead
and call this part one, but we will be back
for a second episode. I think this is just going
to be a two parter. But in the next episode
(38:19):
we'll get a little bit into the idea of the
quest for flaming hair and flaming beards and mythology and folklore.
We'll also get into some examples from antiquity, so I think,
and probably some other angles as well that we haven't
worked out just yet. But yeah, we thought this was
going to be a one partner, but I think there's
(38:39):
enough interesting stuff for two here. In the meantime, we'll
remind you that Stuff to Will Your Mind is primarily
a science and culture podcast, with core episodes on Tuesdays
and Thursdays. Let's see. Currently we are doing short form
episodes on Wednesdays. We're doing Weird House Cinema on Fridays. Now,
you might notice that our Monday listener mail episodes have
(39:00):
ceased for the time being. We're experimenting with a slightly
different format, going back to the old format of having
listener mail episodes occur, say, every month or so and
instead running a weird House cinema rerun in that Monday slot. Again,
we're just trying things out here, so if you have
thoughts on this experiment right in, we would love to
hear from you.
Speaker 3 (39:20):
Right so, want to be super clear, listener mail is
not going away. Please keep the messages coming. We are
still going to read them on the show, just on
a less frequent basis. The plan is roughly every month,
month and a half, more like we used to do
before the weekly.
Speaker 1 (39:35):
Yeah. So, if you have experiences with burning hair some
pirate thoughts to share, or certainly if you have thoughts
about standard issue Flamer units on space missions and deep
sea missions in science fiction, right in, we'd love to
hear from you.
Speaker 3 (39:52):
Huge thanks as always to our excellent audio producer JJ Posway.
If you would like to get in touch with us
with feedback on this episode or any other, to suggest
to topic for the future, or just to say hello, you
can email us at contact at stuff to Blow your
Mind dot com.
Speaker 2 (40:13):
Stuff to Blow Your Mind is production of iHeartRadio. For
more podcasts from my Heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows,
Hey, you welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind. My
name is Robert Lamb. Today is Saturday, so we have
a vault episode for you. This is going to be
Hair on Fire, Part one, which originally published seven eighteen,
twenty twenty four. There's a lot to talk about here, chemistry, mythology.
It's one of those episodes. So let's dive right in.
Speaker 2 (00:28):
Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 1 (00:38):
Hey you welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind. My
name is Robert Lamb.
Speaker 3 (00:42):
And I am Joe McCormick. And today on Stuff to
Blow Your Mind, I wanted to talk about burning hair.
That might be a kind of unusually niche or weird
thing to look into. But I was inspired to do
this a couple of weeks ago, on the fourth of
July actually, when I was making food for a for
a big family get together. You know, I was out
(01:03):
in the backyard grilling, and I did something I have
done many times before, which is burn all the hair
off part of my arm. Oh no, yeah, turn and look.
I mean like I wasn't like badly burned myself, like
on my skin. But you know, at some point I
look down and realized, like Oh, what are all these
weird little kind of pale curls?
Speaker 1 (01:24):
Oh? I see, Okay, do you say you've done this before?
Do you at least alternate arms or is it just
always the same arm that it gets?
Speaker 3 (01:32):
It's always my right arm, because that's the arm I'm
right handed doing that, you know, that's what I'm manipulating
the food with. You know. Sometimes it's more the hand,
like the I don't know if it's gross to talk
about your hand hair, like the hair on my knuckles,
the hair on my back, the back of my hand
that gets burned off. This time it was mainly along
like my forearm and the outside of my wrist. I
(01:52):
wonder if other grill operators have had similar experiences, because
I I never burn my hand or arm here when
I'm grilling a small amount of food, like a couple
of portions of whatever. It's always when I'm grilling for
a big crowd. So I guess it has something to
do with like trying to like fit a bunch of
different individual items on the grill and then go down
(02:15):
the line flipping them or moving them one at a time,
and something about that means like I'm holding my arm
directly over the hot part of the grill more or something.
Speaker 1 (02:24):
Well that that would make sense, because I was thinking
about this as like, Okay, I don't know that I've
ever done this myself, but I think look back on
all on the grilling I have done over the years,
and it is generally just grilling for probably just for
my immediate family, So it's feeling just for like two
or three people. It's probably just going to be veggies
that aren't on there very long. And yeah, for I
(02:47):
guess a variety of reasons, and luck I have not
like burnt a lot of arm here on the grill,
but I have to, so I have to ask like
the follow up questions like what you mentioned what it
looked like, but that it was was that the primary
way that you realize something had happened or was there
also like a skin level sensation And was there a smell? Uh?
