How quick would one die after falling in lava?

[Cheb]

How quick would one die after falling in lava?

Factors speeding up the process:
-- the heat radiation is immense, and human body is an almost perfect blackbody in the IR range

Factors slowing down the process:
-- at such high temperatures, water evaporates instantly creating a sheath of vapor with very good insulating properties and thus slowing the heat transfer. Examples: 1. People plunging their wet finger into molten lead or steel(!) momentarily and pulling it out intact. 2. Water drops will dance on a frying pan if it is hot enough, while evaporating instantly on a less hot frying pan. 3 People walking across hot coals (it's presumably sweat that protects them).
-- lava is rock, with density >2, so one would be only half submerged at best

Does anyone have more insight?
As I understand it now, a human in lava will die slowly and painfully, melting layer after layer, until a vital melts or the heat stroke comes from the IR radiation.
If it is Ranma who falls in lava, his death would be so much horrible and prolonged, due to his toughness.

[Spokavriel]

Most people mercifully will pass out from the pain long before they are actually dead.

Edit: Ranma might actually be able to walk out given the Soul of Ice.

[PCHeintz72]

Most people mercifully will pass out from the pain long before they are actually dead.

Edit: Ranma might actually be able to walk out given the Soul of Ice.

There is also the phoenix pill... I've seen some fanfics use this as an excuse to give Ranma insane heat resistance.

[Spokavriel]

Especially when they add in the fact pressure points wear off over time. Having Ranma walk out of the fire of exploding gas stations and worse.

[Cheb]

mercifully will pass out from the pain

Unfortunately, if they see it coming, they could get such an adrenaline rush that the pain will get blocked or dulled enough not to die from it

add in the fact pressure points wear off over time.

Well, maybe the phoenix pill does wear off too? We can only guess.

In canon, Ranma avoided serious injury after touching hot surfaces (and even lava once, AFAIR) by breaking contact with it.
But if one does fall in... lava is sticky. Especially if it is liquid enough. Getting out quickly is impossible, like getting out of mud. So a prolonged contact is forced. Then, even if one gets out, they are still covered in lava, so DamageOverTime sticks.

My goal was to crank up the horror factor, mentioning in passing that the scenes in movies where one falls in lava and drowns without a trace are in fact "gory discretion shots". In reality, one would stay on surface, screaming thrashing and roasting alive. Bonus point for the quickly solidifying rock layer falling off in chunks, revealing the disfigured bleeding ruin below, for arms turned into charred stumps while the fingers burn away instantly due to being thin - stuff like that. After that, they just stay on the surface - crackling, smoking heavily and charring slowly into a more unrecognizable mess.
I want a description, made in a conversational form, that would leave most readers slightly green around the gills.
I'm trying my best.

Any good ideas how to improve this bloody description?

[Spokavriel]

In a way you could be right but then again many calderas have quite gaseous and fluid stone so it would really depend on conditions at the moment. It is quite possible for the Lava to be too full of gas bubbles at the moment to support weight even if it is cool enough that you'd think it would float someone. There are allot of factors to take into account.

[Konsaki]

http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2011/ ... into-lava/
http://youtu.be/kq7DDk8eLs8 (video of bio matter falling into lava)

[Cheb]

So its not 2x but even 3x density of water? Thank you! A very useful link.
It's even more horrifying then, with only 1/3 of the body in direct contact with the lava, death will be even slower.

I guess I have to calculate the effect of the IR radiation by myself... but wait!Lava cools rapidly on contact where its energy is expended to evaporate the flesh. So this thin less-hot layer should act as a shield against the radiation... Prolonging the suffering... yeah.

[Té Rowan]

Also, Erik Klemetti discussed this on Eruptions (on wired.com).

[Ellen Kuhfeld]

Organic waste tossed into volcano.

[Cheb]

To be honest, I thought more like "Yay, I'm walking on top of freshly solidified lava, it's holding well. What could ha... Aaaaah its cracking under ma feet! Help! Its submerging! Theres nowhere to... *sizzle*"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KARzrNa7y_4&t=1m55s
[warning: the guys who did the filming are cussing! Lots of F-words later.]

[PCHeintz72]

To be honest, I thought more like "Yay, I'm walking on top of freshly solidified lava, it's holding well. What could ha... Aaaaah its cracking under ma feet! Help! Its submerging! Theres nowhere to... *sizzle*"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KARzrNa7y_4&t=1m55s
[warning: the guys who did the filming are cussing! Lots of F-words later.]

If you ever see the movie Volcano (with Tommey Lee Jones, the one that occurs in LA)... there is a scene where a fire fighter goes to rescue a person from a subway car, then gets trapped holding her as the lave spread under the car, and polled between him and safety... to save the person, he jumped and landed in the lava, and whil in agony thre the person to the other rescueers, whom then watched him die...

[Cheb]

Yes, a completely unrealistic scene, a sort of "gory discretion shot", as I pointed earlier. He submerges completely out of sight, quickly, while in reality his body would stay on the surface, burning with lots of black smoke and charring slowly into a unrecognizable mess. Movies and videogames are all like that.

Lava in Quake 1/2/3 is water with special properties. At least they got the "die quickly" part right. However, if you have red armor and fully charged power shield in Q2, it will just prolong your agony for many, many seconds. The screams alone... Games of today are censored too heavily to achieve that level of horror. They never let your character scream like that. [shudder]