well, seriously...how would any parent react to this, aside from the horror their child was killed, but in the oddest of fashions O_o

I'm sure it /can/ happen... but it's around the odds of a propane cylinder randomly exploding on you for no good reason. These things are tested and made to be as nearly flawless as they can be.

These pictures don't have me fooled. The Chinese government has everything on such tight control that this wouldn't have leaked if it could be helped. That and there's no blood in that chair.

My computer chair is my couch

This is not the first i have heard of shit exploding in china. Apparently batteries from 3rd party sources are over heating and making cell phones explode. There have been at least 8 people that this happened to, at least one dead from holding the phone right to his head when it happened. I speak from experience when i say shotty made stuff is a serious problem in china. Although i got a shit load of DVDs for pocket change i would not be surprised if it was true.

I think only 8 exploding batteries is an acceptable rate of failure out of the millions that were probably made in that production run... its bad luck for the people who got the fluke defective products, but what do you expect from anything cheaply mass produced in china, perfection? anything containing reactive chemicals or pressurised gasses has a very slim chance of going boom if something goes wrong, thats a risk you just have to accept when using them, just as driving carries with it a chance of road accidents.

I cant decide whether to dismiss this as a hoax, or just a really improbable occurrence...

Either way, I dont see myself adjusting my sitting habits any time soon because after all : this world is big enough for some strange shit to happen, but thats no reason to be paranoid, particularly not over an isolated incident without obvious cause or discernible pattern.

You just know we'll see this on Mythbusters.

well I would first like to know how this can happen. I don't know exactly how the adjusting seats work but since they seem to use air (because of the sound they make when you lower them) and it has a cylinder form it's easy to believe that the mechanism filled with air could explode without actually knowing how the air makes the thing work.

Same with the exploding cellphones someone talked about earlier, how does that work? it's not like the cellphone uses gas or has an integrated bomb.

I'm not saying it's not possible, just that I don't really know how some things work and it's better to investigate that before believing something like this. That reminds me of the Pinky and The Brain episode were brain says that nobody knows how microwave ovens and powdered milk work.

Well mythbusters episodes are the best when something explodes so I think we should give them a ring. As for my chair. If anything were to bust or explode or otherwise end up in a compromised state it would have happened already. This chair has lasted a long time and well the person sitting on it isn't your average chair user. I weigh a fair amount more than most folks do. I think my chair is fine. China or not (I'm not about to look).

The gas cylinder is in the chair post. The post mount on the bottom of the chair doesn't have a scratch on it which suggests to me that any explosion occurred above the plate.

A lot of those types of chairs use compressed gas, but only so slightly compressed as to being able to lift around 15-20 kilos of weight.
But as you say it's not nearly enough to blast the casing to bits, that needs _at least_ 20 atmospheres of pressure...

My chair is controled by mechanic way and not by gas...And in the office i got a chair, that isn't even a wheelchair, so i think i'm safe. Isn't there a metal plate between those tube and the cushion? I really didn't know the schematics of those wheelchairs, but if they got a 2-3mm thick metal plate (steel?aluminium?) i think it's hard to blast trough. If the plate was borred out to fit the pipe, then it's more belivable...

Who you gonna call?
Mythbusters!

Don't worry, your cuddly little butt is safe(until I find you )...

Your cuddly bunny-butt is never safe around me...

Yeah, I'm thinking this has all the signs of being a fake story. The bottom of the chair in those pics isn't even damaged in any way.

indeed its a job for mythbuster, dam allways thot of sugeste em test the killer weelhubs from the 70s

This apparently isn't the first exploding chair incident -

http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/china/.....nt_6096611.htm

Exploding chair shocks cashier
(China Daily)
Updated: 2007-09-11 09:42

In a bizarre incident, an office chair in a supermarket of Jingdezhen, Jiangxi Province, exploded last Tuesday, seriously injuring a cashier's bottom.

The cashier surnamed Chen was seated on the chair watching TV and as she stood up, the chair exploded.

Doctors said serious wounds were found over large areas of Chen's buttocks, and had to be hospitalized for further observation. The local commercial and industrial office is examining the quality of the office chair.