Speaker 3 (03:06):
I mean, there's the feeling of heat obviously, which but
that's just naturally the air, because like I'm reaching over
a hot fire, I think there is a smell normal.
In fact, I would say that the smell is probably
the most characteristic and instantly recognizable sensory part of the
burning hair experience, right. I mean, almost anybody I think
(03:28):
can immediately think of the smell of burning hair. It
seems to stick in people's minds, even if hair burning
is like not something that happens very often to them.
It's just sort of I don't know, do you know
what I mean, Like it just sort of like sticks
in your memory. What that smells like?
Speaker 1 (03:43):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, we'd be kind of wired, I guess,
to recognize.
Speaker 3 (03:46):
It specifically in the context of grilling, though. There are
already a lot of volatiles in the air, there's a
lot of smoke, a lot of particles and everything. It's
an intense smell experience already, so I think the smell
of the burning hair, especially if there's only a little
bit of it, just kind of blends in more. You
might not notice that first. In this case, Yeah, I
remember just like looking down at my arm the part
(04:08):
that had been hot, and being like, oh, yeah, that
happened again.
Speaker 1 (04:11):
Okay that yeah, that would make sense. There are a
lot of competing smells going on there. Yeah.
Speaker 3 (04:15):
But anyway, this experience got me wondering about the science
of burning hair. I started to wonder, you know, some
questions about the basic science and chemistry involved here, like
how flammable is human hair and why does it smell
that way? And so forth. I was looking around for
good sources on the question of the sort of the
(04:39):
underlying chemistry of the smell of burning hair, and basically
the best sources I found pointed me to the presence
of sulfur. Of course, hair is mostly made of keratin,
which is primarily protein, and of course those proteins, when
they're burned, release their own sort of there are characteristic
(05:01):
protein burning smells that we might associate with the burning
of other types of skin and even fingernails and things
like that. But a big thing is the presence of sulfur.
According to a paper that I'm going to mention in
a little bit, human hair is approximately five percent sulfur,
(05:22):
and that sulfur content is largely responsible for the characteristic smell.
And this is interesting to me because it explains a similarity,
at least as far as I can remember. That burning hair,
to me, smells a little bit like lighting a match.
Lighting a match produces the distinctive smell of sulfur dioxide
(05:43):
or generally sulfur compounds, which happened because there is usually
sulfur content in a match head. It's part of what
burns to set the match alight. As a side note,
apparently it is kind of known that you can temporarily
mask other unpleasant smells. A commonly referenced one is the
(06:04):
smell of feces by striking a match. Have you ever
heard this before?
Speaker 1 (06:08):
Rob, Oh, yeah, yeah, of course, you know. I mean
sometimes you even see that in at least residential bathrooms.
You know, there will be like some matches out by
the bathroom facilities, that sort of thing.
Speaker 3 (06:22):
Oh, that's interesting. I don't know if I ever made
that connection, I would have assumed that if there were
matches out, they're usually paired with the candle, and the
idea is that you would use the matches to light
like a pleasantly scented candle. And I always understood that
as the ideas you would use a pleasantly scented candle
to mask the smell of feces in a bathroom or something.
Speaker 1 (06:41):
I guess often but not always, I guess. And then
there is also like the kind of just a saying
right like, oh, there's a bad smell that may be
associated with digestion. Someone will be like, oh, somebody light
a match, you know.
Speaker 3 (06:55):
Oh okay, well, I may have misunderstood those sayings as well.
I probably would interpret that as like, I don't know,
what's the polite way of putting it, lighting afart kind
of comment.
Speaker 1 (07:05):
Well, I don't Well, I'm not sure that that was
the level of excitement, Like it's a bad smell in here,
let's see if it can busts. It's more like there's
an unpleasant odor. Let us light a match so that
the smell of that struck match might mask the stink
that has enveloped us.
Speaker 3 (07:21):
Yeah, okay, Well, so now I'm understanding several things about
the world differently than I did before this conversation. But anyway,
so it makes me think about I see like a
candle in the bathroom and some matches. Maybe I'm thinking
about the mechanism differently. It's actually the lighting of the
match more so than the candle that helps, sort of
like calm your mind about the smells in there. But anyway,
(07:42):
the idea is that the sulfur compounds released by striking
a match overpower other smells in our olfactory recognition. I
have seen it written in a couple of places that
the idea is when you strike a match, like it
burns up the bad gases responsible for causing the smell
in the air. That does not seem to be true.
It's more kind of like your your nose and your
(08:04):
brain are primed to just let the smell of the
struck match. I think this will be primarily the smell
of sulfur dioxide. It just take over your smell sensing abilities.
