How does a wet cloth really help (scientifically) to survive an airplane crash?

A lot of people survive plane crashes, even the one where the big plane was doing cartwheels. The number who don't survive but could have if they had a survival kit is probably verrrrry low.

I agree. And I thank everyone for helping us come to the supported conclusions.

You may notice that I've put the obnoxious kids posting here in my killfile, so, that helps weed out the garbage (and save us all time & effort).

The chance of a cabin fire is extremely rare, but, the whole question was answered well, which is why the recommendation for the wet cloth.

Who knows. Perhaps armed with this knowledge, your handkerchief and bladder might help save your life!

It's always better to know, than to be ignorant.

Or relocate all the seats to the back of the plane! :)

On December 1, 1984, NASA & the FAA crashed a Boeing 720 into the Mojave Desert for their joint report on their "Controlled Impact Demonstration".

Likewise, on April 27, 2012, a Singapore Airlines 727-200 was purposefully crashed into the Mexican desert for a television documentary first aired on October 7, 2012 (and numerous times thereafter).

In both tests, about 3/4 of the "dummy" passengers might have survived, particularly those in the rear seats.

What was most interesting was how fast the fire moved through the passenger section. You literally have seconds to escape. It really is important to remember where the exits are and have a plan on using them.

bladder

I'm going to try to remember to always have one of those little 8oz bottles of water with me when I fly because I'd rather not have to depend on my bladder to wet the handkerchief. (-: Eeeeewww

I knew, before this thread, that airplane cabin fires produce toxins but I didn't know the fumes had large amounts of hydrogen cyanide gas. Some people might remember that it's the primary component of Zyklon-B which was used in the Nazi death chambers

Hydrogen cyanide was also used for jural homicide in the US for many years, so it's kind of creepy to realize that our jetliners have the capacity to turn into lethal flying gas chambers in the event of a serious fire. That and the TSA "touching my junk" are two more good reasons to take the train instead!

This thread has helped explain why I believe the missing Malaysia flight might have suffered a cabin fire (that model plane had a known oxygen supply hose defect that caused a very serious fire on the ground in another plane). I have not been able to discover if that plane had the necessary repair work done to eliminate that threat. In an oxygen-fueled fire, even things not normally very flammable like Velcro burns. The citations here make it clear that there's very little time to act in the event of a cabin fire.

If the cabin's filled with cyanide gas, death for everyone would occur in very short order. The autopilot, since it doesn't breathe, would have flown the plane until it ran out of fuel. We may never know the truth of what happened to MH370 but this thread reinforces my belief that a cabin fire could spread so quick and be so lethal that it could kill everyone on board in a matter of minutes.

If I read an article that said that, I wouldn't have to *assume* anything. Relying on a seemingly competently-written article is not assuming.

....

Okay. What about the rule against bringing your carry-on. I've assume that is to save time, but I think I'd be willing to go last if I could take my carry-on bag with me. I'd hug it so it wouldn't touch anything.

Actually, the rest of what I wrote was more important, but when I wrote this, I was particularly annoyed by someone trying say what I could safely assume.

I think you were clear.

OTOH, I don't know how many articles like this you found. ......

....but it doesn't matter, because it's not my point either. I think everyone agrees that cyanide is bad for a person and no one challenges the idea that a wet rag helps avoid it (helps a lot, apparently). So let's just drop the subject of cynaide, about which no one disagrees.

Apparenly I wasn't clear, or you weren't reading carefullly. I, at least, am not not espousing any alternate point, but I'm taking issue with the flimsy to non-existent basis for your conclusions.

I'm saying a few things, 1) You draw conclusions for no good reason, and I'm pointing that out. When something isn't warned against strongly, you say we can safely assume it's not a health hazard. We shouldn't be assuming anything. There's no reason we have to reach any conclusion at all on most of these things. Since we don't know if a given fire is producing cyanide or not, it might be helpful to think a wet rag protects against hydrocholoric acid, because that will be one more reminder of the value of wet rags.

3 About smoke inhalation only. You say things like this "but, nobody has reported any real evidence that "smoke inhalation" (presumably that means particulate inhalation) is either immediately dangerous, or the

And why are you presuming that smoke inhalation means particulate inhalation? None of the things you have cited have said that specifically, have they? Trader?

Trader says otherwise. He quoted them, from articles you posted and articles he found. I didnt' read the whole articles. I'm not very interested in the topic. I am interested in why you draw conclusions for no good reason, and why you think if something isn't harmful immediately, it's not harmful enough to worry about.