(Jiangnan Metropolitan News)

As for the "lack of blood" observation, think about the description of the incident - chair explodes and sends shrapnel into the kid's butt - looking at the pict of the seat do you really think he'd stay put or that his first reaction is going to be to leap off of it (or be propelled off of it) and probably clenching his butt (think of how you react to being goosed)? So no surprise that there's no visible blood or any blood at all - this isn't a videogame or anime where a papercut results in five gallons of blood spraying all over the place.

We don't know how big the chunk of metal in his was, how many chunks, depth of penetration nor how long it took the kid to die either - it could have been one small chunk that ruptured a major organ or resulted in internal bleeding.

Finally, how do we know the chair was made in China? Just because the kid lived in China doesn't mean that the chair couldn't have been made somewhere else.

The funniest part is the reaction of people on the blogs though - folks talking about sitting on telephone books, replacing their adjustable chair with a normal one, etc. If this was a common problem we'd of seen it reported on the news - its a hoax at best or a one in a million fluke at worse.

No shrapnel in the plywood, wounding the intestinal tract will make a person bleed a lot, China rarely import things they themselves produce...

Anything else you want to add CS??

Yeah - I looked at the picture and it seems pretty obvious to anyone who did that the damage went straight out of the tube that secures the chair as there's a metal plate protecting the majority of the bottom of the chair, thus channeling the shrapnel straight up and avoiding the wood all together - simple physics.

Simple physics you say? Simple physics and a small knowledge about how explosives work tell that this is a hoax as an explosion would send shrapnel flying in every direction, into the plywood, into the kids legs, the walls, the floor and so on... And if you knew a little bit about human anatomy and wounds you would know that not even with adrenalin flooding your system you wouldn't be fast enough to not leave any traces of blood splatter from the impact. We're talking milliseconds here CS... The distance from the "bomb" to the rectum wouldn't even give enough time for the brain to register the sound of the explosion, let alone react on it. And a impact-wound splatters blood outwards as the projectile penetrates the body...
THAT's simple physics...

Simple physics and a small knowledge about how explosives work tell that this is a hoax as an explosion would send shrapnel flying in every direction

No, it wouldn't - explosions travel the path of least resistance - that's why guns force bullets out the barrel instead of shattering and killing the person firing them.

If you've ever made firecrackers then you'd know that even a cardboard tube can contain an explosion if the ends aren't properly secured - a poorly made firecracker will blow out the ends and leave the tube intact.

The distance from the "bomb" to the rectum wouldn't even give enough time for the brain to register the sound of the explosion, let alone react on it. And a impact-wound splatters blood outwards as the projectile penetrates the body...

Correct, an impact wound - this was not an impact wound - this was point blank - the force of the explosion was right against him - this wasn't a chunk of metal flying across the room - he was sitting on it. Remember, this is a 14 year old Chinese kid, not some 300 pound fanboy we're talking about.

This is also RL, not one of your video games or animes. In RL people don't spray 50 gallons of blood all over the place from entry wounds - exit wounds are where things get messy.

So basically, for the chair to be blood spattered as you're demanding it be, the wound would have either had to have been a very large, gaping wound and/or the kid would have had to have sat on the chair for a bit after the injury so that the blood would have time to soak out through his clothing and into the chair.

That still doesn't mean that it can't be a hoax, the problem is that you're using unsound reasoning and a lack of knowledge of how explosions and puncture wounds work to try to claim that it is.

Path of least resistance in this case would be the seal between the cylinder-casing and the piston which would make the piston a one-piece projectile. Besides the piston is thicker than the cylinder-casing so if there would be a 'blow-out' due to too high pressure the cylinder would be the first to give pealing it open rather than shattering it to tiny pieces.
As for blood spatter I can only conclude that you've never seen a gunshot/bomb-victim...

I put two .45 cal hollow points into someone at a range of 2-3 feet in October of 2005 - yes, I've seen an entry wound and the effect of it on things in front of it (ie/me).

Personally though, I really dont care enough about this story - if it makes your life complete to think that this and the other exploding chair stories are fake then fine - its fake, its a hoax, the laws of physics and entry wounds work just like you think they work - you're right, I'm wrong - I just don't feel like trying to talk reason to an idiot anymore about something that means nothing to me.

