Would it be worse to be set on fire, or frozen in ice?

Well, I think you would die if you were frozen inside a large block of ice, whereas you would have a chance to live if you were only set on fire.

If the question were, would you rather die by hot or die by cold, then i would pick cold – your senses would numb faster.

Definitely the flames. Even if you lived, you would suffer horrible disfigurement and excruciating pain; if not, you would undergo one of the most painful deaths imaginable. With ice, you would go numb fairly quickly, and then pretty much fall “asleep” (actually, if you were encased in a block, you would suffocate very quickly, which sucks, but not as much as burning). I suppose you would have a better chance, in most cases, of living through the flames, but I’m not sure you’d want to…

or c) tickled to death by strippers. sure, you run the risk of VD, but hey.

I’m with @Jayne here. You are more likely to die with the block of ice, but it would be quicker. Now the fire, I just don’t think I would enjoy living after that. I mean, I hate burns on the finger.

Wussy, I know…

Suffocation is panicking and losing consciousness. Freezing, you get tired and go to sleep. With fire, there’s the flesh dripping of your body in slow excruciating pain.

Stop drop and roll sometimes doesn’t put out the fire.

I think there are pretty good reasons why those are both traditional depictions of hell.

@mangeons Something didn’t agree with you at lunch today?

When set on fire, doesn’t the nerve damage and shock happen really fast?

Some say the world will end in fire;
Some say in ice.
From what I’ve tasted of desire
I hold with those who favor fire.
But if it had to perish twice,
I think I know enough of hate
To know that for destruction ice
Is also great
And would suffice.

-Robert Frost.

I think I would prefer to stay at room temperature, thank you very much.

ask them to mix the two. problem solved.

mixing fire and ice, oh, we’ll all drown.

Tossing my experience as a firefighter out there to say that @Jayne‘s statement “I suppose you would have a better chance, in most cases, of living through the flames, but I’m not sure you’d want to…” is really spot-on.

@MacBean; much respect for your work as a firefighter; that takes real guts, brains, and heart to do.

Set on fire.
I work with patients with burn damage, and I’d prefer ice any day.

Both are pretty horrible, but I’m going with the ice. I hate to be hot and I’d hate to go out thata way.

Wouldn’t being frozen in ice = drowning first?

@Jayne: Thanks. I didn’t have quite enough of something for it, though. I was fine with all the blood and guts and gore and stuff when we had to respond to car crashes and the like, but after my first fire where people were stuck in the building, I had to give it up because I couldn’t handle going to fire calls anymore. I can still look at/listen to/read pretty much anything that’s meant to disturb, disgust or gross out and be like, “Eh, I’ve seen stuff at least that bad, or worse” unless it involves burned bodies or people on fire. Then I get uncomfortable and a little shaky. And since I’m kind of addicted to shows like House and CSI and Bones, I spend a lot of my TV-watching time with my eyes closed. XD

Fire would be worse—sensations more intense and non-numbing.

I would guess that being burned alive would be excruciatingly painful and the most horrific way to die out of both of your choices. Being enclosed in a block of ice would be terrible too in that your oxygen supply would run out (if you didn’t melt it fast enough to escape) so in essence, you would die of asphyxiation and hypothermia. Not good.

Stop, Drop, and Roll doesn’t work on ice.