A Computer Exploding?

homestarman17 · **Posted:** Wed Feb 27, 2008 10:24 pm

I was on Yahoo! Answers the other day, and a user said that his computer exploded. There was a video and it looked kind of fake, but I was wondering, can this happen? Have you heard of any specific cases?

extremejon09 · **Joined:** Mon May 10, 2004 10:28 pm **Posts:** 4675

http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showthread.php?t=182421 (language)

Edit by Ju: Added warning

homestarman17 · **Posted:** Wed Feb 27, 2008 10:31 pm

wow, that's crazy

Choc-o-Lardiac Arrest · **Posted:** Wed Feb 27, 2008 10:35 pm

extremejon09 wrote:

http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showthread.php?t=182421

THAT is how awesome Bioshock was. Imagine if he had actually bought the game...

furrykef · **Posted:** Wed Feb 27, 2008 10:46 pm

extremejon09 wrote:

http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showthread.php?t=182421

You should probably put a language warning on that.

Computers can't explode, but in rare cases they can catch fire. You might have capacitors explode as in that Bioshock thing, but those are only small (but critically important!) parts.

I guess a computer can explode if you put a bomb in it...

WierdAlFan · **Posted:** Thu Feb 28, 2008 12:08 am

wow, I didn't know that was possible.

Choc-o-Lardiac Arrest · **Posted:** Thu Feb 28, 2008 12:13 am

Which reminds me, I think I'm gonna go play BioShock.

homestarman17 · **Posted:** Thu Feb 28, 2008 3:43 am

I found the Yahoo! Answers things. Here it is

http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index;_ylt=An_BW4xzvm9d6LY8PwEBjosjzKIX;_ylv=3?qid=20080223155557AAtDzJ9

Thought you might want to take a look

furrykef · **Posted:** Thu Feb 28, 2008 5:42 am

Hmm, it's quite possible that it actually happened... and if somebody were doing that to my computer and it got severely damaged as a result, I would hit them so hard... normally I'm not a violent person, but that guy was being such a total dork that he needed some sense beat into him. It's dumb to try to turn on a computer that you're repeatedly told doesn't work, and it's dumb to try to turn on a non-working computer by repeatedly pressing the power button, and it's especially dumb to do it when somebody is explaining to you that it won't work. Shoot, I'd have wanted to hit him before the explosion.

I wouldn't refer to that as the "computer exploding", by the way. To me, "the computer exploded" suggests to me that the whole system blew up, not just a part of the power supply.

- Kef

ramrod · **Posted:** Thu Feb 28, 2008 2:33 pm

Looks staged to me, honestly. If it doesn't start up by pressing the power button once, why would it work if you hit it 30 times?

furrykef · **Posted:** Thu Feb 28, 2008 4:48 pm

It didn't work, though...

I guess you do have a point, though... for the power supply to go kablooey, there would need to be a complete circuit in the system, and we don't have any evidence of one. What circuit is being completed if the computer isn't making any noise?

I wouldn't entirely rule out the possibility, since I don't know how the computer was wired, but it does seem fishy.

- Kef

ramrod · **Posted:** Thu Feb 28, 2008 7:12 pm

My guess is that it was staged, and by pressing the power button continuously like that, he was activating the explosive. Maybe he was using the power button to pump something?

gunluva · **Joined:** Thu Jan 03, 2008 8:41 pm **Posts:** 815

Terrible acting.

WierdAlFan · **Posted:** Thu Feb 28, 2008 9:30 pm

Staged or real, it was still funny.

homestarman17 · **Posted:** Thu Feb 28, 2008 10:09 pm

I thought it was pretty funny too, but I'm trying to figure out how they would have staged it. If it didn't blow the first time he pressed the button, then how come it blew up the 50th time? A counter? I don't know. Does anyone remember a news story where there were a bunch of people having a meeting and then a guys laptop exploded? I think I saw it a few years back.

PhrawzT · **Posted:** Thu Feb 28, 2008 10:31 pm

A friend of mine went on vacation and when he got back he found that he had left his computer on and it overheaded and the CPU caught fire. There was a large charred area on the motherboard and the room smelled awful, luckily nothing else was damaged.

extremejon09 · **Joined:** Mon May 10, 2004 10:28 pm **Posts:** 4675

I installed Nethack on my Dad's old windows95 laptop and the monitor started smoking when I ran it.

furrykef · **Posted:** Fri Feb 29, 2008 1:43 am

Wow, that super color text technology must have been too much for it.

ramrod · **Posted:** Fri Feb 29, 2008 1:45 am

extremejon09 wrote:

I installed Nethack on my Dad's old windows95 laptop and the monitor started smoking when I ran it.

Pics or it didn't happen.

WierdAlFan · **Posted:** Fri Feb 29, 2008 1:52 am

ramrod wrote:

extremejon09 wrote:

I installed Nethack on my Dad's old windows95 laptop and the monitor started smoking when I ran it.

Pics or it didn't happen.

I believe it.

The Snork · **Posted:** Fri Feb 29, 2008 2:24 am

WierdAlFan wrote:

ramrod wrote:

extremejon09 wrote:

I installed Nethack on my Dad's old windows95 laptop and the monitor started smoking when I ran it.

Pics or it didn't happen.

I believe it.

You're gullible.

WierdAlFan · **Posted:** Fri Feb 29, 2008 3:05 am

I think they program could have gotten the monitor extra hot and started to smoke the dust off of it.

Acekirby · **Posted:** Fri Feb 29, 2008 3:28 am

Uh...no. Nethack wouldn't put that much stress on it.

See:

furrykef wrote:

Wow, that super color text technology must have been too much for it.

PhrawzT · **Posted:** Fri Feb 29, 2008 5:19 pm

I installed iTunes on my computer and when it told me to reboot my computer it wouldn't turn back on, and still won't start up.

furrykef · **Posted:** Fri Feb 29, 2008 9:48 pm

I think the answer to the NetHack thing is "correlation does not imply causation". Two things happening together does not mean one caused the other. (It can form a good hypothesis that it did, but it's only a hypothesis.)

I remember when my grandfather blamed everything that went wrong with the computer (like the computer not being able to print in Windows) on when I installed Linux. :rolleyes:

- Kef

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