December 20, 2011 • 23 mins
Do people really just go up in flames? Do grannies really flare up like roman candles in their rockers and is there anything in science that explains why a middle-aged bachelor might burn down to his sneakers without warning? In this episode, Julie and Robert enter the dubious world of spontaneous human combustion. Where does the science end and the nonsense begin?
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Speaker 1 (00:03):
Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind from how Stuff
Works dot com. Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind.
My name is Robert Lamb, and I'm Julie Douglas. Julia,
you have do you ever just said? At home and you're,
you know, you're maybe you're reading a book, maybe you're watching,
you know, a little TV, staring at the window, rocking chair,
(00:24):
in your rocking chair, and and you shut feeling a
little warm, and you suddenly think, what if I burst
into flames right now? What if I spontaneously come busted?
I actually have had these thoughts before, and not necessarily
in a rocking chair, but it's one of the rocking
chair does seem like be appropriate place to spontaneously It does,
and you guys will all see why by the end
(00:45):
of this podcast why a rocking chair really fits well
into this scenario. But yeah, I mean, this is one
of those things. I've got a irrational fear of spontaneous
fire in general. And I remember which is a good
thing to be afraid of? Yeah, Fosters and you know
you name it, um, But I remember seeing pictures of
the spontaneous human combustion I of as a teenager and
(01:07):
being like, Wow, this is awful and wonderful all at
the same time. I had a similar experience with it
because I feel like I either saw it on Unsolved Mysteries,
which did a great job about creeping me out or
or enthralling me about various paranormal things. Um, because Robert
Stack's voice was so you know, authoritative no matter what
he's talking about, aliens or or people burning up. Uh.
(01:30):
And then also like there was like a little book
I got in uh, like in the checkout line at
a grocery store for some reason, to avoid a human
spontaneous It was just like a condensed tone of all
sorts of paranormal scary things. I had something like that.
It was like an oddities thing. Yeah yeah. And it
had of course human spontaneous combustion, which is completely odd.
(01:52):
It's a weird thing, and it's back in the news
at least it has been this fall in September of
two thousand eleven, and Irish corps Er declared that the
death of one Michael Flaherty. Flaherty was caused by spontaneous
human combustion and that was actually the first instance of
it in Ireland. It's I was reading the articles about this,
(02:13):
and and none of the articles actually that I read
were actually poking fun of the situation. But there is
sort of a sense of the guy saying, I don't
know what it is because it spontaneous human combustion. It's
kind of like saying, we don't know who the murder is,
but I suspect it was magic because it was either
human spontaneous combustion. Yeah. I don't know if that's not
really irish, but yes, I totally get you're saying that.
(02:36):
All those articles seemed to see just be him throwing
his hands up in the air and saying, Okay, it's
got to be human combustion. So now, I are you
about to share more about this particular story. Well, I
was just gonna say that it's probably worth mentioning that
it was so odd to the corner because you know,
here he has a seventy six year old man found
(02:56):
in his home, and uh, the damage was to his body,
which was totally burned, the ceiling above him and the
floor beneath him, and there was no other evidence of
a fire. There was no foul play. There was a
fire source, but it was a fireplace in the next room.
So that's why the corner perhaps just threw up his
hands and said spontaneous human combustion. Oh well, I ran
(03:18):
across another story from from two thousand eleven, and this
one was out of San Francisco, and it was reported
by CBS five. Uh, their their lead is great. A
man was hospitalized Wednesday evening with life threatening third degree burns.
All right, well, I mean that's not funny, but you
know after somehow catching fire inside of San Francisco porn store,
authorities told CBS five. So, so, basically, police officers were
(03:42):
on the street and they saw a flaming man come
run out of the shop suddenly, and there were firefighters
like a block away, so they able to come over
and extinguish the flames. But here's another line from there,
said arson investigators said it was not exactly clear how
the man caught fire. Police indicated he had apparently been
watching videos in private booth at the adult arcade when
the fire ignited. Well that is that is some powerful
(04:08):
porn perhaps, or as we have found out before, there's
very rare instances of pyromaniacs having to start fires in
order to reach a sexual climax. So maybe he was
like you know that the one out of I don't
know two million people that that needs to do that.
So he's like sexy firefighter film check, um, oily rags
(04:33):
and uh and a torch check. I'm ready to go,
and then he set himself off that or really powerful
porn right yeah. Or spontaneous human combustion really does exist,
and that's what we're going to talk about today. Um
does it? Big question mark? Yeah? And before we you know,
we we've we've started off with these cases, if you will,
(04:53):
of of of alleged spontaneous human combustion. But but now
we're gonna take a step back and we're gonna look
at spot spontaneous combustion. Can it happen? Yes, spontaneous outside
of humans definitely occurs. Yeah. Yeah. In fact, our senior
video producer roxand sent it's a really interesting article about
pistachios and apparently they will spontaneous combusted the drop of
(05:17):
a hat because especially when they're packed really tightly for
shipping because I have to remain cool and dry. But
because they have such a large that content makes them
really flammable. So when they're packed that densely, um, they
can actually begin to heat themselves. Um, you know, the oil,
the postastia oil will start to self heat, causing spontaneous
(05:39):
human combustion. So this is really like struck fear into
the heart of pistachio shippers. Yeah, I had no idea.
