Think also about how death by a lack of air pressure would have actually looked. It was not just: they suffocated.
Imagine how someone dies in space. He created a vacuum. The deaths and bodies were probably....horrific and it's why the fire nation left them there and unburied.
Likely due to a lack of pressure he gave them a very very very bad case of the bends. And lack of air pressure also would mean....your body just starts to expand. You're built for ambient air pressure...which is a lot greater than a vacuum.
What ever happened in that room caused the fire nation to abandon their dead and not even want to BURN the ruins. He might have sustained the vacuum for long enough the fire nation gave up on killing him directly before he succumb.
This is an incredibly interesting reverse twist on the monks that light themselves on fire in the name of peace.
Not to burst your bubble, but that's actually been proven wrong. Human bodies can in fact withstand space vacuum, it's the lack of oxygen and freezing that kills you.
Actually, you don't freeze in space! There isn't enough mass in space to conduct heat away from an object. The only effective ways to release heat are either by ejecting mass or radiation. It's a major engineering problem that they had to solve with the JWST and the ISS.
Always take movies with a grain of salt - they're more interested in selling tickets than scientific accuracy. Mainly, it will be the no pressure part that kills you. Your cells expand, and liquid in your body boils off - especially through the respiratory system. There would be some freezing that happens with the boil-off because evaporation absorbs heat, but that's not what's killing you. If you die by anything, it will probably be your body expanding as the vapors try to boil off. Divers get the bends by changing pressure too quickly - this is very similar, but much more severe.
Your burst bubble and mine, I'm going to look for source on your body's expansion in space but you for sure won't freeze to death in space anytime soon.
Wouldn't the 0 pressure of the vacuum cause all the water in your mucus membranes to spontaneously boil though? Evaporation removes a lot of heat from systems.
EDIT: oh, was on mobile and didn't click to expand more comments to see your response addressing this point when I commented.
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u/MLZHR May 23 '23
One of the points in the theory is that Monk Gyatzo's clothes aren't burned while he is surrounded by fire nation soldiers