Invisible "explosion" killing players in one area

[Shiny]

A group of players have complained that for half an hour, an area in their basement would kill anyone that entered it. The death was shown as being caused by an explosion (player blew up), and the damage would happen over time, not instantly. None of the surrounding blocks were damaged. Any idea what would cause this?

[Kinluki76]

Combustion engine which is getting overheated in the area?

[Milk]

Might be a nuclear reactor (most people put those in their basement, right?) which hurts players in an area when it heats up to a certain point.

This has never happened to me before though, so it might not be that.

Another issue someone on a server I played had once was this: He had combustion engines in his pyramid, but they somehow glitched out and hurt anyone inside the pyramid despite not having destroyed any blocks, but they didn't work either.

[Xylord]

Sounds like a tesla coil. I'm not sure what it would say for the cause of death though.

[Shiny]

They said it was fully cooled by water drawn from a never ending source block, so I'm not sure that was the problem

Edit: My bad I didn't see the other responses. This was in reply to the first reply.

[Milk]

Just by water? Because that's probably the worst cooling system you can use other than lava buckets...

[Xylord]

They said it was fully cooled by water drawn from a never ending source block, so I'm not sure that was the problem

Edit: My bad I didn't see the other responses. This was in reply to the first reply.

Never ending sources of water can be buggy and disappear, in particular if the lake is too small.

[Milk]

I suppose you could just wait a while and if you come back later and their basement is bigger than normal, you'll know what the cause was.

[Nesico]

A little more information (as i was one of said people being killed). While yes there may be issues of cooling them the pump was green, but yes that could have been a bug. It was my understanding however that it would explode, whereas this was a continuous pulse of damaging... something or other for the entirety of the 25-35 minutes. Any items thrown into the area would be destroyed when contacting the area as well. There were only 3 players on at the time and the other was far away from us the entire time so I had doubted that could be it.

If combustion engines can do that for 30 minutes (in what seemed to be a sphere of sorts with a diameter of 9 blocks), then I shall hang my head in shame at my lack of understanding. I would appreciate any insight into the matter however.

[Nesico]

And I had assumed tesla coil but with no one nearby and nothing found at the scene, I just assume wacky hijinks ensued.

[Xylord]

A little more information (as i was one of said people being killed). While yes there may be issues of cooling them the pump was green, but yes that could have been a bug. It was my understanding however that it would explode, whereas this was a continuous pulse of damaging... something or other for the entirety of the 25-35 minutes. Any items thrown into the area would be destroyed when contacting the area as well. There were only 3 players on at the time and the other was far away from us the entire time so I had doubted that could be it.

If combustion engines can do that for 30 minutes (in what seemed to be a sphere of sorts with a diameter of 9 blocks), then I shall hang my head in shame at my lack of understanding. I would appreciate any insight into the matter however.

I'm not sure about the items, but that sounds like an un-insulated cables. The gold ones, if they are only insulated only one time, can and will hurt you, as well as the EV ones.

[Nesico]

Yeah had thought about that as well but the only cables are up on the ground floor and that was the safest area. Plus theyre all fairly insulated (I'm fairly paranoid about possible sources of pain)