Postachios were always like a Christmas time sort of treat
in in my household, and I never considered the possibility
that they might explode. But in the previous podcast, I
was mentioning how I wasn't sure of what I was
going to get my uncle Craig for Christmas because I
(06:01):
drew his name. But but here, here are two things
to consider. A he has an irrational fear of unexploded ordinance, okay,
and and lives in the US. So it's like, it's
not like he lives in Bosnia or this is good
or South Asia or anything. Uh. And but then the
about the only thing on his wish list that that
I'm thinking about getting is mixed nuts in the shell.
(06:24):
So I'm thinking a tightly packed bag of the statuos
in the shell with a copy of that article Rock
sand Sinus. Well, just to throw him into full blown PTSD, right, yeah, well, no,
just a happy alidays. You make it sound meaner than
it is. But well, okay, I guess that you are
maybe trying to educate him flash scary. It would be
(06:44):
a learning slash snack experience. And we know that fear
has a really important role in learning, right, Yeah, So
there you go. Uh, I've um, you don't have to
get me a present this year, so don't worry about that.
But there are other stances. Piles of hay or straw y. Yeah,
they've been known to to spontaneous, spontaneously combust when they decomposed.
(07:08):
So the bacteria inside them orchestrates that decomposition process, and
that can generate enough heat to kindle a spark and
then poof which I actually saw the other day. My
my neighbor had a compost pile that was smoking really
yeah yeah, and I was like, hey, head's up, and
they were like, hey, that's pretty normal, and I was like,
all right, so just check in. You know, I didn't
want my neighbor's house to burn down because of a
(07:30):
pile of leaves um. And then of course the pile
of oily rags which you have mentioned, and and you'll
see this warning on various like varnishes and what have you,
where they'll say like, don't leave, don't leave the the
oil rags unattended after you do this, because it may
set fire to itself. Yeah, because what we're talking about
here is that oxygen is meeting an inflammatory agent and
(07:52):
then there there has to be a spark, right, which
sometimes can happen naturally, like, for instance, the pile of rags.
You can't start You can't start a fire without a spark,
Is that right? Is that what the boss said? Um? No,
without those there? Yes? Okay, good, he was right. Let's
(08:14):
just chat chat fact checking my basic physics with with
the boss. Well, yeah, you have to so mean when
we do talk about spontaneous human combustion, what what really
are we talking about? Um, well, it's it's kind of
like that case and not so much the case with
the dude running flaming out of the adult store, because
that's more just like a dude on fire. Uh. Spontaneous
(08:37):
human combustion as as we typically encounter it, we're talking
somebody who's been burnt down like to the bone or
through the bones, but then maybe like an entire arm
will be just laying there on the floor next to them. Yeah.
It was identified as early as or the alleged phenomenon
by a doctor Trail who claimed he had recently discovered
(08:58):
a peculiar kind of oil in the human blood, which
is highly inflammable. This oil is chiefly observed in the
blood of persons who have been addicted to drinking oddent spirits.
It is probably that this discovery may tend to elucidate
the hitero explosion inexplicable phenomenon of the spontaneous combustion of
(09:18):
human bodies. So even back in the day, they were
seeing these instances that were very odd. Again, there are
certain hallmarks that we'll talk about that make people quite quizzical. Right,
it will be someone like they're burned in their rocking
chair and the chair is still there, but their their
bones were incinerated, right, which is weird because you've got
a wood chair, a wooden chair that is not affected
(09:40):
at all. Right, the room will be fine, the the
you know, the the chair, the bed will be fine.
There will be like a legrant arm that isn't burnt.
And for all. I mean, if if you were just
to open the door to all sorts of science fiction possibilities,
it looks like someone was like blasted with a sci
fi ray gun or a heat gun or something, because
(10:01):
it just like just cores right through the aliens. Again,
but we know it's it's not that visiting the elderly.
So the question arises, you know, what what could be
going on? And there are there are various theories, um
and and a number of these theories do relate to, uh,
to some of these phenomenon we were talking about, for instance,
(10:22):
methane um methane building up inside the intestines and then
ignited by enzymes. But what's the problem with that. The
problem is that, as you had said before, this is
largely the parts of the body that were largely affected,
or the skin and the bones, and not the internal organs.
So that would clue use into an external source of
(10:43):
the fire rather than internal. Yeah. And and again just
just to give you an idea of like what it
takes to incinerate a body, because most of the most
of the body is not flammable. I mean, that's that's
the thing. We're so much water, We're not pistachios. Yeah. Yeah,
there's not a lot in this the can that can
actually go up in flames. Uh. And if you even
(11:04):
in like a crematoria, the temperatures are generally like seven
thousand centigrade and that doesn't even destroy the bones. So
some of these other theories static electricity, the idea that
if you were walking around your carpeted home, I guess
we're just like if you didn't leave and you had
socks on you and you were just walking around in
circles and in circles and circles, you could eventually build
up enough of a static charge to incinerate your body,
(11:26):
which just seems soles. I mean, you don't need to
go out and like build a hat out of like
you know, dryer sheaves. It just seems a little bit silly. Yes, um.
And and then there's a sort of an extrapolation of
this by a guy named Larry Arnold, who is a
self proclaimed expert on the subject and author of a blaze,
and he claims that there's a new sub atomic particle
(11:46):
called the pyratron that has the power to ignite the body.
Oh yeah, but that of course that's none of that
is Is it all proven? Right? That's the problem with that.
