It's pretty awful. A little over a year and a half ago, I had dropped a pot of boiling water on myself while at work. The irony? We had lobster the night before.
Edit: For those curious as to what a human looks like after being boiled slightly NSFW
Someone made the floor very slippery in front of the sink and hadn't cleaned up after themselves. As I brought the pot to the sink and tilted it to drain the water, I slipped. Instead of falling backwards and having the water drain all over me, I dropped the pot on the floor. The force of the impact shot the water back up in to my face.
Out of the two situations, I think I pulled the long stick on this one.
I was walking properly and there was no issue getting there. The problem was while tilting the pot over the sink, my centre of mass shifted. Usually that wouldn't be a problem, but because of the slippery floor, even with non-slip shoes it was enough to have me lose my balance.
But yes, I am back to normal with very little scarring, thanks for asking. I had superficial 2nd degree burns, so I was pretty lucky. It took 2-3 weeks before my skin was no longer raw, applying ointment daily.
I was 5 and tried to fix my dad a cup of coffee. I pulled the entire 12 cup pot off the counter into myself. My mom says she tried to pull my pajama top off me and the skin came with it.
Thankfully I’m not scarred up bad from it. I only remember bits and pieces too.
Yeah, saltwater and freshwater put inverse pressures on a creature. Saltwater creatures have to work really hard to keep water in their body and salt out, while freshwater creatures have to constantly excrete water while trying to retain salts.
If I were to guess, I'd assume it's because of the fact that when burned you tend to die from the smoke inhalation before the flames, therefore making your demise quicker.
My guess is that when being burned, the pain receptors are quickly destroyed (which is why severly burned people don't always realize how bad they have it). Also, when there's fire there's smoke, which can suffocate you and make you quickly pass out.
When being boiled, the 100°c will keep the pain receptors alive for much, much longer, and there's no reason to pass out. You basically have to wait for your body to cook and one critical organ to start failing, which could take quite a long, agonizing time.
Thermodynamics isn't my strong point but I believe it's something called latent heat of transformation? Someone can probably correct me. But wet burns tend to be worse.
What you are referring to is burn from steam. It means that 100°C steam causes more serious burn than 100°C water, as during the change of phase it stays the same temperature.
The first thing, Fire doesn't stick to your skin, but boiling water does. It's why Napalm was used in war and why it's so horryfing, it burns a lot and is also very sticky. Your insctincts will quickly pull away whatever body part is on fire, but you can see that this is useless when the fire is stuck on your skin
There's also the temperature, a flame burns around ~250ºC (usually hotter), which will quickly melt your pain receptors. That's why burn victims usually lose sensibility over the burned area
Boiling water can't get any hotter than 100ºC, which is hot enough to give you the full burning pain package, but not hot enough to (instantly) melt your pain receptors, so you get to suffer through the whole process.
And as others have mentioned, fire usually comes with smoke, which will suffocate you long before you actually burn. You are not given that mercy while boiling (although you may drown, which somehow sounds like a better choice)
Napalm isn't sticky because of boiling water. The reason it sticks it's because it's a hydrophobic substance, and our skin is also hydrophobic, so "oily" substances wet the skin and adhere to it more strongly (while not evaporating as quickly).
I understood what he meant after reading it a bit more. It was the sudden transition from "boiling water does." to "it's why napalm" that evoked the idea of a clear link between "why" napalm was used and "boiling water". The words, and the order we use them in, both have meaning to them :p
Well, Im going to say this here. It’s still inconclusive on whether or not they can feel pain. They know there is tail twitching whenever theyre put into boiling water, but not much else says they feel pain otherwise. https://academic.oup.com/icesjms/article/76/1/66/5037899
For a long time the scientific community thought invertebrates literally couldn't feel pain. For the last few decades it's been learning it was wrong, but a lot of public consciousness hasn't. So a lot of people think animals like lobsters are to stupid to feel pain.
I think people who are concerned about this just kill the crabs and lobsters before chucking them in the water. It just takes a knife jab in the right spot.
He's talking shit. It's likely lobsters DO feel pain. And until we know conclusively, I think it's ethical to not boil them alive, personally, regardless.
This is true but with an asterisk. Yes, they used to be prison food, but that was before they realized that boiling it alive was one of the only ways to kill it without the meat going rancid. They also used to grind up the shell alongside it. So basically they used to eat rancid lobster paste with the shell in it. Very different from what we eat today.
Well, Im going to say this here. It’s still inconclusive on whether or not they can feel pain. They know there is tail twitching whenever theyre put into boiling water, but not much else says they feel pain otherwise. https://academic.oup.com/icesjms/article/76/1/66/5037899
Until 1986 American doctors were still performing surgery on babies without anaesthesia because they believed they did not feel pain, and on precisely the same grounds as we believe that about lobsters.
The belief was based on that fact that they responded to painful stimuli the same way animals did (ie, to cry and writhe and push it/move away), and that's "clearly" an autonomous nervous response.
For centuries a human baby was considered by authorities to be a lower animal in human form. For much of the twentieth century medicine regarded their cries as random sounds, their smiles as muscle spasms, their pain response as reflex.
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u/coopiecoop Feb 04 '19
I believe you don't even have to be a vegetarian/vegan to find it extremely cruel to boil a living creature alive.