But it makes me wonder if the burning of hair
also releases these sulfur compounds that are responsible for the
characteristic smell, if you could likewise cover up the you know,
(08:24):
these unpleasant body body aromas, fecal smells and stuff by
burning hair.
Speaker 1 (08:29):
Well we're not advising that, no, no, but but just
from like a chemical standpoint, okay, perhaps so.
Speaker 3 (08:48):
One of the most surprising and interesting things I discovered
by looking into these questions about about the science of
burning hair was that some of the best research I
could find on this came from studies about hair catching
on fire in spaceships.
Speaker 1 (09:05):
Yeah yeah, attack ships on fire off the shoulder of.
Speaker 3 (09:08):
Orion, right, yeah. Yeah. So the main paper I was
looking at is called the Flammability of Human Hair in
Exploration atmospheres from the year two thousand and nine in
the SAE Journal International Journal of Aerospace by Sandra L. Olson,
Devon W. Griffin, David L. Urban, Gary A. Ruff, and
Elizabeth A. Smith. And so the authors here begin by
(09:33):
referencing an older study that I'll mention in a second
that says, the flammability of both skin and hair has
actually been a subject of major concern since the early
stages of the US base program. And they refer back
to an older paper, one from nineteen sixty eight by
Robert L. Durfey, called the Flammability of Skin and Hair
(09:55):
in Oxygen Enriched Atmospheres. This was published in in the
Or as part of a USAF School of Aerospace Medicine
technical report. This was from December nineteen sixty eight, and
durfy begins this study from sixty eight by saying, quote,
observations after recent fires involving human subjects in oxygen atmospheres
(10:19):
indicate that the humans may have contributed to the spread
of fires through combustion of their skin and hair. So
obviously that's quite morbid. But I was wondering what this
refers to, and I figured that since this was published
in nineteen sixty eight. I think it almost certainly must
be referring, at least in part to the tragedy of
(10:39):
the Apollo one fire, which killed three astronauts on January
twenty seventh, nineteen sixty seven. Those astronauts were Gus Grissom,
Ed White and Roger B. Chaffey, and they died during
a launch test that was less than a month before
the scheduled mission, so they weren't actually in space. It
was a ground test on Earth before the launch of
an orbital mission. And the tragedy was that a flash
(11:02):
fire broke out inside the cabin of the command module.
The fire probably started with There could have been several
ignition points, but it may have been an electrical arc
from faulty wiring, maybe connected to some kind of chemical present,
like a volume of anti freeze fluid called glycol. But
however it started, it spread very rapidly due to the
(11:25):
enriched oxygen atmosphere pressurized inside the cabin. It was basically
pure oxygen in there, and due to a variety of
combustible materials spread throughout the cabin interior. Now, remember, as
we've talked about on the show before, fire needs three
things to burn, it needs heat, it needs fuel, and
it needs oxygen. Obviously, in this scenario there could have
(11:45):
been an initial heat source, some kind of ignition point.
There would have been lots of oxygen because it was
a pure oxygen atmosphere inside the command module. And so
the question is what was the fuel and what was
the fuel roll of very substances, including parts of human
bodies inside the command module. And so this study was
(12:06):
looking into human hair and skin, and so one thing
it says that is that taken as a whole, even
with enriched oxygen around, human skin is not especially flammable
because it has a lot of water in it, right,
So there is a major heat sink in human bodies
where heat has to be continually applied from the outside
(12:29):
in order for it to burn. There's a lot of water.
That water must be turned into water vapor, so it
doesn't catch fire easily. However, there are sort of little
layers on the outside of skin and also hair, which
can catch fire in enriched oxygen environments much more easily.
This study from sixty eight found that a high concentration
(12:50):
of inert helium in the air in an environment, in
this case seventy five percent helium would prevent hair from
burning at regular atmospheric pressure. And the study also tested
various protective measures such as smearing the skin and hair
with protective lotions and greases and covering it with flame
repellent cloth.
Speaker 1 (13:09):
Was just shaving off all the hair just not an option?
Seems like if I got to choose between the two
for my space mission, I would just say, well, can
we just buzz it all off?
Speaker 3 (13:19):
That is an option that is discussed in the two
thousand and nine paper, which I'll come back to now.
So yeah, So initially they cite the Durfy study and
they say, as a general matter, there are several factors
to consider that could increase the risk of fires within
spacecraft or space exploration testing environments. And a big one
(13:39):
they call out is the same thing we were just
talking about, elevated oxygen levels. So in some cases ambient
within spacecraft, but also in cases where supplemental oxygen is
being provided through a mask. Now, when would there be
supplemental oxygen inside a spacecraft? You could say possibly in
a medical intervention for ill or injured crew member. They
(14:01):
might have extra oxygen supplied to them. This is common
in hospitals on Earth as well, or possibly during emergencies
such as the leak of toxic chemicals or in fighting
a pre existing fire. Now, the authors point out something
interesting about the case of breathing pure oxygen through a mask.