I mean, it is kind of interesting. It kind of
leads into the idea, you know, the whole equals mc
square thing about matter and energy, and well, what if
some or all of the matter in our body were
transferred into into energy? Right? Of course, the problem with that,
(12:11):
and this is from Dr Stephen Novella, who's a Yale
neurologists and founder of the New England Skeptics Society. He
points out that the mass of a single person, if
entirely converted to energy, would be much more than a
few hydrogen bombs. So so even if there there was
some sort of situation with matter transferred into energy inside
the human body, it would have to be just a
(12:32):
minute amount of mass, like a very minimum amount. Well,
there's no process really that could kick start this in
the first place. I mean, there's not even a theory
for this. So it's just kind of a hey, maybe
it's this is particle. But if it were to happen
to your point would be that we are basically a
bunch a bunch of walking hydrogen bombs right ready to
(12:54):
go off, right if if there was some sort of
process to actually kick that into demotion. Right, And then
you also have to consider that kids playing with methane,
and when I say methane mean parts and lighters like
you would see so many more UH instances a spontaneous
human combustion among twelve year old kids. And and remember,
(13:15):
not everybody produces large quantities of methane. Remember our our
NASA UH one of our podcasts, we maybe it is
the wearwolf theory. We're talking about the ideal human body
to go into space, and NASA found that that. You
know that there are certain individuals that produce much less
methane and some individuals who produced no methane. Right, we
find the face of the whole methane building up in
your intestines theory, right, But there is one theory that
(13:37):
seems to hold true, at least in terms of explaining
how someone might burn the way that they do um
with their extremities intact and with the rest of the
room completely intact. You're talking about the whip theory, believe. Yeah,
this is one of the more interesting theories and definitely
more interesting than things like balls of lightning or or
aliens or aliens or psychic phenomena. And this is basically
(14:00):
the idea that the human body can, under certain circumstances,
be like a big fat candle. So yeah, I think
of a candles. You know, the wax ignites the wick
and keeps it burning right because it's got the fat,
and that fat continues to allow the candle to burn
very slowly. So essentially the human body could do the
same thing. Yeah, and there was there was actually BBC
(14:23):
sponsored an experiment in ninety eight, and it was pretty
great when I found It's like, normally I would not
be like, hey, there's a study from ninety eight and
be proud of it, but it was. It's a pretty
cool experiment they put together, and if you look it
up online, it's like still like there. I don't I
don't understand how some websites do their updates because they're
parts of the BBC website that have never changed, like
they're still this this ancient web design and it's pretty
(14:45):
awesome because you feel like you're actually going back in
time when you look at these. So anyway, this involved
this guy, Dr John Dehan of California Criminalistic Institute, and uh,
they did what anyone would do when testing out the
wick theory. They took a they used to pig in
a blanket, by which I don't mean a tasty hot
dog or vegan hot dog wrapped in some literal literally
(15:06):
a pig in a blank literally, it was a dead
pig and a blanket. Yeah, why did why did they
used to pick? Because I thought this really interesting. I
mean they obviously it's something that's much more ethical than
using human right, right, right. That was the number one
that they couldn't get the okay from the BBC to
burn any actual people. But also I believe it has
to do with like the the amount of fatah to human. Yeah, coomfortable.
(15:28):
You know the human that catches on fire and here's
a pig more or less. Um. So they wrapped this
dead pig in a blanket and then a small amount
of petrol was poured on gasoline and uh, after five
hours of continuous burning, they found that the bones were
in fact destroyed. And Dr Dehannon said, the sort of
damage here is exactly the same as that from supposed
(15:50):
spontaneous human combust. Okay. So so just like the candle,
like a tallow or candlewax, it allowed the burning to
happen in distant way over consistently slowly. But you know,
not in a way it's going to burn the rest
of the house down, Not in a way that's going
to necessarily gather a lot of attention. Yeah, it's just
it also explains why only part of the body, the
(16:12):
part that you're rich and fat, burns away, one of
the rest stays intact. Yeah all right, So what what
do all of these cases have in common? Well, they
all know each other, they did not, and they were
not all huge drinkers. Right that the special human oil
theory exactly exactly. Um. The victim is almost always completely consumed,
(16:33):
usually inside his or her home. Okay, so it usually
happens since someone's home. A sweet smoky smell usually accompanies
the incident. It's like like barbecue. Yes, I mean it's
a little distasteful, but yes, like barbecue. Um. And then
the extremities often stay in intact, which we've talked about.
So the head and torso maybe completely charred, but the hands, feet,
(16:55):
and legs are left unburned. And that's what you see
in on some of those iconic photos, you know, someone's
shoes with smoke coming out of them. Um. There are
no other signs of fire in the room other than
a greasy residue sometimes left on fronture and walls. Okay,
and not all spontaneous human combustion victims simply burst into flames,
some developed strange burns on their body which have no
(17:16):
obvious source, or they emanate smoke from their body when
no fire is actually present. Should be a little bit
weird to look down in your arm and see, you know,
smoke curling up right. Um. So that's what they all
share in common, and that is why it has been
such a interesting subject for a lot of people, because
that's very those are weird things, right. But I do
(17:38):
think that the wig theory in the pig in the
blanket experiments actually helped to support that. Uh. And it's
also key to note here that that that the throwing
them with this pig in the blanket idea is the
is the notion that it's probably not spontaneous. But the
spontaneous is just sort of I mean, it's kind of like, well,
(17:58):
we don't know what the causes, so must be magic
kind of a deal, where in reality, there are a
number of things in any given household that could potentially
set something upon. Right at issue here the heart of
them out it really is is it coming from an
external source or is it coming from an internal source?
