Stuff to Literally Blow Your Mind

sports line he literally took his head off. And but the thing is generally you're not You're generally not starving or and uh and and then uh, sports people generally are not decapitated on the field hopefully. Yeah. So it's it's interesting to actually dive into the scientific world and look for examples where people's heads can literally explode, because people will use this like like, oh man, I've read that are iCal and nature and made my head explode, or you know, or I went to math class and

you know, my head totally exploded. So we'd we're seeking to answer the question can your brain your skull literally explode? Yeah?

And if so, how But I think I think we may need to go back in the time machine a bit too, Yeah, to look at a good instance of splattering of the brains, so to speak, because we felt we have evidence from around d a little place called Herculaneum near Mount Vesuvius, where where archaeologists have found these skulls from the victims of people who died when this is volcano erupted and the skulls like completely cracked open

like an egg that's been shattered brutal. Yeah. So they're thinking that now that they've got more evidence that it had to do with a pyroclastic flow, right, Yeah, And the pyroclastic flow is is pretty uh mind blowing. Uh. When a volcano erupts, all the stuff coming out the top is uh, of course, it's not just not merely smoke. It's it's ash, it's um, rock and mud. Yeah, it's all just pulverized by this rapid release of gas from

the inner earth. Okay, So all that stuff comes back down again, and it can it can end up forming to this thing called a pyroclastic flow, which is essentially a just mass of ash, gas, rock fragments all traveling at It speeds up to like a hundred and twenty five per hour, So just speeding along, and the temperatures in this thing are pretty amazing, like degrees fahrenheit. Yeah, yeah, yeah,

I've seen it. Seen it ranged from like seven fifty two to yeah, thousand, four seventy two degrees fahrenheit, which is pretty hot. Yeah. Okay, so let's set the stage. Ves erupts. Right, there's this column of gas, this roiling mixture, and if you're unlucky enough to live in Pompeii, you're probably gonna get buried in a bunch of ash, right, which is I think what we normally think about when we think about vesuvious. We think about the inhabitants of Pompeii.

But if you're in the little fishing village of Herculaneum, it's gonna be far worse. You're you may even be Let's stay down wind of that pyroclastic flow. Yeah, and again it's just like this wall of of what looks like smoke, and you know, this wall of just rolling ash, just just coming down the side of the of the hills, you know. Yeah, And so that you see that, you see them the volcano erupt Ten minutes later, you're you're trying to evacuate something, You're running down the street and

like you said, you've got this cloud mushrooming out. You add nikes degrees fahrenheit. I mean that what is that going to do to you? Well? Uh, the scientists believe that what happens is when it when it first hit you, Um, it's going to basically vaporize your soft tissues on the like on the extuse exterior of your body. But then the heat is it's also so intense that it like

cracks the enamel of your teeth and uh. And actually that they've discovered also the insides of the skull were kind of blackened, so the brains are essentially boiling in there just like in a split second. It's like it's like being it's like some of the from a sci fi novel or something where someone's like hit with a ray gun. It's like suddenly brains boiling and uh and what happens if something is suddenly boiling inside an enclosed space like the cranium? Yeah, that so thinking and it's

it seems so sci fi. Something that's just incinerating before your eyes and in the poor brain is boiling and just pops. And I think you had written a article about volcanic ash, and you actually had a good explanation for that. I think you likened it to an egg and water. Yeah. Yeah, it's boiling. And if you think about it as like a molten goo that your brain

is in, yeah, it's uh. Another way to think of it is if you've ever been been camping and you had like a hand of beans or something can't of soup and you're kind of like heating it up hobo style, you know, like, you know, like the stupidest thing you could possibly do would be to throw an entire can of soup into a fire, because what's gonna happen. It's gonna blow up, right, it's gonna blow up. You gotta

poke holes and that can of course. Right. So it's the it's like a similar thing occurring in a split second with these uh, these poor you know, fisherman's skulls. It's just suddenly heat hits them and whammo, top of the skull cracks, instant literal blowing of the mind. Correct, right there. And I think what's so cool about that

is that they actually tried to replicate these results. Well I shouldn't say that's what's so cool about I think it's cool that they went to the trouble of trying to find out exactly how this is because again, before the before they got this sort of recent information, everybody was under the assumption that people had died from suffocation from the gases and volcanic ash and everything else raining down upon them. So now they know it was really the heat that was the element that wiped out the

