
Frozen Alive - bootload
https://www.outsideonline.com/2152131/freezing-death
======
gumby
We rescued a group (mother, son, three of his friends) a three weeks ago on
California's highway 4. It was at night after all the ski traffic was gone;
they didn't understand their car well enough to know why it had failed (they'd
even noticed the transmission fluid leaking out before they set off), no
shovel, no cold gear beyond ski parkas, not even water. The were also
astonished that there was no phone service (in fact none for another 20
miles).

On one hand I'm glad technology has developed such that people can drive
around without knowing to check fluids, how to build a shelter, etc. On the
other hand I see people at the edges of the wilderness who plainly haven't the
faintest idea what is going on (and in some cases how much danger they are
in).

Typically I don't butt in. In this case when we stopped to see if they needed
help they said "no" but my GF insisted on getting out and finding out that
yes, they wanted help but didn't want to impose. (they day before she stopped
to make sure we found the owner of a stray dog in the street, that turned out
to have been lost. She's a good influence on me).

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woliveirajr
> In fact, many hypothermia victims die each year in the process of being
> rescued. In “rewarming shock,” the constricted capillaries reopen almost all
> at once, causing a sudden drop in blood pressure.

Interesting, it's like your body is made of independent organs and systems
that don't orchestrate very well. Each part trying to survive on its own make
the worst for the whole. Come to think about it, seems that some health
problems are caused because some part of your body don't send or receive the
proper signals, hormones and so on.

~~~
chillydawg
Distributed systems are hard, especially with poorly documented inter-system
protocols for coordination!

~~~
dahauns
What documentation? The only info they've got is transferred in the transport
payload.

~~~
Jtsummers
Just read the code.

~~~
logfromblammo
Ok, yeah, but we still don't completely understand all the features of the
equally undocumented compiler, standard library, and OS kernel.

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wiredfool
This is at least a few years old, I remember reading it when the family was
stuck in the snow in the southern Oregon mountains.

Rule #1. Don't ever leave the car and setoff overland.

~~~
joshuaheard
I remember reading this in Wired magazine several years ago. Afterwards, I put
together a little survival pack in each of my car's trunks including a space
blanket, hand-crank phone charger, and other items.

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upofadown
As someone who grew up and lives in Manitoba, some of this rings false. The
temperature was described as -35F (-34C). People that wander away from their
cars inadequately dressed for that sort of condition only technically die of
hypothermia. They mostly die of the complications of having their extremities
frozen. They don't tend to have enough time to go though the stages of
hypothermia. There would be no time to drift off to crazy land, they would
know things were going wrong right away.

In the same vein, if they don't have a scarf or other face protection (which
for some reason was the case for the skier in the article) and there was any
wind they will immediately freeze their face. This can take less than a
minute. This is incredibly painful and could be expected to cause pretty much
anyone to get back in the car.

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gerbilly
I always keep a a pair of sleeping bags and a shovel in the car when driving
in the winter.

If you can't dig yourself out, i think it's safer to say warm in your car.

Also a candle burning in the car (crack open a window, extinguish before
falling asleep!) can raise the temps inside the car.

~~~
antisthenes
The candle idea is dubious at best and dangerous at worst.

Cars are very poor insulators, being made of single layer glass, steel and
aluminum.

Any temperature rise you'll get out of a _candle_ (in reality almost
negligible over the T. rise from your body heat) will be gone within minutes
of you extinguishing it.

~~~
L_226
[https://outdoors.stackexchange.com/questions/3389/how-
much-h...](https://outdoors.stackexchange.com/questions/3389/how-much-heat-
can-a-candle-lantern-provide-while-winter-camping)

~~~
antisthenes
Thanks. I haven't gone through all the answers, but it looks like most of them
confirm my original post, that it isn't worth it.

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officelineback
Is this based on a true story?

~~~
logfromblammo
It reads like a pastiche of many true stories. One of the first things that
hypothermia does is impair your ability to think rationally.

Basically, a person makes _two_ marginally unwise decisions in a row, the
situation snowballs from there, and the person winds up dead or on the brink
of death. Occasionally, the victim has a stupid idea that actually warms them
back up a bit, and can claw their way back from there.

In this particular story, the first unwise decision was to leave home at all,
and the second was to leave the car. Everything that follows is cold brain no
thinky good; unsmart.

This is why government spokespeople have to tell everyone to stay home before
every predictable winter storm. Cold people are even stupider than normal, and
stupid people are a burden on local emergency services.

