Dark Bending Forms

[The Lion Turtle]

If Firebending is heat bending... Can firebending induce hypothermia? In a battle sense that can't be too practical, but making people slowly die and go insane from loss of internal heat is rather dark and horrifying.

[Tiny]

That's the thing. Firebending ISN'T heatbending. Firebending is FIREbending. Heat is associated with fire, but a firebender will not be able to draw heat from a person. That would probably be better associated with waterbenders, who could freeze you, causing you to get colder.

[sparticus]

Fire, or more accurately called combustion, occurs when a collection of molecules containing the correct proportions of hydrogen and oxygen (often with other molecules, in the case of hydrocarbons) undergo a form of oxidation that causes some molecular bonds to be broken (releasing energy) and forming bonds with other molecules (water vapor, carbon dioxide, carbon monoxide, particulate, etc). The method that cells use to generate energy from oxygen and calories is the exact same form of oxidation as used in combustion.

So, this means that a firebender, could, in theory actually stop a person's cells from converting food and oxygen into energy (which wouldn't be cooling them, just stopping energy production). This would probably start off as paralysis, but quickly develop into death as blood stops flowing. I'm not sure how it would effect the firing of neurons in the brain, so I don't know if the person would be conscious during the ordeal. But I'm unsure of how difficult it would be to control a chemical process inside a body over 3 trillion cells all at once. Bloodbending is effective because its much closer to precisely controlling a set volume of water, and not directly affecting a couple trillion chemical processes at once. I suppose you could work on only doing it to a certain area of cells, like the heart, to kill someone that way, but that is still a lot of reactions to control.

I also think that this method would allow a firebender to go super-saiyan as they increased the oxidation of their own body. That would speed up the metabolism and turn them into superman until they ran out of fuel.

But I would like to point out that we have seen firebenders directly redirect heat. We see Sozin bend the heat from lava, so it is possible.

[The Lion Turtle]

De-oxidizing cells .That is a very stealthy way to kill people. It actually seems kind of like a peaceful way to die when you think of firebending, but something like that must be very difficult to trace for the person doing the murder investigation. It would be the perfect crime. It is amazing. When you think about it, Fire really is the perfect element for war.