They say, quote, for every breath of pure oxygen breathed in,
(14:23):
the exhaled breath still contains ninety five percent of the oxygen.
This creates an environment of increased oxygen near the head
and chest. Now, I did not know that, and don't
think I would have thought about that before, but from
what I looked up in other sources, yes, this seems right.
In breathing say normal air on Earth, which is roughly
(14:46):
twenty one percent oxygen and the rest is mostly nitrogen.
In rough terms, that air on Earth. You know, if
you say twenty percent is oxygen, about fifteen percent of
the air you breathe out is oc oxygen. So what
happened to that missing five percent of the air? Well,
about five percent of the air is oxygen that is
(15:07):
absorbed by the lungs. So when you breathe in, you
absorb about five percent of the air, about a quarter
of the total oxygen content of the air. And then
that oxygen is replaced mostly with carbon dioxide when you
breathe out, so that leaves you with what the author said,
if you're breathing pure oxygen, say through a mask, in
one of these scenarios, what you breathe out would be
(15:27):
roughly ninety five percent oxygen, So the area around your
head as you're exhaling is going to have a lot
more oxygen in it than it normally would. Now note,
with regard to ambient oxygen, the oxygen levels used in
like different space exploration and environments have varied. The International
Space Station actually maintains roughly the Earth's atmosphere mixture of
(15:51):
gases in the air, so about twenty one percent oxygen.
The rest is nitrogen, but the nitrogen has to be
supplied through through like bringing up tanks of nitrogen to
make up that difference. So that and other considerations have
led people to plan that in some other cases there
might be higher levels of oxygen in the atmosphere breathed
(16:14):
within space exploration contexts in the future. The authors cite
a few other examples. They cite past examples as well.
They say the Apollo missions and sky Lab used higher
oxygen levels, and as of the time of this paper,
there were plans for other missions that the authors say
would have used higher oxygen concentrations. They cite the Orion
(16:34):
Crew exploration vehicle. They cite the Altai Lander, which would
have been at the time this mission was planned, would
have been a landing vehicle for a US mission returning
to the Moon. And they also talk about higher oxygen
concentrations in possible lunar surface habitats. So there would be
numerous scenarios where you're in a space exploration context and
(16:57):
you would have increased oxygen levels. Either there's just ambiently
increased oxygen in the particular mission or vehicle you're talking about,
or you might be needing to give somebody oxygen for
some reason, in which case there would be in much
increased oxygen around their head and chest. The authors also
point out that certain medical interventions could provide ignition points,
(17:19):
such as you could potentially start a fire during defibrillation,
and this could happen even on Earth, And I was like, really, yes,
I went and read about this. It seems to put
some fears at rest. It is very rare. This is
not something that commonly happens, but there have been reported cases.
For example, the following study. I was looking at a
(17:40):
study published in the Journal of the American College of
Cardiology by Sanchez at All from the year twenty twenty three.
It talks about a case where a seventy two year
old male showed up at the emergency room. He was
suffering atrial fibrillation, an erratic elevated heart rate, and there
were several interventions, including the use of a defibrillator to
(18:02):
stabilize the regular heartbeat. So they put the leads on
your chest and they send a charge to try to
synchronize the muscles of the heart. The report says, quote,
the defibrillator pads ignited in flames after the defibrillation button
was pressed. The betting and oxygen mask also caught fire.
Now that's something you don't usually think of happening. However,
(18:24):
the authors stressed that this is extremely rare. They say
there are only two known cases in the medical literature
that they could identify. And also fortunately the patient did
not suffer actually suffer burn injuries. What was burned appeared
to be the pads and the patient's body hair in
some parts of the betting. But they say to avoid
this happening. There are several steps you can do. Of course,
(18:47):
the increased oxygen from supplemental oxygen probably contributed here. So
they say you can remove or place oxygen masks or
nasal canul of further away from the patient's chest when
you're doing a defibrillation charge. They say that you can
prepare the pads better, make sure that they have complete
(19:07):
attachment to the chest wall. They say chest hair should
be trimmed ideally, that that helps, and they also say
avoid alcohol products during the preparation for the defib anyway,
so that was sort of a tangent. But defibrillation is
one of the scenarios the author is mentioned that could
possibly provide an ignition point in space. But coming back
(19:29):
to the burning hair in space study, the authors also
mentioned cauterization as a medical procedure that could provide increased
risk of fire in an oxygen enriched environment. So you
pair the oxygen ch atmosphere in some spacecraft and space
exploration environments with various ignitionen scenarios and you've got the
heat and the oxygen. So the third ingredient is fuel.
