Is it at all possible for a human to spontaneously combust? I know there several theories such as the wick effect and static electricity which try to prove that SHC does not exist. Are there conditions in which the body is actually capable of combusting?

I have heard a theory that says that a SHC is caused when a spark or flame gets near a persom on Oxygen.BUT, it doesn't explain how the rest of the house did not burn or how that the only items that had any charring were the items that the victim touched.

Also there is usually isn't some one around to clarify(There are a few casaes exempt from this, but cause of death is something else). But I'm not sure if there is a certain perfect condition for SHC to occur.

spontaneous human combustion or human global warming gone way too far

It's bunk.

http://www.google.com/cse?cx=006450987733407521261%3Aen...combustion&sa=Search

I would like to see the Mythbusters take this one on just to put it to rest. I remain skeptical and I think that these rare instances are the result of the perfect conditions to create a flash burn that runs so fast and hot it limits its damage to a localized area. As for how they actually ignite...people still smoke...houses still have faulty wiring...and so on.

What I don't get is how a human would naturally fuel a fire. flesh and skin probably have too much water in it to easily ignite.

I bet if you built a small glass box/"cage" where you could stick your arm in it, fill it with oxygen, then have some sort of ignition-source up next to your arm, it's not going to be "combustion". The hairs might singe a little faster, you'll still get blisters from the direct flame...but your arm is not going to go ka-boom!

Yeah I am with ya...I am thinking that the perfect conditions would be something like a kiln. You know, a chair, foam cushion, old wood, old cloth and so on. It would have to be really hot though to burn a human body to ash.

This is exactly why the topic is interesting: there is enough water in the human body, and the remainder of the body are biomolecules that aren't known for spontaneous combustion, such that it would seem impossible for SHC to occur, YET, there remains a number of witnessed reports of people that defy explaination and seemingly... do.

i learned about this in school, our skin and blood holds to much water for us to turn into ash imeditly

Personally, I think there's something unexplainable there.

Most people when they hear about it say "well, that's what smoking in bed gets ya" and dismiss it out of hand.

Those who delve a bit deeper (you know, investigate so as to make an informed decision) wind up finding out a large percentage of SHC victims are non-smokers and do not drink to excess.

In case studies of the wick effect, the process takes an hour or more to replicate the effects upon the body. Yet there are SHC cases where the process happened within 15 seconds to a minute. No wick effect test has ever replicated the peculiar localized fire damage, either.

Then there are the testimonies of the survivors. If they don't convince you, then nothing will.

So yeah, there's something rotten in Denmark. Fortunately it is so rare that your chances of being struck by lightning are much more likely.

We can't turn to ash immediatly huh? I seem to recall silhouettes of people being left on walls from being vaporized in nagasaki and Hiroshima... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GYevZoMCC7A

[quote]YET, there remains a number of witnessed reports[/quote]

No, there isn't a single one.

[quote]We can't turn to ash immediatly huh? I seem to recall silhouettes of people being left on walls from being vaporized in nagasaki and Hiroshima..[/quote]

Yes. Which is proof that they DIDN'T vaporize instantly.

Or even quickly. Bodies were found associated with such images. Not surprisingly, they were quickly cleaned up.

Instead of getting faulty information from YouTube, you might want to read witness accounts of the bombing in the book "Hiroshima," a book that was required reading many years ago when I was in high school.

I've seen stories on this before.. I'm going to have to do a bit of research before I stick my neck out, but it seems to me it has been documented... I'll get back to ya'all on that!


Hideeho!

Here - I'll save you the trouble. CSICOP has done many extensive investigations into both SHC, and into the people who promote it by distorting and outright inventing events that never happened:

http://www.google.com/cse?cx=006450987733407521261%3Aen4nuq_uphu&q=spontaneous+human+combustion&sa=Search

Regarding Hiroshma; read the book MunchkinPuncher suggests.

(I read the entire string so I added this in case it helps.)

Spontanious Human Cumbustion, here is a quote I found at the '1998 Skeptical Inquirer'.

"Another theory, the multiple wick effect theory, predicts that only body parts covered by clothing will burn, whereas body parts not covered by clothing will remain intact (Pescod 1996). Items of clothing act as multiple wicks and support burning over a long time because the body fat in subcutaneous layers changes into a liquid form. Otto Prokop, Germany's major authority in forensic medicine for more than thirty years, wrote: "The liquefied [body] fat of the subcutaneous layer can soak into the clothing, causing it to act like a wick which maintains the fire. Only this mechanism can explain the most severe combustions which are observed in persons who, for example, fall asleep whilst smoking" (Prokop 1960). Ignition, in that case, always starts with the clothing (Masuth 1978). Furthermore, 40 percent of all seventy-five people who died by fire in closed rooms between 1964 and 1973 in Cologne had a blood alcohol level of more than one part per thousand (Masuth 1978), and 54 percent of all eighty-seven fire victims who died in Oslo had a blood alcohol level of more than one part per thousand (Teige 1977). These observations support that many people who die in fire accidents are under the influence of alcohol, which explains why (1) people fall asleep while smoking and (2) why they do not wake up immediately after the fire starts. Furthermore, elderly people often cannot move fast enough to extinguish the fire."

Whether it's true or not, I don't know but it's the explanation I like best.

I am sorry, but if you can make water vaporize instantly, you can make a human vaporize instantly. It just has to have enough heat to do it. There were no bodies below ground zero because the did infact vaporise. but the flash was not long enough to generate that kind of heat very far out.

“Spontaneous human combustion” doesn’t exist. Notice how there are very few well-documented cases of it ever happening, over the last fifty years or so?

It’s what an expert scientist or researcher would call “drawing a target around where the darts landed”. The people who believe in SHC cling to some pretty fantastic-looking pictures of house fires and decide that fantastic effects must have fantastic causes.

I don’t believe in SHC, but I suppose it could be possible. There just isn’t any explanation for its cause yet.