If you jumped into lava, how quickly would you die?

Best guess, less than 6 seconds after full body submersion.

Well I actually jumped into lava. Specifically I jumped onto a moving lava flow. Fortunately it held my weight and only the soles of my shoes melted.

I was younger and stupider.

So…you mean the last moments of Gollum aren’t realistic?

~~

Oh, lava is super dense, so you float on top of it.

Feet first- it’s over before your head is submerged.

It depends on whether or not you’re a terminator

Depends on how you land on it too, how much general heat there is in the air, what you’re wearing, how hot and fluid it is, whether it’s burping up lava blops, etc.

Good question, is this a a basaltic or pyroclastic lava flow?

@ARE_you_kidding_me Oh. Pyroclastic you wouldn’t have a chance.
The lava flow I walked on was on Kilauea—sort of the opposite.

That is what I was driving at. Pyroclastic = instantaneous. Basaltic = your legs get seared like a steak as you slowly sink and asphyxiate on all of the toxic fumes out-gassing from the lava. That is, if it’s fresh enough for you not to simply run away.

@ARE_you_kidding_me ” That is, if it’s fresh enough for you not to simply run away.”

That’s exactly what I did. We found ourselves in the middle of a flow by accident and we had to run across it to get out.

Completely immersed? Instantly.
The people of Pompeii who were hit with the extreme high temperature dust and gas cloud were supposedly killed instantly.

@Caravanfan Not many people can claim that they’ve walked on lava—pretty amazing! So there weren’t fumes/radiant heat (other than your melted sneaker soles)? I would’ve expected that the air would be so hot it would scorch your lungs, clearly that’s not true.

@gorillapaws Oh, no, it was hotter than hell, and it was a sunny day. I was hiking in long sleeve shirts and jeans despite the fact it was over 80 and the lava was black. I had 5 liters of water with me. Part of the reason we were with long pants was because the lava was so sharp we were worried about scraping ourselves. The gas was our primary concern and that’s actually why we turned around. So when we started smelling more than just faint sulfurous fumes we turned around.

The actual “walking on flowing lava” bit lasted a few seconds. We were hunting for moving lava and we saw it above us, so we walked up to intercept to look at it, hopefully not get too close. It was then we realized that we miscalculated and we actually got ourselves onto a hill between two rivulets of lava. We could have hiked back down but the crust on top actually looked pretty solid. I threw a couple of rocks and they bounced normally, so I bounded across it to get to safety.

On the way back we actually ran out of water but I had kept well hydrated. I fell once and ripped my shirt and got bloody. We got back to the trailhead and the park ranger was desperately trying to get a couple of tourists in flip flops to turn around. They saw us, sweat soaked, blood stained, and exhausted come off the trail and they said, “Fuck this” and turned around. The ranger thanked us.

In retrospect it was an asininely stupid thing to do, but heck, it makes a good story.

One could argue that anyone desperate enough to commit such an extreme act would indeed already be dead inside.

Head first or feet first?

How hot is the lava?

Is the lava cool and hardened? Or is it red hot runny liquid?

How high up from the lava is the jumper? 30 feet? 30,000 feet?

Is the jumper naked? Is the jumper wearing a space suit?

Lava is thousands of degrees. I’m pretty sure the body would just start melting instantly.