A scary thought for a dark Autumn evening BBC News - 'First Irish case' of death by spontaneous combustion You're sat there watching the telly with a nice glass of whisky to keep you warm, suddenly you start to feel a little too warm and whooofff - you're toast.
This kind of weird S#*t just creeps me out. Now I'll never have another glass of whiskey in comfort. It'll take two or three! ound: Ahhh well as the Irish say . . . In Heaven there is no beer. That's why we drink it here. Maybe they should stick to beer far less combustible.
or strained sterno. [ame=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sterno]Sterno - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia[/ame]
There is nothing in the article to suggest whisky or anything similar. The court was told that no trace of an accelerant had been found and there had been nothing to suggest foul play. I was just trying to draw a mental image of a one of us relaxing alone in similar circumstances. Having looked up Spontaneous Combustion on wiki, it appears that the body is often near an open fireplace and there are no witnesses. [ame=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spontaneous_human_combustion]Spontaneous human combustion - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia[/ame] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Faherty_(suspected_combustion_death)
If he was old and fat and it was winter time, his dry skin could have acted as a wick and the fat as a fuel source.
Likely a log in the fire popped and sent an ember floating out to land on the guy... from there all it would take would be something flammable (probably his clothes - cotton wouldn't be identified in the police report) to start the fire from the ember. Let the fat fuel it from there, and keep him asleep until he's dead with previously-imbibed copious amounts of alcohol or sleeping pills.
Being 110% Irish, that's 55 proof, I frequently tend to leave scorch marks as I start to combust. That's were a really cold beer comes in right handy. I really need to drink much more beer when I am consuming HOT SPICY TexMex!
The guy was old so he's retired and since Ireland is broke the meager amount of state aid he's allowed means he can only afford potatoes. No biggie the irish love potatoes. Since his state aid isn't enough to pay the utilities he had to cook the potatoes in the fireplace. This poor bloke was miserable, broke and alone. In such a situation what good irish man wouldn't be pounding down some cheap irish whiskey? Knowing now that it was cheap irish whiskey we can definitely say he was chasing it with whatever beer he could put his hands on and his mouth around. That's a good irish man for you. Potatoes, cheap irish whiskey and beer all cause flatulence. The gas drift over to the fire in the fireplace and ignited. Being old it set his paper thin dry skin aflame which acted as a wick for the corpulent fat underneath. At this point if he had just stopped, dropped and rolled he would have been okay. However, so startled was he that in his haste to extinguish the flames he dowsed himself in whiskey instead of the more preferable beer, as any backyard BBQ'er would know, irish or otherwise. At this point he was fully and completely ablaze he bolted from his comfortable chair and tripped. Going down in smoke and flames he managed to knock himself out on the hearth of the fireplace. Thank God he never felt a thing and perished in front of his easy chair near the fireplace. No accelerants were found because they were either burned up or consumed by the irish fire investigators, You know how the irish are eh? Top that Baker Street boy! It is a horrible way to go however, of all the ways to die, burning to death has got to be the #1 most painful.
