The man at the gas station accidentally dropping a match into a river of gasoline causing such a conflagration - unlikely.
The match would go out when hitting the liquid! It's a more likely occurrence with a gasoline vapor, but that doesn't seem to be the case in the scene.
It depends on the match used...he lights one, lights the cigar, shakes it to put it out and drops it on the ground with gasoline....maybe the match wood was still glowing red which would be enough. Like someone said you would be crazy to try this out because it can happen.
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what are you looking at..
When I saw a one-night "re-release" of The Birds a coupla of years ago at a movie theater, the other "creative license" issue was: once the man dropped the lit match and the gasoline exploded, on the soundtrack came one of those standard "KABOOM!" explosion sound effects...as if the victim hadn't just set himself on fire, but had somehow ignited dynamite at the same time.
But that didn't really matter, Hitchcock got his spectacular action effect of sight and sound.
Hey, 12 years later Steven Spielberg had a great white shark blow up "like an oil refinery"(the skeptical words of "Jaws" author Peter Benchley) on the basis of a bullet to a scuba tank in its mouth...
You're an idiot, try it sometime.
shareTo all the plausibles critiquing this ridiculous point to the extent of nausea, there is a simple test to your theories. I suggest you try it!
In the frozen land of Nador they were forced to eat Robins minstrels. And there was much rejoicing.
you people waste a lot of space talking about things of little consequence
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Probably no definitely play it safe and assume the worst. Of all the falsehoods movies teach us, I shall continue to live as if a match will start. (stress LIVE) If we can believe that Melanie would personally deliver love birds in a little boat and that school kids wouldn't rebel if their teacher made them sing such a lousy song, then I can believe a match would ignite gasoline.
shareGasoline, like anything else needs air (which has oxygen) to burn. You could most likely throw a lit cigarette into a bucket of gasoline and have it go out. That is because there isn't enough air mixed with the gasoline to allow it burn. Dropping a lit match into a puddle of gasoline would most likely ignite it or more correctly the vapor coming from it as it evaporates. It's like a car's engine, the gasoline must be mixed with a certain amount of air to get it to burn. A car's engine literally runs on fuel vapor. That's the key to all this, getting the correct mixture of air and gasoline. If you watched Mythbusters when they have experimented with explosions of gasses, they point out that the mixture is critical.
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