After plane or space craft crashes, what happens to the bodies? Do they implode because of the pressure? In plane crashes, clothes and pieces of the aircraft are found, but no bodies.
After the challenger explosion there weren’t any bodies either.
What happens to them?
Eta: Thank you so, so much everyone who has responded to me with helpful comments and answers, I am very grateful y’all have helped me to understand.
Eta2: Don’t get nasty, this is a safe and positive space where kindness is always free.
I am under the impression of “no bodies”, because:
A. They never go into detail about bodies (yes it’s morbid, but it’s also an unanswered question….hence why I’m here) on the news/documentaries, only about the vehicle and crash site information.
B. I do not understand force and the fragility of the human body on that scale, —which is funny because I have been in a life altering car accident so I do have *some* understanding of how damaging very high speeds in heavy machinery can be. You’re crushed like bugs, basically. Just needed some eli5 to confirm it with more dangerous transport options.
Nonetheless, I have learned a great deal from you all, thank you💙
Eta3: I am learning now some of my framing doesn’t make sense, but y’all explained to me what and why. And everyone is so nice, I’m so thankful🥹
In: Physics
I can assure you that there were bodies in every case, the question is more about how intact and/or recognisable they were.
No, impact-forces and jet-fuel are *not* going to completely turn a person to dust. At the very worst you can expect a charred partial skeleton wrapped in the remains of their clothing.
Keep in mind that Cremation funerals typically have to deliberately grind the bones down into the ash in order to finish the process because Bone doesn’t break up very much from being burned.
There will always be bodies, whether you can recognise who they were is another matter.
Yes, even Challenger had bodies, here’s an excerpt from the wikipedia page:
>The crew compartment, human remains, and many other fragments from the shuttle were recovered from the ocean floor after a three-month search-and-recovery operation.
In practice it’s also worth adding that plenty of people have survived plane-crashes, even quite large ones. Planes are built to help their passengers survive some pretty bad situations, though yes, full-tilt at 500mph into a mountainside is pretty unsurvivable.
Unpowered gliding to a soft-landing in a field with the gear-up is a designed-for scenario for example.
Losing a wing, breaking up and tumbling to the ground is pretty certain to kill everyone onboard.
Stay strapped in unless you have to get up for the bathroom and you’ll have much better odds of survival in event of a crash-landing.
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