I don't care. My point was never to prove any alternate view. It was to say that you jumped to conclusions to support your view. The exception was smoke inhalation and no one but you needs a research paper to know that smoke inhalation kills people. It's in the newspaper every week, and for the entire USA, every day.

It wasn't a matter of fortune. It was a mistake on your part. So stop trying to speak in the name of others. If you said it when it was true, you might get away with it, but you say it when even your should not be assuming what you assume and when you certainly can't do it safely.

Again, trying to be clear about what my point is, I DON"T CARE about any alternate view. I care, for some reason, that you draw conclusions for the wrong reasons.

Find a place where I said anything supportive of any alternate view, except that smoke inhalation can kill you. That 's so damn obvious to everyone but you I had to mention it.

You keep saying that. Trader says otherwise. You ignore him when he says otherwise. When he gives quotes you don't try to refute the meaning he attributes to those quotes. So you look like you can't be relied on to examine things closely. I don't care enough to go read his quotes in context, but you sure seem to. Yet you don't reply to his citations.

Now you've exaggerated from nobody has found to nobody CAN find. You shouldn't make statements like this. They make you look like a dummy or a liar. (Have you worked in politics?) . I haven't spent any time looking, and I haven't claimed to look, so you have no basis to say I can't find something. Plus trader says he has found such things and you ignore his statements to that effect.

Claiming someone is in a defensive mode is a poplular method for trying to put them in a defensive mode. We're just setting the record straight and trying to keep you from making a false statement.

That woudl be false. WRT what I've written, you have seen such refrences. People are frequently reported to have died of smoke inhalation. These reports come from pathologists and coroners all over the country. Given the hot potato that some are trying to make out of Ambassador Stevens's death, do you think the sources that say his death was from smoke inhalation were not trying to be accurate? Does anyone say his death was not from smoke inhalation?

Trader has more reasons why the statement above would be false.

Again false.

But at least you're not trying to drag me into agreeing with you when you don't use "we" or "us", and I will appreciate that if you continue to do so.

News reports of people who died from smoke inhalation, incuding Ambassador Stevens, certainly count as real evidence.

I reed and hear such reports frequently but I'm not going to take the time to find any now. If you want to read some, search the web. There are plenty.

Why do you worry only about the most dangerous gas? If 3 people mug you, and one has a .45 caliber gun, another a rifle, and the third a Derringer, with two small bullets, and you can stop the guy with the rifle from shooting you, will you happily let the other two guys shoot you?

This line made me really angry.

And this 3-line sentence made me angrier. Snipping so readers could't understand my point. And because you were making light of the death of a woman I cared about.

To try to make up for what Ms. Brest had snipped and to make my previous post more clear: If you don't see the connection between my brother's aunt's death because of where she lived but years after she moved downwind from a steel plant and my ridiculing your insistence that it only matters if something is *immediately* dangerous, you're blind, or intentionally blind, or lying, or stupid.

She didn't want to die, and her family didn't want her to die from mesothelioma, at all. Of course it didnt' happen immediately. It never does with asbestos.

Maybe health insurance shouldn't pay expenses of someone who doesn't get sick immediately? Maybe life insurance shouldn't pay when someone dies, but not immediately. Heck, maybe we shouldn't even bury the people who don't die immediately after the cause of their death. Because immediate danger and death is all that matters, it seems, to you. None of these is more stupid than your attitude.

Maybe when you're dying from some long term poison, you'll understand it, but until you do, you're stupid.

OTOH, if we are going to *assume* smoke particles are a life-threatening danger, we don't need to read anything. We've already assumed it.

Yeah, getting the carry on out of the overhead never has been shown to slow things down (grin). Even getting it out from under the seat would most likely get in the way of your aisle-mates getting ou. And if you were last (and even the only one) how exactly do you stay out of everyone else's way? Finally, you can't be last because then you are endangering the FAs who can't leave until you do.

Oh, well. Maybe I'll get a wearable computer, just in case.

Bingo! You made two good points here.

Don't you think that's a little harsh. Even if she did spit on your aunt, she can't help herself.

That's a pretty good analogy.

Maybe she can do that.

supply

plane).

There's no explanation of events that can be proven or disproved until the wreckage is found. The pandemonium that can occur with a cabin fire can explain a lot of things that appear to be inexplicable. Reading about how fast cabin fires spread and how lethal they can be still makes me suspect a cabin fire because a pilot crashing a plane deliberately and silently doesn't make sense. He would *want* to get credit for his actions. Your small, ideal window could be total coincidence. There's just no way to know from the few facts that are available.