village and Pompeii. And you have a bunch of scientists basically in a lab taking animal and human bones and exposing them to certain degrees of heat and finally being able to replicate this degree of charred nous um, and and also looking at the schools as you had mentioned, and seeing that there are parts of the school missing,

and hey, here's our conclusion. That got up to uh to degrees so hot that it could just make your brain pop. Yeah, I believe the They believe it got up in her in herculaneum got up to around n degrees fahrenheg. Yeah, And it was a big I mean, this wasn't just a paraclastic flow. I mean it was that as well, but the paroclastic clouds so it hung around. So even if you were ensconced away in some building and you thought you were hiding from it, the heat

was eventually going to get to you anyway. No insulation of the time was going to save you from that. Yeah, yeah, I mean it's really horrific when you think about it. Yeah, But luckily, like I said, I think, I think it would have been over pretty quick, you know. Yeah, this is true. Like you said, I mean, it's I mean sort of instant vaporization. So I as far as ways to go, that's I think not too bad. Not having experienced it myself, I mean I wouldn't I wouldn't seek

it out. Now, what is the Another interesting aspect of the of the whole situation with Vesuvius was the posture of the bodies. Yeah. Yeah, they called the garden and Fugitives because they found a bunch of different people who, uh, they assumed were, um, we're suffocating to death because a lot of them had their hands up to their noses and an apostures if like they were choking or whatnot. And they found it to actually be something called a

cadaveric spasm. And this only happens with nuclear explosions and volcanic eruptions. So this is something that is instantaneous muscular stiffening. So it's an instantaneous death mask, if you will. And I mean it's it's pretty shocking if you think about it.

They actually this is kind of interesting too, that a lot of the researchers had looked at the different postures and they categorize them and some were called lifelike and somewhere called sleep like, and somewhere called hugilistic attitude, which I really like. Oh and this is the one where it kind of looks like they're boxing. Yeah. Yeah, it

looks like like as if they were. And the conclusion was is that they were sort of boxing at the elements, trying to get away from you know, the volcanic ash or something. Um, you know, man versus nature. Uh. But I just love that it's called pugilistic attitude. I'm gonna start saying that you have a really pugilistic attitude it um. I mean, it sounds kind of like almost kind of snobby on the part of the archeologist if they kind of like they're thinking, hey, look these you know, primitive

people from the past. They thought they could box away the you know, the the volcanic eruption or fight it off with their hands, and I don't know. Yeah, I mean, think about how long we've had access to Pompeii and what our thoughts when we were first discovering that. Um. Was it in the eighteen hundreds? Correct me if I'm wrong, But it seems like that's when UM when people became aware of it and really started to look at explanations.

So yeah, they're boxing off elements. I remember becoming aware of it through my father's National Geographic subscription because I just like they had all these like really gnarly um you know, illustrations of all the bodies and the skulls, you know, and all those weird poses and it's really fascinating. In fact, the PBS special I think it's called Secrets of the Dead is fascinating because it looks at all the different things they can find out now through science,

and particularly with herculaneum. That's that's somewhat new in the discoveries that they've found there. So it's cool stuff, you know. In in researching the possibility of one skull literally exploding, I ran across another interesting tidbit um, and this had to do with giraffes. I don't know if you happen to come across this one as well. But draft giraffe's hearts that the heart of a giraffe produces a very um high pressure to force the blood yeah, up to

the head. So um. I found the an instance where online where some people were asking, well, how come the when the giraffe like leans down to get you know, moves and leans its head down. Um, then you know, cranes its neck forward. How come the pressure doesn't make the giraffe's head explode. Come, Well, it's because the giraffe has this thing called a and I'm probably going to mispronounce this, but rete mirable, which is Latin for wonderful net.

And it's a cluster of arteries and veins that diverts blood flow and uh, and changes actually equalizes blood pressure so that when the animal lowers its head, it kind of serves as like a natural pressure relief system. Yeah, do you think they get dizzy? Nonetheless, I don't know. Like apparently it's the same thing that like it keeps dogs when dogs get really hot, keeps their their brains

from overheating. Uh. It helps regulate like where the blood is going into penguin to keep the penguin from getting to its extremities, you know, cooling cooling down blood too much and also helps like whales and other diving mammals when they're going down to different pressures, you know, higher pressure portions of the water. So very cool. Yeah, that way. I found that on the Happy Scientist Robert Krapp's website. So yeah, everybody needs some happy science. That's good stuff.