(19:53):
And here the authors point to the presence of potentially
flammable clothing and hair. Now, in addition to the medical
ignition scenarios mentioned above, like defibrillation and cauterization, the author
is note the conclusion of previous research, especially regarding Apollo one,
that it should basically be considered impossible to eliminate all
(20:14):
ignition sources in a spacecraft environment. You're always going to
have things that could generate sparks or electrical arcs or
hot surfaces. So the best way to limit the risk
of fire is to control access of those ignition sources
to fuel by removing combustible materials or making them less combustible.
Speaker 1 (20:36):
You know, I've been watching enough alien movies recently to
of course know that standard issue. If you're going on
a space mission, you have a flamethrower on board, you
have or at least a flame or unit. I don't
think it's it's necessary. It's not nothing that's supposed to
be like spitting jelly gasoline or anything like that, Like
not a military flamethrower, but still a unit that shoots
a big plume of fire at things.
Speaker 3 (21:00):
Do they have that, that's a good question. Is there
an industrial use or do they make them? Maybe they
make them now that.
Speaker 1 (21:06):
I I think sometimes that's the case, But I don't
know the best I could do putting this together, watching
the films in the back of my mind, always thinking
like flame is probably not a great idea in an enclosed,
sealed environment without even factoring in and all the stuff
we've been talking about here. But I'm guessing you could
make a case for Okay, if you are dealing with
(21:26):
some sort of a life form situa biological threat, like
some sort of a bug, not a full blown xenomorph,
you know, but just kind of whatever is expected to occur,
then I guess you can make a case for a
flame unit. And then on top of that, if you're
looking at some sort of a potential like boarding scenario,
like a boarding action, like people coming on your ship.
(21:47):
They aren't supposed to be there and you want to
encourage them to leave or to back off. I guess
a flame unit you could make some sort of a
case that a flame unit is better than a gun
could potentially puncture the whole. But I don't know. Okay,
once you factor all this in, though, is the risk
of fire greater. I don't know.
Speaker 3 (22:08):
I think we'll have to assume that, like the Nostromo
and other alien environments just use they're more like the ISS,
like they supply the nitrogen, they have a more earth
like atmosphere rather than the oxygen enriched atmospheres that would
increase the risk of using flames.
Speaker 1 (22:24):
Sure, Plus everything's a little bit wet on the Nostromo,
so maybe that helps now.
Speaker 3 (22:28):
The authors of this paper note that a lot of
individual mission durations are short enough that astronauts don't need
to cut their hair in space, but even that does
happen sometimes. The space haircuts are real. They include a
photo from the ISS of a space haircut where Russian
cosmonaut Valerie Corzun is doing a haircut for the American
(22:49):
astronaut Peggy Whitson in the year two thousand and two.
And you can see like he's got the scissors and
a comb in his hands, and she's holding a like
a hose up by her head. It's a vacuum cleaner hose.
And I guess that's to suck in all the clippings
right as their release, because man, you think hair gets
everywhere during a normal Earth haircut with regular gravity, you know,
I feel like I get a haircut and days later
(23:10):
I'm still finding hair. It's like I'm not even wearing
the same clothes. What's going on? But yeah, so in
microgravity you could imagine it's a real headache.
Speaker 1 (23:20):
Yeah, I feel like you got to make a strong
case for that haircut and or be really good with
that vacuum huze.
Speaker 3 (23:25):
But anyway, given all these considerations, it's important to know
for planning future space missions in these abnormal atmospheric and
gravity conditions, and especially in more unique scenarios where you
would need to supply somebody with supplemental oxygen, how flammable
are the fuel sources you would find inside a spaceship.
And in the case of this study, they looked into
(23:46):
how flammable is human hair with these increased concentrations of oxygen.
So the authors did some experiments. They tried to stimulate
what it's like in various space exploration environments using an
apparatus called a low speed flow tunnel, where you maintain
a forced flow of a controlled gas mixture. In this case,
it was mounted inside of a NASA Zero Gravity Research
(24:10):
Facility drop rig, so that was to simulate different gravity conditions.
They tried a few different lengths and styles of human hair,
they mounted them on a rack and they said that
basically the flame spread was pretty similar for the different
hairstyles tested different lengths. The spread was sort of quick
at first over the sort of frizzy outer layer of
(24:31):
the surface of a hair mass, and then would be followed,
especially in the cases of longer hair where there's a
lot of hair, followed by quote continued bulk burning. And
they found that, oh yeah, it is absolutely right that
increasing oxygen will increase the flame spread rate of hair significantly.
