Random Coffin Question!

[libby1980]

How long would the air last in an air tight coffin? (i.e if you were breathing in it). I am not a nutter, I am trying to win a bet on how long it would take!

[4getmenot]

surely that all depends on size of cofin and how much your body needs to consume each breath you take.

[libby1980]

An average coffin and an average sized person

[missjef]

i dont know if you ever watch the program "mythbusters" on Bbc 2, on at around 7:30pm on thursday nights where 2 American guys try and 'bust' certain myths, and on here the other week they were wanting to see how long it would take for air to run out in a coffin.. So one of them actually got in a coffin - a really strong sturdy one (a metal one i think..), and they put a camera in and such like and put him on a heart moniter and such like so they could moniter him to see how he was doing. The coffin was placed in a big glass box then it was piled full of soil.. And it was quite interesting what they found.. they discovered that the air was fine for quite a while, but what happened was the coffin started to cave in because of the weight of the soil so they had to get the guy out. So they didnt actually find out how long the air lasted for because the coffin was caving in before the air ran out!! So if you were buried alive its likely that you would die from the coffin collapsing rather than lack of air - even more so if you were just in a thin wooden coffin!!
sorry if this doesnt help you with your bet!!

another thing is.. a magician in America who was attempting to "break-free" from a coffin buried under loads of soil actually died in the process. So i think if you're buried alived your chances of getting out are very slim indeed!!

[yigoh]

Average American or average Britain?

[Octavius]

If interment (burial) is not reversed within a short period of time, it usually rapidly leads to death, usually through one or more of asphyxiation, dehydration, starvation, or (in cold climates) exposure.

Although human survival may be briefly extended in some environments as body metabolism slows, in the absence of air, loss of consciousness will take place within 2 to 4 minutes and death by asphyxiation within 5 to 15 minutes.

[jeanette1976]

Or you would go crazy with fear and claustophobia!!!!!!

[silverdaler]

octavious, you are sooooooo clever, i love reading your answers !

[jake-the-peg]

Average human breathes 6.6 l/min of air consuming 18.4 l/hr of oxygen and produces 16 litres an hour of CO2

http://www.aopis.org/aiha-indoor%20air%20qual. pdf

If a coffin is say a box 2m x 1m x 0.5m that's a volume of 1 cubic meter but it's probably filled a lot so say half of that

If a person is say 100kg and roughly the same density as water that's 100litres which would give you 400 litres of air or 21.7 hours.

BUT that's ignoring the CO2

http://www.esc.cam.ac.uk/ivhhn/guidelines/gas/ co2.html

says that loss of conciousness after 10 minutes results in exposure above 10% - Roughly speaking from the figures above that'd be about 2.5 hours.

Of course the breathing figures at the top are relaxed - if you're concious in a coffin that's unlikely to be the case and you might easily breathe several times that amount.

Does this help

[Octavius]

Does that take account of asphyxiant gasses built up in the confined sapce JTP?

[jake-the-peg]

The only asphyxiant gas build up will be co2. The Nitrogen concentration will be pretty much the same as when the lid is closed.

[funkymoped]

my mate is an elephant.... we had the same bet some years ago... so we dug a big deep hole and buried "Elle" in a made to measure coffin.
she lasted 3min 25 seconds before she passed out and had to be dug out.. it was touch and go, but we saved her...

Anthony the ant was bragging he could do better than Elle.
we put Ant into Elle` coffin and buried him. we also put some cake and water in there just in case he was any good at the dare.

it was twelve weeks before he wanted to leave the coffin..

HE GOT BORED !!
:-)

[Octavius]

So are you suggesting that someone locked into an airtight coffin could live for 2.5hours?

[jake-the-peg]

Possibly - it depends on my estimates for the amount of air being correct and the amount of air they breathe.

If there were only half as much air and they were breathing 3 times faster then it'd be about 25 minutes so as an estimate it's quite sensitive to initial assumptions.

Doesn't seem that outrageous - Snopes has a number of live burials verified:
http://www.snopes.com/horrors/gruesome/buried. asp