So let me ask you. Has your head ever exploded? Not literally, not literally, but there is something called exploding head syndrome. Okay, it sounds pretty severe. It does sound severe. Uh, and I actually have experienced that, okay, So that is something that you you're feeling side of your brain or

you perceive inside of your brain. So, I mean, I've been a couple of nights that I've woken up in the middle of night and thought, oh my god, I've just heard this gigantic, really loud, slamming sound in my in what I thought was my environment, and freaked out and got up and made sure that you know, the mafia wasn't coming from and I don't know why I thought it was the mafia, but um, you know, and then checked everything out and said, okay, that's fine, and

it's happened enough so that when I actually read about explaining exploding brain syndrome, I thought to myself, Oh, yeah, of course I've had that, No big deal. Um, So it sounds really dramatic, but at the end of the day, it's it's really just um, the person experiencing this sound, and there's no pain. It's just a sense of alarm and of course a surgeon adrenaline. Right. Yeah, I've seen like in different uh like different people experience that is

is more like a gunshot. Yeah, it's noise. Others it's like an explosion. Sometimes people apparently experience kind of a flash of light with it. Yes, yeah, and um it's best that can tell. It's thought to be uh about it's thought to be caused by delay in the reduction of activity and selected areas of the brainstem. Um, what do you think about my brainstem that it's it's not working, right, I guess it's making you wake up in the night

to imagine it sounds. But but when when I first found out about this one, I was like, oh my, like actually, like even when I first started reading about it, um, you know, because initially, like exploding head syndrome that sounds insane, and then you read a little about it, like an initial um explanations of it online are kind of like people are waking up in the night holding you know, you could just picture people waking up clutching their head

like screaming and thinking that their heads about to explode. Like that was the vision. You know, It's like totally like scanners. That was what I was thinking. So when you, like when I asked you, you mentioned it this morning, you're just very nonchalant, like, yeah, I think I've had exploding head syndrome. I was like, whoa, how could you you just think you have it? Or or how could you have not realized you had it before? But it's uh um, Exploding head syndrome more e h S as

they call it, apparently is not really that severe. Like they're right right, like if you experience it, don't go to your doctor and ask for you know, tell me you need medication because he's just gonna laugh at you. Well he's probably not gonna laugh at you, but yeah, yeah, or you might get some medication that you don't necessarily need.

It depends. We have a non judgment zone if you if you need to do that, it's fine, but but yeah, generally you don't need to and that that's kind of I think why my reaction was so boss a about it because I was like, well, yeah, so I heard this slaming sound in my in my head and sometimes that happens every once in a while. But yeah, no mafia people in my living room. So allways, well, yeah, and I believe it. It It tends to occur like in the early phases of sleep, right when you're sort of

you're not really completely awake, can you not really sleep yet? Yeah. I think it's before you take the deep dive into sleep, and then sometimes it occurs after the deep dive. So it's and that's the twilight stage, I think they call it. So note to myself, I need to need to get my brain stem worked on. Well, I think there's a there's a kid you can get online where it's just just like self repair. Yeah. Yeah. This presentation is brought

to you by Intel sponsors of Tomorrow so um. In researching this, we also ran across some some stories that are completely not true about exploding heads. Um, but kind of wonderful because I think we both got excited. Yeah, Like there was one, um about the chess player whose head exploded. Yeah, and we but I think we both had the same experience where we ran across the article and then we're like, oh my goodness, gold this is we're totally going to talk about this one. And then

we we saw the source Weekly World. Yeah. Yeah, but it started out kind of strong, right, I mean, it's still sort of impossible, but still it starts out kind of strong. And then as it goes on, um, you start thinking, I don't know about that. It just seems like it's just not possible. And then at the very end of the story it says, you know, this is this is more common than you think it is. And here are some signs that you may be in dangerer of your head exploding, which is like my favorite thing

about this article. Um, and I won't read all of them, but there's here's one which was does your head sometimes ache when you think too hard? Yeah? Okay, well you could your your brain might explode. Yeah. Oh and here's another one. Do you tend to analyze yourself too much? Oh? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, I mean that there there are many more, like if you spend a lot of time balancing your checkbook. Yeah,

it's good stuff. But I think the I think the theory behind that that they tried to posit in the story was that there was too much electrical activity happening in the brain. It was like an overload of the circuitry. All right, Now, how about the trumpet guy, because that

was another story. Oh yeah, there's a trumpet player. Okay, this was in the National Enquiry, so obviously, like you see that, you okay, this is right next to that boy um Hugo Slari was playing the Impossible Dream on trumpet when his head swelled and burst quote like a balloon.

