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naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   29600 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of February 6, 2023

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Whether or not you can perform a cremation without additional fuel will depend on how much heat is lost to the environment

So you are not saying one way or another whether a cremation requires fuel? Can you cite me any case or example where the cremation of a carcass (livestock for example) did not require fuel to be cremated to ash?

Here's an example by the way of a cremation of a pig with a large amount of wood fuel. It did not achieve complete cremation.

Can you cite me any case or example where the cremation of a carcass (livestock for example) did not require fuel to be cremated to ash?

I can cite you several cases where the burning of a body did not require significant amounts of external fuel. Which had already been pointed out to you at the time you made this comment. However, and I will emphasize this because it is in fact an important point:

Nobody in this thread has made the claim, or is currently making the claim, that the pyres did not have any fuel. They are instead saying that your assumption that the amount of fuel required to burn a pile of bodies must scale with the number of bodies is wrong.

The actual specific testimony in question was

The cremation took place in such away that railway lines and concrete blocks were placed together. The corpses were piled on these rails. Brushwood was put under the rails. The wood was doused with petrol. In that way not only the newly accumulated corpses were cremated, but also those taken out from the graves.

You seem to be under the impression, not just that this did not happen, but that this physically could not have happened. That is why people, including me, are pointing out that bodies do in fact contain enough energy that they could burn under the right conditions.

And rather than disputing the math, or making specific claims about why the math does not apply in this situation, you've been doing an awful lot of sneering about how absurd peoples' claims are[1][2][3], and trying to misrepresent what their claims were[4][5][6].

So no, I am not going to engage in the way you want, providing ever more statements for you to make doubtful sneering faces at while avoiding actually engaging with the arguments.

I'm out.

[1] "Your claims are literally absurd. But it's why witnesses thought it wasn't too big of a problem to say that little or no fuel was used, or particularly fat women were used as fuel". (no explanation of why the claim is absurd, just an attempt to distract with other claims by the same person that you find non-credible)

[2] "It's pretty unbelievable that you make the claim that thousands of people could be cremated simultaneously without fuel (except to start the fire), and that the cremation would be net energy-positive" (and your source of why it's unbelievable was... ChatGPT???)

[3] "It's a logistically absurd claim. It's not even close to being possible." (judged absurd by ChatGPT again, of course)

[4] "The suggestion that cremations were burned in the open-air without fuel is of course completely absurd" (that was not, in fact, the suggestion)

[5] "So that's now 3 people who have claimed it takes no fuel to cremate bodies, just for the record." (which was, again, not the claim)

[6] "So your contention is that it takes no fuel beyond body mass to perform a cremation?" (you get the idea)

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