Ok fine..this isnt my area of science anyway lol

Ragib, I only poked a little fun at toaster wires but you showed you understood they vaporized. I should not dismiss the role of resistive heating because that is what happens first and continues as long as the current path is there. I appreciate your discussion, and though I spent two years as a college research assistant on an accelerator team at the Brookhaven 3GEV beam, I don't know much theory here. I observe we have a factor of 5 or so higher temperature than mentioned for carbon 'burning'. Water is one thousand kg/m3; steel is maybe 5-6 times as dense, and however much the volume is pinched, perhaps a factor of a thousand, multiplies in. If it is true that what matters is the product of temperature and density (given adequate energy), it seems to me on an order-of-magnitude quick approx, we are only an order of magnitude shy.