And obviously is we've kind of discussed um, you know today,
it's not coming from inside. There's no pyrotron. Really, that's
(18:22):
igniting us. Um. Many of the cases have had victims
who were smoking, and a good amount of them have
been had been drinking as well, So it stands to
reason that they fell asleep while smoking, the embers fell
on them, ignited their clothes, and then poof, they become
a human candle. Um. So you know, that's not all
(18:45):
of them explained away in such a neat fashion, but
a good many of them share that sort of common right,
and the individual is elderly, as a number of cases are.
I mean, you confirm or infirm in some way. I mean,
you can easily you can more easily imagine that happening
where they they're smoking or whatever, they catch the thills
on fire and stop dropping roll was not necessarily is
(19:05):
easily achieved. Yeah, So I mean, you know, you can
you can see when you lay it out that way,
you can see that it's pretty obvious that it probably
is coming from an external source. And even in the
case of the man, the seventy six year old man
who had a fire in the next room but no
fire source where he was sitting and where he died,
it's very possible that he could have gotten up, stoked
the fire and somehow ignited a piece of his clothing
(19:28):
without even knowing sat back down. I mean, you know,
it's it's a little bit hard to explain any of
these away, but um, to me, it seems a little
bit more at least practical to to look at it
more as an external phenomenon. And I just keep coming
back to that, right, it's got to be some sort
of external thing. And in fact, we recently circulated in
(19:49):
the office something called an I A which is our
initial approach for when we try to tackle a subject.
It's like, Hey, I'm writing an article about such and such.
Here's what I'm thinking. Do you guys have any other tidbits? Yeah, yeah,
pile it on. And so I know I'm sharing the
secret sauce here of what we do. But um, but
I'm telling you because one of the things that went
out one of the I A s was Hey, what
(20:10):
were some of the craziest headlines of because we're gonna
do some sort of round up article about that. And
one of them that made the list or actually I
don't know if it's made the list, but was put
out there was woman's face ignites during UH standard procedure,
standard operating um procedure that she was having. I think
she was having maybe some moles removed or something. So
(20:32):
what happens basically because they're using so many instruments in
the operating room now that have you know, electricity that
they were you know, sometimes you know, something ignites. Unfortunately
was this woman's face. And um, it's pretty awful to
have to go into for something like that and come
out pretty burned. But again, here's another case where fire happens,
(20:53):
and you usually have to have a source for the
ignition right right like like like the boss said, so
here you go, there you can. Well, hey, speaking of
spontaneous combustion, I think I see the robot coming over
here with a smoking piece of listener mail. Hello Arnold.
All right, So here we hear from the Jim and
(21:14):
Jim rites and it says, I just finished your fire podcast.
So he's talking about the Pyromania podcast that came out
a couple of weeks ago. He says, I don't have
any feelings about fired that are beyond what I would
consider it the norm. My most frequent interaction was fired
with us as a boy scout, which Robert mentioned too,
there was something very alluring about it. It wasn't just
the flame itself, but our ability to master it through
the crep work in gathering materials, building the fire, lighting it,
(21:37):
and finally putting it out. It was always a goal
to build a fire without using newspapers or other fast starters.
We were even successful with non match techniques such as
steel matches. I've never tried tried the bow or other
pre match techniques, which, of course the once you see
in all the movies where they're the little bow, the
twine um, which I hear are very challenging. By the way,
(21:59):
we never pete on the fire. It really stinks up
the place. Um which, as we mentioned before, the alchemists
know the smell. We used to know the smell urine
as they were trying to turn into go after scouts.
I didn't have much direct contact with fire. A few
years ago my son tried scouting to one of the
first skills the boys learned his fire safety control. Would
build a few fires, and the sight, sounds, and smell
(22:20):
of a wooden camp fire brought back all kinds of memories. Um,
you didn't mention fire in Frankenstein. I only mentioned it
because I caught part of Young Frankenstein on cable this weekend,
and of course in the films, Frankenstein is a grade
of fire. Um. Yeah, I mean, I think that's one
of the really cool things about something like like bus Scouts. Um,
you know that he gets kids, even kids that are
(22:42):
um and maybe part of a more urban environment, gets
them out there with fire. Sure, playing with it, there's
a certain amount of playing with fire is inevitable, uh
in that situation, But you're also learning the basic control
of it and how to use it responsibly and indeed
some techniques just to start it beyond maryly A, Uh,
you know, throwing some fire on some ladder fluid. Indeed,
(23:03):
I'm sure that's exactly what I was trying to do
when I was burning ants with magnifying you Just if
if you've been in Scouts, then how many aunt lives
would have been saying to tell us? So, Hey, if
you have anything you would like to share with us,
be it your own history with fire, your own if
you if you have any personal experience with Spottany's human combustion,
(23:25):
do tell we would love to hear about that. Or
if we left out any of hair brained theories. You
can find us on Facebook um we are stuff to
Blow the Mind on there, and you can find us
on Twitter where our handle is blow the Mind, and
you can also send us an email at blow the
Mind at house to fook dot com. Be sure to
(23:47):
check out our new video podcast, Stuff from the Future.
