Spontaneous Human Combustion and Treblinka? Really?

Mary Q Contrary wrote:

Monster wrote:

Mary Q Contrary wrote:When somebody says that human beings don't easily burn, and I correct him, why does Matthew Ellard object?

The stuff you said is something that I've never heard before. I've read about experiments where a guy tries to burn a human body. The bodies simply didn't burn easily. The experimenter had to keep adding fuel to the body to keep it burning. So, I don't think you're correct. Unfortunately, it's taking a long time to find relevant articles via google about the combustability of the human body. Most links are for cremation or spontaneous human combustion.

I always believed that human beings were difficult to set on fire myself. Everything I have read about cremating bodies makes it sound like it requires an external fuel source that generates temperatures up to 1800 F for several hours to reduce one body to a skeleton. The fact that bodies are often recovered from burning structures and that murderers who try to eliminate evidence by burning their victims bodies often fail also caused me to believe we don't easily catch fire. Studying Hindu funerary practices leads me to the same conclusion. There was an article in New Scientist a few years ago specifically about burning human remains which supports everything I've read in any book or article about forensic fire investigations;, i.e., humans don't easily burn. Considering just the water content of our bodies, common sense tells me that humans don't easily burn.

So science tells us people don't easily burn. But historians have proven conclusively that two or three thousand bodies can be stacked on a pile, outdoors, in the middle of winter, branches and twigs doused with a flammable susbstance can be placed underneath, ignited, and within a few hours a roaring bonfire will reduces all the bodies to nothing except ash and a few bones.

That sure doesn't sound like we're too difficult to burn.