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Kalvyn Adams

Amanda Bucher

EDGE English III

May 08, 2019

Spontaneous Human Combustion

By Kalvyn Adams

It’s a mild breezy evening in New York, September 12th, 2023. The lights are starting to

shine through the streets of the restless city. The low cloud cover pushes through the road

creating the murky water that civilians trudge through at Times Square. A man in a heavy black

jacket walks through the square, suddenly coming to a halt and keeling over on the concrete.

Worried looks are passed through bystanders as the body of the man convulses. In the few

seconds that the horror unfolds, the surrounding area begins to seer with sweltering heat, the

body of the man is ripped into droplets of gore everywhere, and the closest civilians are

incinerated in the blast. Another case of Spontaneous Human Combustion has been logged in the

history of terrorism and the media continues to cover these events in shock and awe at the

attacks. Now this situation, even in the near future, because the technology behind this kind of

gruesome event out of reach and current day society would prevent as much of this scenario as

possible. The question under investigation for this literature review has a scope in three different

fields. The first being a heavy physics and energy transformation level of understanding, the

review goes into the transfer of energy, deconstructing molecules, and adverse effects of a

scenario close to Spontaneous Human Combust (which will be stated as SHC from now on.) The

third scope is a mild depth of basic human psychology, with more in-depth research on the

development of PTSD. And the final scope is a minimal understanding of sociology and
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comparisons to events similar to SHC in a public area. These three areas are covered in the idea

of SHC when an individual looks at the possibility of SHC and the impacts of it, and that is the

goal of research at present in this paper. The specific goal: researching the scientific and

sociological impacts of SHC. Forewarning - This topic has minimal direct research, and most

research used in this paper is pieced together. There is plenty of room for error, argument, and

improvement. This topic also doesn’t have a major impact on today’s society, and merely covers

the theoretical idea of SHC.

Starting with the first major topic, the question of how scientifically possible and accurate

is SHC comes to mind. Mark and Watson (2005) quickly debunk the possibility of SHC being a

common or even possible scientific occurrence in their article “How Spontaneous Human

Combustion Works.” stating “Spontaneous combustion occurs when an object bursts into flames

from a chemical reaction within, apparently without being ignited by an external heat source...

But as of August 2018, there's no scientific evidence that proves the existence of this particle —

or spontaneous human combustion itself.” (Mark and Watson, 2005, p. 3) There are is not a

single confirmed case of SHC in the world and plenty of scientific explanations for similar cases

that could’ve been SHC: “A possible explanation is the wick effect. When lit by a cigarette,

smoldering ember or other heat sources, the human body acts much like an inside-out candle. A

candle is composed of a wick on the inside surrounded by a wax made of flammable fatty acids.

The wax ignites the wick and keeps it burning. In the human body, the body fat acts as the

flammable substance, and the victim's clothing or hair acts as the wick. As the fat melts from the

heat, it soaks into the clothing and acts as a wax-like substance to keep the wick burning slowly.

Scientists say this would explain why victims' bodies are destroyed yet their surroundings are

barely burned.” (Mark and Watson, 2005, p. 3) This provides a good basis that conventional
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ideas of burning aren’t going to achieve SHC, at least not in the scenario asked of in this

literature view. This brings up several other points of research and the conglomeration of science

that I cooked up to hypothesize a possible scenario. This next section is largely up for debate but

the idea is still present. First things to be defined in a scenario where we rip apart molecules in a

possible form of combustion is what is the most common molecule in the human body. This

happens to be the obvious answer, water according to Ernest Z. (2016) the human body contains

2x10^25 molecules and almost 99% percent water (in biological terms the human body is

actually about 65% water, but scientifically, the body is made of 2/3 hydrogen and 1/4 oxygen,

making the percentage of possible water molecules 11/12 of the body with a small 1/10 going to

carbon and the remainder to the rest of the molecules in the body.) With a good average of 99%

water molecules (not actually the biological form of water in this case) a scientific equation for

ripping apart molecules of water will cover about 97% ± 1% of the energy needed. This equates

to around 8,634 kJ of energy needed to rip apart all the moles of water in the body. This can be

verified with a little more research as 8,634 kJ of energy is somewhere around the amount of

energy an average Australian male will consume. (Hooft, 2016) This is an odd but useful fact as

it helps confirm how much energy may be required to keep the human body together, and thus

how much it takes for it to fall apart. Reflecting on these math models, there is certainly room for

error but the general energy requirement fits the bill and thus creates a possible scenario and can

be backed with the semi-connected research from Bernard Brown (1979) that covers what the

kilojoule looks like when boiling water. Scientific proofs from this paper show that “4.18 kJ =

1.0 kcal” and “The kilocalorie, I knew, was the energy needed to raise the temperature of 1 kg of

water by l°C.” (Brown, 1979, p. 1) If we divide our total energy of 8,634 kJ by 4.18 and divide

that by 34.5 (the amount of kg of water in an average human body) we can see that with 8,634 kJ
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we can raise the temperature of the water in a human body by 59.87 C0 which equates to 139.7

F0 adding that to the average temperature of the body (98.6 F0) we reach 238.3 F0, which is

higher than the boiling point of water (212 F0). This means that every molecule of water in the

body is boiling in the subject.