They say it's by more than an order of magnitude,
(24:54):
so it's major. And Rabbi included a couple of pictures
for you to look at here of what the hair
looked like after being exposed to fire in normal atmosphere
versus in a thirty percent oxygen atmosphere, and it's a
major difference. The thirty percent oxygen one looks way more
like a matted mass of keratin ash goo. Oh yeah, absolutely, Chris,
(25:19):
So this is something that I don't think I ever
would have thought of before, but the authors say, yes,
their findings show that quote in the elevated oxygen concentration
environments planned for future exploration missions, hair flammability becomes an
important consideration for cru safety. With the high flame spread
rates reported here, an astronaut's entire head would be engulfed
(25:40):
in flames in seconds, and serious injury could occur before
the flames are extinguished. It is suggested that acceptable mitigation
strategies such as hair coverings be adopted and shaving be encouraged.
And they talk about a number of different interventions you
could employ soul. Yeah, you could like cut hair. You
could shave parts of the body. You could shave the head.
(26:02):
You could cover the hair with flame retardant kind of
hair coverings and materials. You can put flame resistant gels
and jellies in the hair. They mentioned several of these
that in some cases are used and have been used.
So there are different interventions you could do. But ultimately
they say, if you have elevated oxygen levels and you
(26:24):
are trying to prevent fires, you really do need to
think about human hair.
Speaker 1 (26:28):
Wow, you know, I can't help but think about like
the sci fi ramifications. And on one level, I love
the idea of like hairless shaved astronauts. You know that
you have removed all their hair in order to prevent
this from happening. But On the other hand, I kind
of like the idea of a bunch of astronauts that
are using some sort of especially made palmade Yeah, and
I'll have some sort of like a maybe slicked back
(26:50):
greaser look going on with this special space space goop.
Speaker 3 (26:54):
Yeah, everybody looks like John Travolta. They in grease. They've
all got the space pompadoors that the Yeah, the flame
retardant jelly in there.
Speaker 1 (27:07):
Yeah, like the Misfits right where they have the hair
all crafted. Now, I got to keep an eye out
for it. I keep watching all these space movies, and
I have not been paying enough attention to everyone's hairstyles.
Which space movie has the has the most slicked back hair?
Where is the most palmate employed in science fiction? I'm
gonna have to be on the lookout for it now.
Speaker 3 (27:25):
So anyway, this is one of these classic rabbit holes
I love on our show that I would not have
expected to go in this direction at all. I was
initially just looking into, like what's going on with the
with the chemistry of burning hair, and I ended up
with the threats of hair catching on fire in space.
Speaker 1 (27:49):
You know, we mentioned boarding actions earlier, and one of
the first places that my mind went when we started
looking into this was what about Blackbeard the Pirate. So
black Beard the Pirate was, of course a real person
that has been mythologized and fictionalized to varying degrees over time,
(28:12):
but this was an actual pirate, Edward Teach, who reportedly
lives sixteen eighty through seventeen eighteen. And yeah, there's a
great deal of legend about this man, including the idea
that he would affix slow matches. Sometimes these are just
called fuses, but slow matches were they would have all
like coils of this stuff. They burned slow, as the
(28:35):
name implies, they burned very hot, and they're used for
igniting like the fuses for cannons, explosive materials, grenades, that
sort of thing, but also of course could be used
to like light pipes and so forth.
Speaker 3 (28:48):
I think even at the time, well I don't know
if exactly at this time, but they were used, and
even handheld firearms at the time, like muskets and stuff
would have like they'd have like a powder pan with
a slow match that ignited it.
Speaker 1 (29:00):
Yeah, and so it would be common to have these
on hand. But of course part of the mystique of
black beard, is that he wouldn't just have burning slow matches,
say on his belt or whatnot, He would have them
under his hat. And I think this sometimes gets conflated
into being like woven into his hair or even in
his beard anyway that you frame it slow matches in
(29:25):
very close proximity to what is generally described and or
depicted as wild hair and beard. You know, Like the
idea here is that he would do this before array,
before a boarding action, to make himself look more fearsome
with those smoking fuses, with like the little pinpoints of
red ember sticking out on either side of his fearsome head.
Speaker 3 (29:46):
So, of course I'm familiar with the story. I've heard
it many times, but this is one of those things
that has never made sense to me because I think, like,
how how do you actually do that and like operate
like move around and stuff with things on fire tangled
in your beard, And wouldn't it be producing some amount
of smoke or fumes at least would it beginning in
(30:08):
your face? I don't know.