If it was a cabin fire, there should be still some evidence recoverable to support that theory. If the FDR and voice recorder unit are found, it may prove your theory - or it may leave us with more clues but no firm answer because the voice recorder overwrites old data every two hours and the plane allegedly crashed 7 hours after takeoff. Critical voice information is most likely gone unless the CVR lost power early on in the flight.

The most difficult part of the suicide scenario is that even Shakespeare's often long-winded dramatic characters got it over relatively quickly. People who survived jumping off the Golden Gate bridge change their minds half way down. Search for the 2003 New Yorker article about Golden Gate Bridge suicide jumpers. It's very enlightening.

I just don't know of a single case where a guy took 7 hours to kill himself. It's an impulsive act that people want to get over with quickly. He left no note, no radio contact, no reasons given. That's pretty unusual for a suicide, especially one who appears as troubled as he's been made out to be. And his demonization by the press and the Malaysian government also bothers me. It's classic scapegoating. There are dozens of scenarios at this stage, but allow me to prefer those that don't point a finger at the crew or the pilot.

Pilot suicide just doesn't make a lot of sense to me whereas a cabin fire in a plane KNOWN to have a serious oxygen hose defect seems far more likely. There's no record or mention I can find of the oxygen hose problem being corrected and I doubt Malaysia has a fully-functioning FAA equivalent to enforce maintenance fixes. I am also always totally suspicious of airlines and governments being quick to blame the pilots. It's an industry tradition used to focus attention away from any possible gross negligence on their part.

"Reported course changes" really bothers me. If they had such detail course information, why where they searching, without luck, huge swaths of ocean? That model plane has not one but several automated systems that can fly the plane and are dedicated to keeping it airborne. There's no main computer to fail, like some "Star Trek" scenario. There are lots of independent systems connected through data buses.

Considering how badly my PC acted up when the space heater accidentally started blowing on it I have no problem believing a fire damaged autopilot could do a lot of things that looked like a human was at the controls. Since autopilots are capable of executing almost every command a pilot could issue, changes in course don't prove there was a person issuing them.

in

You're forgetting that it was precisely those tanks and their fittings that caused the disastrous oxygen-fed fire on a different plane of the same model. A fire that would not have been survivable had it occurred aloft. A fire that turned the cabin's electrical gear into a mass of fused plastic and wire.

Can *they* fly the plane if the pilots burned to death in a flash cabin fire? Maybe one of them was poking around with the charred autopilot after the flames were extinguished and those actions caused the alleged course changes. We may never know. One thing's for certain: without the wreckage there's never likely to be conclusive proof about what happened to that airplane, so we're just spinning our wheels.

Just like you can't testify to the operation of someone's mind in court, you can't determine if the pilot was suicidal or homicidal by counting the number of course changes a plane *allegedly* made after radio contact was lost. If there was a fire, the pilots would have tried to deactivate cockpit components by pulling the electrical busses. That *easily* explains why cockpit based systems failed first and other, more remote systems continued to function. If it was the pilot's emergency oxygen supply that caused the fire, then their chances for prolonged survival amidst toxic fumes are very poor.

Without the data and voice recorders or forensic evidence from the wreckage, it's all supposition. I base mine on a previous very serious oxygen fed cabin fire in an identical model and on Payne Stewart's flight to nowhere with a plane full of dead passengers. Yes, that plane flew in a straight line after all the passengers and pilot died from a pressurization malfunction, but the 777 has a far more sophisticated autopilot.

If the Apollo oxygen-fed (aka a "blowtorch") fire killed everyone in the capsule in 17 seconds, a fire like that doesn't leave much time to call the ATC tower and tell them about an event they couldn't do anything about anyway from 100's of miles away. The pilot's primary duty at that point is to keep the plane flying, not to alert ATC. Pilots have a mantra for setting priorities in an emergency: aviate, navigate, communicate.

The worst part is that they may never find the wreck. It took two YEARS to find the AirFrance wreck and they basically knew where it went down. But if they do find MH370, we may see which one of us is the better guesser, because that's all we can do. Guess. There just isn't enough information available to reach any valid conclusions other than the plane is lost.

Complicating are economic pressures: Plane failed == extremely costly liability. Pilot Error == no liability.

And from experience having a pilot friend accused of fuel exhaustion when it was a casting flaw in the carburator suddenly appearing where he was 'guilty until proven innocent'; you'll see more Pilot Errors causing crashes than mechanical failures.