Join how Stuff Work staff as we explore the most
promising and perplexing possibilities of tomorrow.
Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind from how Stuff
Works dot com. Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind.
My name is Robert Lamb, and I'm Julie Douglas. Julia,
you have do you ever just said? At home and you're,
you know, you're maybe you're reading a book, maybe you're watching,
you know, a little TV, staring at the window, rocking chair,
(00:24):
in your rocking chair, and and you shut feeling a
little warm, and you suddenly think, what if I burst
into flames right now? What if I spontaneously come busted?
I actually have had these thoughts before, and not necessarily
in a rocking chair, but it's one of the rocking
chair does seem like be appropriate place to spontaneously It does,
and you guys will all see why by the end
(00:45):
of this podcast why a rocking chair really fits well
into this scenario. But yeah, I mean, this is one
of those things. I've got a irrational fear of spontaneous
fire in general. And I remember which is a good
thing to be afraid of? Yeah, Fosters and you know
you name it, um, But I remember seeing pictures of
the spontaneous human combustion I of as a teenager and
(01:07):
being like, Wow, this is awful and wonderful all at
the same time. I had a similar experience with it
because I feel like I either saw it on Unsolved Mysteries,
which did a great job about creeping me out or
or enthralling me about various paranormal things. Um, because Robert
Stack's voice was so you know, authoritative no matter what
he's talking about, aliens or or people burning up. Uh.
(01:30):
And then also like there was like a little book
I got in uh, like in the checkout line at
a grocery store for some reason, to avoid a human
spontaneous It was just like a condensed tone of all
sorts of paranormal scary things. I had something like that.
It was like an oddities thing. Yeah yeah. And it
had of course human spontaneous combustion, which is completely odd.
(01:52):
It's a weird thing, and it's back in the news
at least it has been this fall in September of
two thousand eleven, and Irish corps Er declared that the
death of one Michael Flaherty. Flaherty was caused by spontaneous
human combustion and that was actually the first instance of
it in Ireland. It's I was reading the articles about this,
(02:13):
and and none of the articles actually that I read
were actually poking fun of the situation. But there is
sort of a sense of the guy saying, I don't
know what it is because it spontaneous human combustion. It's
kind of like saying, we don't know who the murder is,
but I suspect it was magic because it was either
human spontaneous combustion. Yeah. I don't know if that's not
really irish, but yes, I totally get you're saying that.
(02:36):
All those articles seemed to see just be him throwing
his hands up in the air and saying, Okay, it's
got to be human combustion. So now, I are you
about to share more about this particular story. Well, I
was just gonna say that it's probably worth mentioning that
it was so odd to the corner because you know,
here he has a seventy six year old man found
(02:56):
in his home, and uh, the damage was to his body,
which was totally burned, the ceiling above him and the
floor beneath him, and there was no other evidence of
a fire. There was no foul play. There was a
fire source, but it was a fireplace in the next room.
So that's why the corner perhaps just threw up his
hands and said spontaneous human combustion. Oh well, I ran
(03:18):
across another story from from two thousand eleven, and this
one was out of San Francisco, and it was reported
by CBS five. Uh, their their lead is great. A
man was hospitalized Wednesday evening with life threatening third degree burns.
All right, well, I mean that's not funny, but you
know after somehow catching fire inside of San Francisco porn store,
authorities told CBS five. So, so, basically, police officers were
(03:42):
on the street and they saw a flaming man come
run out of the shop suddenly, and there were firefighters
like a block away, so they able to come over
and extinguish the flames. But here's another line from there,
said arson investigators said it was not exactly clear how
the man caught fire. Police indicated he had apparently been
watching videos in private booth at the adult arcade when
the fire ignited. Well that is that is some powerful
(04:08):
porn perhaps, or as we have found out before, there's
very rare instances of pyromaniacs having to start fires in
order to reach a sexual climax. So maybe he was
like you know that the one out of I don't
know two million people that that needs to do that.
So he's like sexy firefighter film check, um, oily rags
(04:33):
and uh and a torch check. I'm ready to go,
and then he set himself off that or really powerful
porn right yeah. Or spontaneous human combustion really does exist,
and that's what we're going to talk about today. Um
does it? Big question mark? Yeah? And before we you know,
we we've we've started off with these cases, if you will,
(04:53):
of of of alleged spontaneous human combustion. But but now
we're gonna take a step back and we're gonna look
at spot spontaneous combustion. Can it happen? Yes, spontaneous outside
of humans definitely occurs. Yeah. Yeah. In fact, our senior
video producer roxand sent it's a really interesting article about
pistachios and apparently they will spontaneous combusted the drop of
(05:17):
a hat because especially when they're packed really tightly for
shipping because I have to remain cool and dry. But
because they have such a large that content makes them
really flammable. So when they're packed that densely, um, they
can actually begin to heat themselves. Um, you know, the oil,
the postastia oil will start to self heat, causing spontaneous
(05:39):
human combustion. So this is really like struck fear into
the heart of pistachio shippers. Yeah, I had no idea.