Ok Yeah. And what I love about this story is that they've just got um, they've got all these people talking about the event, all these onlookers, and they have these descriptions about how there was a blonde in the front row and she got brains in her blonde hair, and it's it's it's pretty good stuff. Yeah, though I can't imagine, like even like how would the brain explode from playing Like it's just I don't buy it as as as easily as I buy the chess player. I

don't know it was the Impossible Dream. I've never played on trumpet, like and and when, why am the impossible dream? Like I'm thinking like fly to the Bumblebees would probably do it. I don't know. I think it's just something from the Man of La Mancha. It is, you know, it's I'm gonna have to listen to it again. But that was a good one, I thought. And then there's this this idea too that if you were somehow flung out into space you would explode. Yeah, this one is

one you can. I believe we mentioned the the Sean Connery sci fi movie Outland in like the last podcast or the one before it, But that was the movie where the guys are suddenly outside the spaceship and oh their head swells up and burst like a big bloody balloon. Yeah. Yeah, And that's not necessarily going to happen. In fact, it's even not necessary. It's literally not going to spend Yeah, and and and you can like like NASA is pretty open about this, like they really want everybody to know

that you're not gonna explode. Um like like basically you're not even necessarily going to be injured. Um, I mean you might get kind of flight like for like a brief exposure to the void kind of like what happens And I think two thousand one yea and yeah, yeah, and I think they ripped it off in various other films um later on, like I think they do the

same thing and like Firefly and of then Horizon. But um, but yeah, like if you exhale all the all the air, you know, and you don't have like you're not holding your breath like an idiot, then you're you know, you're not going to be injured in that regard. Um, you might get some sort of like mild like you know, sort of like the Bin's kind of situation. You might have some like mild even like non painful and reversible

swelling of the skin. But but the one thing they really stress is that like your your skin is like a really good system, Like it's it's really great at containing you know, it's a barrier. It's a it's a barrier, and it's not you know, it's not ideal for space walking.

You shouldn't you know, depend on it entirely. No, you could get some burned pretty badly, right, But when push comes to shove, and especially when the shove is out of a space airlock, you know you're probably gonna be okay for you know, a very brief period of time before any other you know causes can can jump in there and kill you. Yeah. I think a minute or two and then the loss of oxygen and you're out. It's a very uh unhistoryonic sort of death that you

would experience. There would be no explosions. Yeah, yeah, So just in case that was something you were worried about, you know, don't worry. You would not explode in space. Yeah. If anybody out there was on the fence about getting that Virgin Galactic ticket, yeah, feel feel free to go ahead, go and buy it. Push yeah, push purchase you could, or well, I guess you or you can also just you can reserve it. What is it I think to reserve two hundred thousand for the ticket? Oh yeah, I don't.

I didn't even look at my paperwork. I just signed it, take it on my bank account. So I guess that's about it. For exploding heads, that's not literally it isn't it might be. It might literally be it unless anybody out there has uh something we've overlooked or you know, indeed, have any stories about their own head seeming to explode

in the night due to large and loud noises. And you can also check out more on the how stuff works dot com website where we have I this is where I actually wrote an article on how is a volcanic ash made? Which goes into pyroclastic flow and uh and and all that and the egg analogy, yeah, the egg analogy in other ways, that volcanic ash can really mess with human life and and just you know, getting

about town. And then we also have an article about the whole going out into space without a space suit thing. Marshall Brain, the site founder, wrote one called what if an astronaut went on a space walk without a space suit? What if? Yeah, no explosions in there, but a lot of cool data about the about how it would affect your body. All right, Well, thanks for listening. You can find those articles and many more every day on how stuff works dot com. The house stuff Works dot com

iPhone app is coming soon. Get access to our content in a new way, articles, videos, and more all on the go. Check out the latest podcast and blog post and see what we're saying on Facebook and Twitter. Coming soon to iTunes