You, good sir, have no grounds for calling me an idiot just because we can't agree on this subject so I'd think an apology would be in order here...

Kid, this isn't an issue of disagreeing, this is an issue of you pulling facts out of your ass that have no basis nor connection to reality - that's what an idiot does.

Now I've conceeded to you - I don't give a shit whether this is a hoax or legit, I don't care that you don't know WTF you're talking about - I've got a life!

As such, its over, its done - you won a cyber debate on something that's totally and utterly meaningless - hoorah - take your empty victory, pat yourself on the back and go back to cybering on Second Life.

I'm not wasting any more time on you.

I'd like to inform you, 'mister-cynical-social-worker' that first of all I'm not the generic 4chan-retard that you think I am, secondly I have a real and fulfilling life as well but I thought you where an intellectual individual that I could actually educate in where your theory is flawed, and finally I'd like to inform you that I was top of my class in both physics and advanced physics in college and I have also passed a course in forensics, and I'm at the moment looking into joining a project to create a world-class simulator for the military...
So I do in fact know what I am talking about Mr CS...

I'd like to inform you, 'mister-cynical-social-worker' that first of all I'm not the generic 4chan-retard

Only a chan retard would have made the social worker crack actually.

I have a real and fulfilling fantasy life as well

Fixed.

I was top of my class in both physics and advanced physics in college and I have also passed a course in forensics, and I'm at the moment looking into joining a project to create a world-class simulator for the military...

Of course you are - and your GF is a super model by day, rock star by night and cyborg ninja cat girl CIA assassin on the weekends.

I'm not the one who's trying to show his enormous e-penis by racking down on everyone who doesn't agree with him. I've tried to keep a civilized conversation with you but as soon as I started to counter with facts you went against the first rule of argumentation 101: "Attack the persons arguments, NOT the person himself.", that tactic might work in American politics but it doesn't work in a conversation between truly intellectual people like you and me, CS.

P.S. I'm not the disillusioned computer nerd that you seem to think everyone else is around here, nor do I belong to the tinfoil-hat clad people that you claimed I was before blocking me.

What part of "I don't care if this is real or not" isn't getting through to you kid? I gave you the win so now you can sit back with your imaginary degree at your imaginary job and have your imaginary ninja cat girl GF stroke your epeen. Be happy - the infamous CS conceeded defeat to you. Yes, the issue was something too trivial for him to care about but the fact that you're still going at it shows that you're the kind of loser that needs any kind of victory, so just STFU and enjoy it.

Excuse me? I'm not the one waving an imaginary five-foot dick around ignoring common sense just because he thinks he's better and smarter than everyone else...
I tried to keep a civilized conversation with you while you went and attacked me personally implying I'm a stupid ignorant furry 4chan'er with no friends/life/job/money/girlfriend...
Point out one section where I didn't treat you in a civilized manner.

Still not taking me serious eh?

Doubly so after you felt obliged to say that kid.

If you want to act like a spoiled brat then that's your choice and I'll not waste more of my time indulging your "superior" ego. At least I tried to keep a civilized and mature conversation as I thought you would enjoy that, but you turned it into a furry-drama name-calling...

The blood thing is easily explained, what isn't though is why the seat cushion is exploded above the metal plate where the post fits to the bottom of the chair. It's more likely a case where the cushion material created an explosive gas or fine particulate either from deterioration, contamination or some maniacal disregard for safety some Chinese companies are known for.

Look at the picture of the bottom of the chair - there's the metal plate with the socket in the middle for the base of the chair to go into - it appears to be one peice and my XP in offices is that there isn't any metal underneath it, meaning that the explosion would be channeled up through that hole and blow out the bottom of the chair.

As for the lack of blood, again, the force of the explosion and/or the pain of the impact would have caused the kid to vacate the chair imediately - he was not going to just sit still on it to bleed out - he would have ended up either standing and moving or laying on the floor.

There's no shrapnel in the plywood on the underside nor is there any blood on the seat or anywhere else for that matter and considering a person will bleed a lot and fast if the intestinal tract is ruptured this is clearly a hoax. Hole might be from use of a shotgun or something...