Postachios were always like a Christmas time sort of treat
in in my household, and I never considered the possibility
that they might explode. But in the previous podcast, I
was mentioning how I wasn't sure of what I was
going to get my uncle Craig for Christmas because I
(06:01):
drew his name. But but here, here are two things
to consider. A he has an irrational fear of unexploded ordinance, okay,
and and lives in the US. So it's like, it's
not like he lives in Bosnia or this is good
or South Asia or anything. Uh. And but then the
about the only thing on his wish list that that
I'm thinking about getting is mixed nuts in the shell.
(06:24):
So I'm thinking a tightly packed bag of the statuos
in the shell with a copy of that article Rock
sand Sinus. Well, just to throw him into full blown PTSD, right, yeah, well, no,
just a happy alidays. You make it sound meaner than
it is. But well, okay, I guess that you are
maybe trying to educate him flash scary. It would be
(06:44):
a learning slash snack experience. And we know that fear
has a really important role in learning, right, Yeah, So
there you go. Uh, I've um, you don't have to
get me a present this year, so don't worry about that.
But there are other stances. Piles of hay or straw y. Yeah,
they've been known to to spontaneous, spontaneously combust when they decomposed.
(07:08):
So the bacteria inside them orchestrates that decomposition process, and
that can generate enough heat to kindle a spark and
then poof which I actually saw the other day. My
my neighbor had a compost pile that was smoking really
yeah yeah, and I was like, hey, head's up, and
they were like, hey, that's pretty normal, and I was like,
all right, so just check in. You know, I didn't
want my neighbor's house to burn down because of a
(07:30):
pile of leaves um. And then of course the pile
of oily rags which you have mentioned, and and you'll
see this warning on various like varnishes and what have you,
where they'll say like, don't leave, don't leave the the
oil rags unattended after you do this, because it may
set fire to itself. Yeah, because what we're talking about
here is that oxygen is meeting an inflammatory agent and
(07:52):
then there there has to be a spark, right, which
sometimes can happen naturally, like, for instance, the pile of rags.
You can't start You can't start a fire without a spark,
Is that right? Is that what the boss said? Um? No,
without those there? Yes? Okay, good, he was right. Let's
(08:14):
just chat chat fact checking my basic physics with with
the boss. Well, yeah, you have to so mean when
we do talk about spontaneous human combustion, what what really
are we talking about? Um, well, it's it's kind of
like that case and not so much the case with
the dude running flaming out of the adult store, because
that's more just like a dude on fire. Uh. Spontaneous
(08:37):
human combustion as as we typically encounter it, we're talking
somebody who's been burnt down like to the bone or
through the bones, but then maybe like an entire arm
will be just laying there on the floor next to them. Yeah.
It was identified as early as or the alleged phenomenon
by a doctor Trail who claimed he had recently discovered
(08:58):
a peculiar kind of oil in the human blood, which
is highly inflammable. This oil is chiefly observed in the
blood of persons who have been addicted to drinking oddent spirits.
It is probably that this discovery may tend to elucidate
the hitero explosion inexplicable phenomenon of the spontaneous combustion of
(09:18):
human bodies. So even back in the day, they were
seeing these instances that were very odd. Again, there are
certain hallmarks that we'll talk about that make people quite quizzical. Right,
it will be someone like they're burned in their rocking
chair and the chair is still there, but their their
bones were incinerated, right, which is weird because you've got
a wood chair, a wooden chair that is not affected
(09:40):
at all. Right, the room will be fine, the the
you know, the the chair, the bed will be fine.
There will be like a legrant arm that isn't burnt.
And for all. I mean, if if you were just
to open the door to all sorts of science fiction possibilities,
it looks like someone was like blasted with a sci
fi ray gun or a heat gun or something, because
(10:01):
it just like just cores right through the aliens. Again,
but we know it's it's not that visiting the elderly.
So the question arises, you know, what what could be
going on? And there are there are various theories, um
and and a number of these theories do relate to, uh,
to some of these phenomenon we were talking about, for instance,
(10:22):
methane um methane building up inside the intestines and then
ignited by enzymes. But what's the problem with that. The
problem is that, as you had said before, this is
largely the parts of the body that were largely affected,
or the skin and the bones, and not the internal organs.
So that would clue use into an external source of
(10:43):
the fire rather than internal. Yeah. And and again just
just to give you an idea of like what it
takes to incinerate a body, because most of the most
of the body is not flammable. I mean, that's that's
the thing. We're so much water, We're not pistachios. Yeah. Yeah,
there's not a lot in this the can that can
actually go up in flames. Uh. And if you even
(11:04):
in like a crematoria, the temperatures are generally like seven
thousand centigrade and that doesn't even destroy the bones. So
some of these other theories static electricity, the idea that
if you were walking around your carpeted home, I guess
we're just like if you didn't leave and you had
socks on you and you were just walking around in
circles and in circles and circles, you could eventually build
up enough of a static charge to incinerate your body,
(11:26):
which just seems soles. I mean, you don't need to
go out and like build a hat out of like
you know, dryer sheaves. It just seems a little bit silly. Yes, um.
And and then there's a sort of an extrapolation of
this by a guy named Larry Arnold, who is a
self proclaimed expert on the subject and author of a blaze,
and he claims that there's a new sub atomic particle
(11:46):
called the pyratron that has the power to ignite the body.
Oh yeah, but that of course that's none of that
is Is it all proven? Right? That's the problem with that.
