Dying of hypothermia

[Grignard_TN]

     Does anyone have any first hand experience of finding someone dead or almost dead from hypothermia? Has anyone survived life threatening hypothermia? I was interesting in hearing your experience.

     Do any physicians, biologists, EMTs, etc know what temperature is a high risk for hypothermia? I know even at forty or fifty Fahrenheit you can eventually suffer exposure if you're out long enough. What I'm talking about is at what temperature or windchill is hypothermia something that can kill you pretty rapidly. I imagine below freezing is most dangerous, as eventually your body parts will freeze causing disruption on the cellular level by ice crystal formation.

     Is hypothermia painful? I know being extremely cold is quite uncomfortable, but I have heard some say your reach a point where you actually feel warmer and have no sense that you're shutting down. Do the bodies look peaceful like they do in the Long Dark? Ive heard people try to burrow under things as a primitive instinct, but I'm not sure they are in any way aware at that point.

     At what rough latitude ( depends on day to day weather of course) does hypothermia because a very plausible way to die outdoors? People used to give cold people alcohol, but my opinion is that would make body heat loss faster. What about people under the influence of other sedatives such as barbituates or Benzodiazapines?

      Does one's thoughts just slow down until you go to sleep and, well, just not wake up? Do survivors say they feel any sense of panic as the cold sets in? Would someone who has been in briny or salty water lose heat faster than a merely wet person? They chemistry of it makes me think it could be so, as you can get liquid water much colder in a salt solution.

Edited January 30, 2020 by Grignard_TN

[MarrowStone]

18 hours ago, Grignard_TN said:

Does one's thoughts just slow down until you go to sleep and, well, just not wake up? Do survivors say they feel any sense of panic as the cold sets in?

Essentially, You Fade Into the Long Dark. 

Hypothermia isn't the same for everyone but your body only needs to drop to 35 C (95 F) for it to start taking effect. (However it must be much colder than that for you to start "fading")

As your organs get colder your brain stops functioning on higher levels. Your Prefrontal Cortex stops functioning and that is where your personality and higher decision making takes place. Essentially you aren't even yourself when you get to that stage and are acting on impulse. That's when you fall asleep and fade into the long dark, or you start crawling under things and doing counter productive stuff like stripping naked and wandering away from shelter. It is very possible to get hypothermia and not even know it because it is a gradual process and the added confusion of your brain shutting down basically takes self-diagnosis away. Falling into water can drop your body temperature so quickly you can go into shock, causing hyperventilation, and confusion. 

If you listen closely, Astrid says, "Oh, no" after saying she's so cold she's warming up again, but Will doesn't. A part of Astrid knows what's happening because she's a doctor. 

If you were to survive somehow and thaw out correctly (frozen body parts when thawed could damage your heart or other organs) you most likely wouldn't remember doing any of it. 

I'm not a doctor however and this topic could be built upon much better by one I think. 

[Skelegutplays]

On 1/31/2020 at 2:13 AM, MarrowStone said:

If you listen closely, Astrid says, "Oh, no" after saying she's so cold she's warming up again, but Will doesn't. A part of Astrid knows what's happening because she's a doctor. 

Thats super cool! I love tiny details like these in games! I dont think i have ever even realized it because i play as McKenzie 90% of the time.

[MarrowStone]

2 hours ago, Skelegutplays said:

Thats super cool! I love tiny details like these in games! I dont think i have ever even realized it because i play as McKenzie 90% of the time.

It feels like an ad-lib on the voice actor's part because it is not subtitled but it's definitely there. Will and Astrid say a lot of the same things but you can really tell the actors put a lot of effort in delivering the lines uniquely for each character.

I think I maybe play as Astrid 65-70 percent of the time mostly cause when you drop from small ledges that aren't even close to damaging she doesn't exclaim as loudly as Will. lol. 

[exeexe]

I dont know, but i know the nazis made some experiements about it, so there should be data about it. When people die from freezing they feel really warm and take of their clothes. So when you find someone dead from coldness, the chances are they dont have much clothes on.

They needed this data because the army was dying in the Russian winter

Edited February 6, 2020 by exeexe

[ajb1978]

A few years ago I was walking to work for a week in the winter because my car was in the shop.  (Brakes failed...that's a whole fun story unto itself.)  I took a hiking trail that cuts right through some marshland, and part of that trail ran underneath a viaduct.  That particular viaduct was known for having transients who would sleep under it, in all weather.  I saw one such individual in a sleeping bag.  Turned out he wasn't alive--later that day someone called it in and upon investigation police discovered he had most likely died of hypothermia. I walked right past a literal frozen corpse and didn't even notice.

Also when I was 16 a friend of mine got drunk at a house party, and thought it would be a great idea to run around outside in his underwear in the middle of winter.  We ended up losing track of him, and found him an hour later passed out in a snow bank, still in just his underwear.  Amazingly he woke right up after we slapped him a few times, walked home on his own two feet, and somehow avoided any and all consequences.

[MarrowStone]

On 2/8/2020 at 10:56 PM, ajb1978 said:

I walked right past a literal frozen corpse and didn't even notice.