With the science requirements, other than getting the energy over a certain distance, out

of the way the first of the psychological and sociological question come to mind. The grander

question being, what is the possible mental damage a bystander can undertake if they are not

incinerated. This literature takes a look through the development of PTSD and examples of the

development of PTSD from suicide-bombing scenarios. In a case study by Dr.Dolberg at World J

Biot Psychiatry (2010) 129 suicide bombing survivors were studied for two different forms of

PTSD at two different intervals. At first assessment (short term) 15.5% (20 survivors) showed

signs of full-blown PTSD and 42%(54 survivors) showed signs of sub-clinical PTSD. the other

42.5% of the survivors showed no signs of PTSD. Two years later (long term) only 54 of the 129

survivors could be found. Only 19 (35%) of them had persistent PTSD, but none of the sub-

clinical PTSD survivors showed any signs of PTSD. Even with the small group of subjects, this

research provides some insightful data about a general percentage of people that could be

expected to have two different forms of PTSD from an SHC scenario. According to the NHIM

(National Institute of Mental Health), certain symptoms of PTSD can include flashbacks, bad

dreams, frightnening thoughts, avoiding certain areas of signifigance, being tense and on edge,

distorted feelings like guilt or blame, trouble remembering key features of the event, and

negative thoughts about oneself or the world. The cases of PTSD, if they are persistent, can

become a chronic mental disorder, but only about 20% of people experiencing a harrowing event

will develop a chronic form of PTSD. (Dolberg, 2010) There are a lot of factors that go into,
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these are called risk factors and resilience factors. (NHIM, no date) Risk factors can include

childhood trauma, seeing another person hurt, having little to no social support after the event,

and having a history of mental issues. Resilience factors can be attributed to seeking out support

from other people, such as friends and family, finding a support group, and having a positive

coping strategy. This can provide a small, and possibly not very accurate, insight into how

different demographics of people and cities will have different levels of chronic PTSD. A higher

GDP per capita and the wealthier city will grant citizens higher access to therapy and trauma

groups and basically easier access to support after a traumatizing event. Lower wealth cities and

towns will generally have less support for their citizens, just due to access to money, and living

conditions and health access will be less, this can lead to more risk factors like childhood abuse,

trauma, head injuries that aren’t treated correctly, it just generally seems like a lower wealth

town or city that experiences a traumatic event will have a lot more risk for chronic PTSD in its

citizens, but this is totally subjective and extremely open to disagreement. In the scenario this

paper will review, the setting is New York City, Times Square, a fairly wealthy, yet heavily

populated, city in New York. This can give a lot of insight into the possible outcome of people to

develop chronic PTSD. At any given moment there are around 230 people in Times Square, most

of these people live with GDP per capita of $64,000, 28% higher than the the US GDP per

capita. Comparing the percentages of people to develop chronic and sub-clinical PTSD from

Dr.Dolberg we can generalize that less than or equal to 35 people will generate chronic PTSD,

and 95 of the bystanders will develop sub-clinical PTSD.

Now that we have the two pieces of individual action our scenario of SHC in Times

Square, we can evaluate the sociological impact of the event, from looking at how support might

be created for the survivors, to news coverage and efforts to find and stop this seemingly
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terroristic attack. In this context, the New York Scenario, we will compare the community of

New York City, the level of development (news coverage, medical access, disaster recovery

budget, etc.) and the importance of the event to the city of New York. All of the following

answers are purely theoretical based off of previous events and research in New York City. In

the recorded history of New York there has been a total of 13 bombings from 1914 to the present

day. There is also the attack of September 11, 2001, on the Twin Towers of the World Trade

Center. The most destructive bombing in New York was back in 1920, when a bomb went off on

the financial street of New York, “Wall Street”, killing 38 people and injuring 143 others. It’s

safe to say that New York has been through several bombings and one of the worst terrorist

attacks in history, yet it is still one of the most productive and thriving cities in the US. The

recovery factor of New York is fairly high, and from the media coverage that we recieve from

day to day, we can assume that the public media attention will be quite high, especially since it is

a new form of terrorism (in this scenario) in the heart of New York. The emergency response

time in New York City averages at 3-4 minutes from dispatch to arrival, and the budget for

DHSES in the state of New York (DHSES being the office of counter-terrorism, office of

emergency responses, office of logistics, stockpile, and state preparedness training center, office

of recovery programs, and office of administration, finance, legal, and public information.) is

$1.5 billion dollars, meaning they have a large adequate budget for an emergency, terroristic, and

public media coverage of events that transpire in the state of New York. Specifically viewing the

number of mental help institutes and therapy businesses in New York, government and private

combined, there are a total of 12 just in the City of New York, and 42 or more in total from a

quick glimpse at The OMH (Office of Mental Health) website and a google maps search in the

state of New York. With all this displayed we can generally confirm two things:
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A.) The response of the city to the SHC scenario and the media coverage will be

substantial and highly impactful, all of the injured will be well taken care of, there will be a

heavy focus on the cause and the who behind the event, And there will be a ton of support from

within the State of New York and across the country.

B.) The survivors of the attack will have easy and high-level access to mental and

medical help, even some of the poorer family members will be supported at an extremely

positive level after the attack.

The recovery of any terroristic attack in New York is very well handled due to their economy

and how well they care for their residents.

In a very mild retrospective perspective, this scenario, as unlikely and unnatural as it may

seem the SHC scenario would be handled extremely well by the city of New York, and is

probably not super-ultra unrealistic. Using the inverse square law, and proving that you can

transfer energy over a large distance with just a laser (Schmidt, 2013) means the total starting

energy output, is microscopically higher than the intended ending energy output. This is to say,

without a doubt, that this kind of scenario should never be looked at in a positive way, but the

literature under review has proven that this scenario is possible, and can be handled well by the

city of New York. This goes to say as a final reminder, all research is entirely up to debate and

unrealistic, but that’s what this paper is for, to get the conversation going.

Annotated Bibliography:

https://docs.google.com/document/d/17GVbqxQs8lzqkzJ547tRpaoA0S9Qx3jkizFmhoJ-

jPs/edit?usp=sharing