Speaker 1 (30:10):
I mean, I guess it's a very just few intensive
environment anyway, if their cannons going off, muskets firing, and
then you know, folks are smoking as well. That's something
worth noting, I guess is I've never been a smoker. Smokers,
of course, by practice, are going to have frequently have
burning objects in close proximity to their hair and beard,
and may have additional thoughts in all of this, like
(30:30):
I don't know how often, how often, say, just a
smoker of cigarettes with a prominent beard would encounter some
sort of a beard burn scenario. But then again again
we have to remember that a slow match would have
I believe burnt much hotter than your average cigarette or
pipe or whatnot. Yeah, anyway, so yeah, I had questions
(30:50):
about this too, like did he really do this? Was
this safe? I mean, I'm not particularly worried about Blackbeard's
personal safety toil, but is this feasible? And so I
was looking around at some serious texts about Blackbeard and pirates,
and a number of them, number of them didn't really
(31:11):
do much deliberation on this point. They just kind of
mention it. And there's you know, there's a lot of
there's a lot more pressing history to discuss here, So
not a slide at those sources at all. I also
ran across at least a few more casual commentators who
dismissed it as a myth because they said, well, this
would have surely caught his hair on fire, so it
you know, he almost certainly didn't do it. But I
(31:33):
did finally find discussion of it in Dinnerson Little's twenty
sixteen book The Golden Age of Piracy, The Truth behind
Pirate Myths, and so he attributes, you know, a lot
of this myth making to Captain Charles Johnson's seventeen twenty
four book A General History of the Robberies and Murders
of the most most Notorious Pirates that's spelled p y
(31:53):
R A T E S.
Speaker 3 (31:55):
Gotta love pirate with y Yeah.
Speaker 1 (31:57):
And we have to note that the actual identity of
this author remains unknown. There is apparently no record of
such a Captain Johnson, and some have even argued that
the author here is actually Daniel Defoe. Yeah, of Robinson Crusoe, Yeah, exactly.
So we ultimately don't know for sure. I think historians
kind of go back and forth with different theories, but
(32:19):
it seems to be agreed upon that whoever wrote this,
they had some talent for fiction. They also had a
great love of facts and details, and the resulting work
is kind of a mix of the two. So you
have you do have some factual information that's very helpful
to the historian, but you also have plenty of just
blatant fiction mixed in as well.
Speaker 3 (32:40):
Oh well, that kind of source is in a way great.
I mean, it makes it not as very frustrating as
a historical source, but also an interesting problem for historians.
Speaker 1 (32:50):
Right right now, on the slow match in or adjacent
to the hair, in particular, the author little here adds
the following quote. Still pirates, privateers, merchant seamen and naval
seamen tasked with throwing grenades in battle sometimes carried the
burning slow match needed to light the grenade fuses in
their hats, but it was more usual to tie it
(33:12):
around a wrist or pin it to their clothing or
hat with a match case. Although one image of Jean Bart,
the famous French privateer in the service of France, shows
him with a length of lighted match held in his teeth.
Ugh and so he adds that Captain Johnson or whoever
was behind that pseudonym, would have surely seen the image
(33:34):
in question. They would have been familiar with this idea.
This image of Bart, and so he and he also
points out that the slow match again burns slow but
very hot by design in order to light fuses that,
despite what movies and looney tune cartoons portray, can be
rather hard to light. That's why you need a slow fuse.
You can't just you know, you couldn't just strike a
(33:57):
match and so forth. You need something hot and more
or less consistent. And then this is where he finally
gets to the part. This is where Little gets to
the part that I was wondering about. He adds, quote,
slow matches could thus easily ignite hair, and a pirate's greasy, tarry,
flaming beard would have been a hellish spectacle and one
probably never repeat it. So I guess that's as close
(34:19):
to an answer as I could really find. Basically, like, yes,
slow matches on the hat, in the hat and so forth,
that's going to be expected to a degree, But there's
like a fine line. You wouldn't want to push it
too far, and if someone did push it too far,
it would be notable. You know, that pirate would ever,
(34:40):
would forever be remembered as the guy whose head went
up in a ball of fire because he was trying
to be a little bit too dramatic in the boarding action,
and other pirates would decide, well, you know, I'll just
keep it on the hat. Maybe I'll just tie it
to the wrist.
Speaker 3 (34:54):
I'm trying to think. Okay, so that's sort of a
count against this story, I guess, of black Beard putting
them in beard. I wonder is it possible that along
the lines of this, like NASA research we're looking at
where you could put some kind of gels or jellies,
you know, flame resistant gels or jellies in the hair.