I mean, it is kind of interesting. It kind of
leads into the idea, you know, the whole equals mc
square thing about matter and energy, and well, what if
some or all of the matter in our body were
transferred into into energy? Right? Of course, the problem with that,
(12:11):
and this is from Dr Stephen Novella, who's a Yale
neurologists and founder of the New England Skeptics Society. He
points out that the mass of a single person, if
entirely converted to energy, would be much more than a
few hydrogen bombs. So so even if there there was
some sort of situation with matter transferred into energy inside
the human body, it would have to be just a
(12:32):
minute amount of mass, like a very minimum amount. Well,
there's no process really that could kick start this in
the first place. I mean, there's not even a theory
for this. So it's just kind of a hey, maybe
it's this is particle. But if it were to happen
to your point would be that we are basically a
bunch a bunch of walking hydrogen bombs right ready to
(12:54):
go off, right if if there was some sort of
process to actually kick that into demotion. Right, And then
you also have to consider that kids playing with methane,
and when I say methane mean parts and lighters like
you would see so many more UH instances a spontaneous
human combustion among twelve year old kids. And and remember,
(13:15):
not everybody produces large quantities of methane. Remember our our
NASA UH one of our podcasts, we maybe it is
the wearwolf theory. We're talking about the ideal human body
to go into space, and NASA found that that. You
know that there are certain individuals that produce much less
methane and some individuals who produced no methane. Right, we
find the face of the whole methane building up in
your intestines theory, right, But there is one theory that
(13:37):
seems to hold true, at least in terms of explaining
how someone might burn the way that they do um
with their extremities intact and with the rest of the
room completely intact. You're talking about the whip theory, believe. Yeah,
this is one of the more interesting theories and definitely
more interesting than things like balls of lightning or or
aliens or aliens or psychic phenomena. And this is basically
(14:00):
the idea that the human body can, under certain circumstances,
be like a big fat candle. So yeah, I think
of a candles. You know, the wax ignites the wick
and keeps it burning right because it's got the fat,
and that fat continues to allow the candle to burn
very slowly. So essentially the human body could do the
same thing. Yeah, and there was there was actually BBC
(14:23):
sponsored an experiment in ninety eight, and it was pretty
great when I found It's like, normally I would not
be like, hey, there's a study from ninety eight and
be proud of it, but it was. It's a pretty
cool experiment they put together, and if you look it
up online, it's like still like there. I don't I
don't understand how some websites do their updates because they're
parts of the BBC website that have never changed, like
they're still this this ancient web design and it's pretty
(14:45):
awesome because you feel like you're actually going back in
time when you look at these. So anyway, this involved
this guy, Dr John Dehan of California Criminalistic Institute, and uh,
they did what anyone would do when testing out the
wick theory. They took a they used to pig in
a blanket, by which I don't mean a tasty hot
dog or vegan hot dog wrapped in some literal literally
(15:06):
a pig in a blank literally, it was a dead
pig and a blanket. Yeah, why did why did they
used to pick? Because I thought this really interesting. I
mean they obviously it's something that's much more ethical than
using human right, right, right. That was the number one
that they couldn't get the okay from the BBC to
burn any actual people. But also I believe it has
to do with like the the amount of fatah to human. Yeah, coomfortable.
(15:28):
You know the human that catches on fire and here's
a pig more or less. Um. So they wrapped this
dead pig in a blanket and then a small amount
of petrol was poured on gasoline and uh, after five
hours of continuous burning, they found that the bones were
in fact destroyed. And Dr Dehannon said, the sort of
damage here is exactly the same as that from supposed
(15:50):
spontaneous human combust. Okay. So so just like the candle,
like a tallow or candlewax, it allowed the burning to
happen in distant way over consistently slowly. But you know,
not in a way it's going to burn the rest
of the house down, Not in a way that's going
to necessarily gather a lot of attention. Yeah, it's just
it also explains why only part of the body, the
(16:12):
part that you're rich and fat, burns away, one of
the rest stays intact. Yeah all right, So what what
do all of these cases have in common? Well, they
all know each other, they did not, and they were
not all huge drinkers. Right that the special human oil
theory exactly exactly. Um. The victim is almost always completely consumed,
(16:33):
usually inside his or her home. Okay, so it usually
happens since someone's home. A sweet smoky smell usually accompanies
the incident. It's like like barbecue. Yes, I mean it's
a little distasteful, but yes, like barbecue. Um. And then
the extremities often stay in intact, which we've talked about.
So the head and torso maybe completely charred, but the hands, feet,
(16:55):
and legs are left unburned. And that's what you see
in on some of those iconic photos, you know, someone's
shoes with smoke coming out of them. Um. There are
no other signs of fire in the room other than
a greasy residue sometimes left on fronture and walls. Okay,
and not all spontaneous human combustion victims simply burst into flames,
some developed strange burns on their body which have no
(17:16):
obvious source, or they emanate smoke from their body when
no fire is actually present. Should be a little bit
weird to look down in your arm and see, you know,
smoke curling up right. Um. So that's what they all
share in common, and that is why it has been
such a interesting subject for a lot of people, because
that's very those are weird things, right. But I do
(17:38):
think that the wig theory in the pig in the
blanket experiments actually helped to support that. Uh. And it's
also key to note here that that that the throwing
them with this pig in the blanket idea is the
is the notion that it's probably not spontaneous. But the
spontaneous is just sort of I mean, it's kind of like, well,
(17:58):
we don't know what the causes, so must be magic
kind of a deal, where in reality, there are a
number of things in any given household that could potentially
set something upon. Right at issue here the heart of
them out it really is is it coming from an
external source or is it coming from an internal source?