My condolences, being in the presence of death unawares and looking back on it in hindsight can be a bit of weird feeling, I know. We are kinda trained to see death as this big loud thing (metaphorically speaking). But it can be just a whisper. There aren't always the telltale crows like in TLD. 

 

[Grignard_TN]

      I'm very curious if someone has intentionally placed themselves in a situation where they would expect to by hypothermic? I mean, people try to kill themselves in all sorts of ways, some of which are objectively painful and horrible. It seems like someone could just down the better part of a fifth, take some sedatives, and just go out and go to sleep if they were determined on such an action. In northern areas near cities, do you encounter people after winter who just went out and died in the cold on purpose? Is this something you see or is it just my sick imagination?

[MarrowStone]

Cold weather is especially dangerous to children, Elderly, the homeless, and yes, people with mental illness. These can overlap too such as elderly with dementia wandering off and getting lost or falling somewhere. I have a grandfather who doesn't have a mental illness, but he took a fall on some ice while clearing his driveway and didn't get up until he came to much later. No one knew until he reported it later. 

[Grignard_TN]

22 minutes ago, MarrowStone said:

Cold weather is especially dangerous to children, Elderly, the homeless, and yes, people with mental illness. These can overlap too such as elderly with dementia wandering off and getting lost or falling somewhere. I have a grandfather who doesn't have a mental illness, but he took a fall on some ice while clearing his driveway and didn't get up until he came to much later. No one knew until he reported it later. 

That is very frightening.

[exeexe]

Actually i had one interesting experience one time. I was on a long walk in the night and it was about 15C in temperature and took a break on a bench, were i laid down on it. Just wearing T-shirt and shorts AFAIR. I think 30 min later i decided it was time to move on. i wasnt freezing or anything, it was, as you remember 15C. But when i got up i was shaking all over my body. Teeth making noises. The temperature in my core had dropped significantly slowly over time. I thought well if get up and walk soon enough the shaking will stop. So i did but actually i just kept on shaking lmao. I decided enough is enough so i started to run and only after maybe 200 meters i was warm again.

[Bean]

Two stories:

1) when I was about ten I went swimming in the river.  Was cold maybe 55°F but I figured out that if I stayed in there a while it became tolerable.  So I stayed in... way too long.  By the time I noticed something was wrong, I could barely move my limbs and barely managed to stumble out.  Mom took my temperature and it was 90°.  I was about dead and never noticed the transition.  It was a nice sunny day so she put me in the car with windows rolled up.  Yah, one horrible parenting decision to cancel out the other I guess!?  But it worked and in half an hour I was back to normal.  
 

2. My brother’s friend had a daughter, 18 years old.  They live on an island in Alaska, remote.  She broke up with her boyfriend and was depressed so she drove across the island to find a spot to cry.  A sudden blizzard came up and she got back in her car and tried to drive home.  In the low visibility she drove off the road and got stuck.  Then she got out and somehow locked her keys in the car.  At this point she was cold and not thinking well.  
With few other options she began walking towards home in that blizzard.  She only made it a mile before she collapsed and died of hypothermia.  
By the time they found her, the foxes had begun to feast.  

[AdamvR]

@Bean that is a truly horrific story...

i have much milder, though personal ones:

1) a couple years back went to Finland in the winter for the aurorae. walked outside the village a few kms to the wild to get a better spot without light-pollution to take photos. They need long shots (30 sec) on a tripod, as are quite faint to show up in a pic. no need to hold the camera in hand, but every here and then I had to press something on it - for which I had to take my gloves off for a few seconds. It was about -15 - -20C, so pretty cold, but no Siberia. In between I kept walking around, and had many warm layers on, so did not feel cold at all. Only, to realize at one point that i literally did not feel my fingers ("I don't feel my hands" resonated very strongly). Got extremely scared of frostbite, and decided to quickly pack up and run back to the village all the while aggressively doing an exercise with my hands i learnt as a child playing the piano to try getting as much blood in them as possible. After a while I did get to feel them again, but the experience was extremely scary. On some other days also walked on frozen lakes, thinking they were safe, only to see certain areas with evidence of break-ins. Luckily changed direction on time... Gorgeous in real life, but very scarily accurate TLD experiences.

2) I live in the Netherlands and there is a custom here called New Year's Dip: on 1st January running into the sea and back (even if for a few seconds). Many people do it, often in groups (not this year...) We participated a couple times, the water is about 3-5C then, with the air also just above freezing (often with some windchill to make it feel colder - very accurate TLD representation btw). While running and dipping into the water feels really cold, there is a weird time after coming back ashore, for about 10-30 minutes you do not feel cold, at all, actually feel a bit warm - despite being wet without much clothes on. (We usually take our greeting photos this time shocking friends and family afar) After a while as we start dressing up again, the cold starts to be felt, conversely, the more (dry) clothes we put on, the more it feels cold. It might be different physiologically from slowly cooling down, but the brain's reaction to negate the feeling is probably similar, and very scary... (I'm no doctor though).

Edited January 27, 2021 by AdamvR

[Sherlock Holmes 18]

It's weird🤔