There's something that would have been available in the seventeenth
(35:14):
or eighteenth century. You could like wax your beard with
a flame resistant material that would like prevent it from
catching on fire. I'm just spitballing here.
Speaker 1 (35:22):
I guess. So, I mean, two things we have to
consider about pirates without going into a deep dive on
like the actual realities of pirates, is that in some
cases these were learned men or women, you know, that
that might be pretty to information like that that would
be useful. Also, that they could just be clever enough
(35:44):
to figure out something that would work if they were
that attached to this dramatic flare they had in mind.
But On the other hand, I feel like, you know,
pirates are making bad life choices, so that can include,
you know, risk your head going up in flames.
Speaker 3 (36:02):
More thoughts about the beard, Okay, I can imagine the
plausibility of it would be affected by I think, how
long the slow match you're putting in the beard is? Like,
if it's significantly long and hanging out, that sort of
gets it away from your face. But the longer the
match you put in, the heavier it would be, in
which case I would think, how do you get it
to stay in the beard? Do you literally have to
(36:23):
like tie it inside a braid in your beard or something,
so you know what I'm saying, like just sticking it
in there? I don't know. I mean, beard hair can
be kind of thick and tangly, so you can imagine
sticking something in a beard that's not very heavy and
it stays there. But I don't know, a significant length
of something like rope or a slow match seems like
(36:43):
that would start getting heavy enough to just fall out.
Speaker 1 (36:46):
Yeah. Going back to some of these illustrations, these classic
illustrations of black Beard, I guess the idea is that
he would take a length of slow match like place
it over his head and then put the hat on
top of it, and then you have either end of
the slow match sticking out on each side. Still I
think too close for comfort to the rest of his
(37:07):
hair and his beard. But the way it's physician, maybe
it has the burning tips of the matches sticking out
to either side.
Speaker 3 (37:16):
Ah yeah, Okay, I guess that's more plausible because I
was imagining it literally being just in the beard, tangled
in the beard.
Speaker 2 (37:23):
Man.
Speaker 1 (37:23):
I think it sometimes gets conflated to that, either through
storytelling and embellishment or just by looking at a picture
like this, where like the famous illustration in question, it's
like his beard is already in kind of like squidlike arms,
like like dreads, and then the slow match also looks
like a dread coming out on either side of his
head that is then producing smoke.
Speaker 3 (37:45):
Okay, but I see I was mentally personally supplying some
of the more implausible elements myself there that it was
like necessarily said to be in the beard. That's maybe
a less common variation on the idea, but.
Speaker 1 (37:58):
I think it's out there. Like I said, there's so
much you know, myth making and an exaggeration in pirate
mythology that I think it just inevitably goes there. All right. Well,
on that note, I think we're going to go ahead
and call this part one, but we will be back
for a second episode. I think this is just going
to be a two parter. But in the next episode
(38:19):
we'll get a little bit into the idea of the
quest for flaming hair and flaming beards and mythology and folklore.
We'll also get into some examples from antiquity, so I think,
and probably some other angles as well that we haven't
worked out just yet. But yeah, we thought this was
going to be a one partner, but I think there's
(38:39):
enough interesting stuff for two here. In the meantime, we'll
remind you that Stuff to Will Your Mind is primarily
a science and culture podcast, with core episodes on Tuesdays
and Thursdays. Let's see. Currently we are doing short form
episodes on Wednesdays. We're doing Weird House Cinema on Fridays. Now,
you might notice that our Monday listener mail episodes have
(39:00):
ceased for the time being. We're experimenting with a slightly
different format, going back to the old format of having
listener mail episodes occur, say, every month or so and
instead running a weird House cinema rerun in that Monday slot. Again,
we're just trying things out here, so if you have
thoughts on this experiment right in, we would love to
hear from you.
Speaker 3 (39:20):
Right so, want to be super clear, listener mail is
not going away. Please keep the messages coming. We are
still going to read them on the show, just on
a less frequent basis. The plan is roughly every month,
month and a half, more like we used to do
before the weekly.
Speaker 1 (39:35):
Yeah. So, if you have experiences with burning hair some
pirate thoughts to share, or certainly if you have thoughts
about standard issue Flamer units on space missions and deep
sea missions in science fiction, right in, we'd love to
hear from you.
Speaker 3 (39:52):
Huge thanks as always to our excellent audio producer JJ Posway.
If you would like to get in touch with us
with feedback on this episode or any other, to suggest
to topic for the future, or just to say hello, you
can email us at contact at stuff to Blow your
Mind dot com.
Speaker 2 (40:13):
Stuff to Blow Your Mind is production of iHeartRadio. For
more podcasts from my Heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app,
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