And obviously is we've kind of discussed um, you know today,
it's not coming from inside. There's no pyrotron. Really, that's
(18:22):
igniting us. Um. Many of the cases have had victims
who were smoking, and a good amount of them have
been had been drinking as well, So it stands to
reason that they fell asleep while smoking, the embers fell
on them, ignited their clothes, and then poof, they become
a human candle. Um. So you know, that's not all
(18:45):
of them explained away in such a neat fashion, but
a good many of them share that sort of common right,
and the individual is elderly, as a number of cases are.
I mean, you confirm or infirm in some way. I mean,
you can easily you can more easily imagine that happening
where they they're smoking or whatever, they catch the thills
on fire and stop dropping roll was not necessarily is
(19:05):
easily achieved. Yeah, So I mean, you know, you can
you can see when you lay it out that way,
you can see that it's pretty obvious that it probably
is coming from an external source. And even in the
case of the man, the seventy six year old man
who had a fire in the next room but no
fire source where he was sitting and where he died,
it's very possible that he could have gotten up, stoked
the fire and somehow ignited a piece of his clothing
(19:28):
without even knowing sat back down. I mean, you know,
it's it's a little bit hard to explain any of
these away, but um, to me, it seems a little
bit more at least practical to to look at it
more as an external phenomenon. And I just keep coming
back to that, right, it's got to be some sort
of external thing. And in fact, we recently circulated in
(19:49):
the office something called an I A which is our
initial approach for when we try to tackle a subject.
It's like, Hey, I'm writing an article about such and such.
Here's what I'm thinking. Do you guys have any other tidbits? Yeah, yeah,
pile it on. And so I know I'm sharing the
secret sauce here of what we do. But um, but
I'm telling you because one of the things that went
out one of the I A s was Hey, what
(20:10):
were some of the craziest headlines of because we're gonna
do some sort of round up article about that. And
one of them that made the list or actually I
don't know if it's made the list, but was put
out there was woman's face ignites during UH standard procedure,
standard operating um procedure that she was having. I think
she was having maybe some moles removed or something. So
(20:32):
what happens basically because they're using so many instruments in
the operating room now that have you know, electricity that
they were you know, sometimes you know, something ignites. Unfortunately
was this woman's face. And um, it's pretty awful to
have to go into for something like that and come
out pretty burned. But again, here's another case where fire happens,
(20:53):
and you usually have to have a source for the
ignition right right like like like the boss said, so
here you go, there you can. Well, hey, speaking of
spontaneous combustion, I think I see the robot coming over
here with a smoking piece of listener mail. Hello Arnold.
All right, So here we hear from the Jim and
(21:14):
Jim rites and it says, I just finished your fire podcast.
So he's talking about the Pyromania podcast that came out
a couple of weeks ago. He says, I don't have
any feelings about fired that are beyond what I would
consider it the norm. My most frequent interaction was fired
with us as a boy scout, which Robert mentioned too,
there was something very alluring about it. It wasn't just
the flame itself, but our ability to master it through
the crep work in gathering materials, building the fire, lighting it,
(21:37):
and finally putting it out. It was always a goal
to build a fire without using newspapers or other fast starters.
We were even successful with non match techniques such as
steel matches. I've never tried tried the bow or other
pre match techniques, which, of course the once you see
in all the movies where they're the little bow, the
twine um, which I hear are very challenging. By the way,
(21:59):
we never pete on the fire. It really stinks up
the place. Um which, as we mentioned before, the alchemists
know the smell. We used to know the smell urine
as they were trying to turn into go after scouts.
I didn't have much direct contact with fire. A few
years ago my son tried scouting to one of the
first skills the boys learned his fire safety control. Would
build a few fires, and the sight, sounds, and smell
(22:20):
of a wooden camp fire brought back all kinds of memories. Um,
you didn't mention fire in Frankenstein. I only mentioned it
because I caught part of Young Frankenstein on cable this weekend,
and of course in the films, Frankenstein is a grade
of fire. Um. Yeah, I mean, I think that's one
of the really cool things about something like like bus Scouts. Um,
you know that he gets kids, even kids that are
(22:42):
um and maybe part of a more urban environment, gets
them out there with fire. Sure, playing with it, there's
a certain amount of playing with fire is inevitable, uh
in that situation, But you're also learning the basic control
of it and how to use it responsibly and indeed
some techniques just to start it beyond maryly A, Uh,
you know, throwing some fire on some ladder fluid. Indeed,
(23:03):
I'm sure that's exactly what I was trying to do
when I was burning ants with magnifying you Just if
if you've been in Scouts, then how many aunt lives
would have been saying to tell us? So, Hey, if
you have anything you would like to share with us,
be it your own history with fire, your own if
you if you have any personal experience with Spottany's human combustion,
(23:25):
do tell we would love to hear about that. Or
if we left out any of hair brained theories. You
can find us on Facebook um we are stuff to
Blow the Mind on there, and you can find us
on Twitter where our handle is blow the Mind, and
you can also send us an email at blow the
Mind at house to fook dot com. Be sure to
(23:47):
check out our new video podcast, Stuff from the Future.
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