Funny Pictures of Cold Lying Under Blanket

The man who refused to freeze to death

(Image credit:

Getty Images

)

Lost, wet and alone in a freezing, snow covered landscape, an Icelandic fisherman'south story of survival against the odds reveals the human body'due south remarkable ability to adapt to the cold.

T

To mark the terminate of a turbulent year, nosotros are bringing back some of our favourite stories for BBC Time to come's "Best of 2020" collection.Discover more of our picks here.

Heimaey is the largest of the Westman Islands, an archipelago southward of Iceland mostly inhabited by puffins. On Stórhöfði peninsula, at the southernmost betoken of Heimaey is an outcrop that juts into the Atlantic Ocean. The local weather station here claims to exist one of the windiest places in Europe.

It was here, in the early on hours of March 12 1984, that 23-year-onetime Guðlaugur Friðþórsson stumbled towards salvation. His bare feet were bleeding from deep cuts caused by the volcanic rock hidden beneath the snow, his clothes soaked in seawater and frozen to his body. He should have already died several times over, simply something deep within Friðþórsson propelled him forward.

The night was clear and cold. The air temperature was -2C (28F) merely with strong winds it would have felt much colder. Despite the freezing temperatures, he paused at a bathtub filled with water left out for sheep for a brief respite. Punching through the centimetre-thick ice he began to gulp downward water from the trough.

You might also similar:

• The tragic tale of Mt Everest'southward most famous dead body
• What it's like to survive a shipwreck
• Can you survive if you run out of air?

Information technology is perhaps foreign that a beverage of ice cold water was a primary concern at a time like that. Simply dehydration is a surprising business concern in common cold environments as the air in sub-aught temperatures is essentially freeze-dried. With no moisture in the air, when he breathed out, he was losing vital fluid from his lungs. Information technology is why you can see your breath hanging in the air on a cold night.

But the common cold besides appears to edgeless our sensation of thirst, meaning many people exercise not take in enough water. If you lot are working difficult to stay warm, and breathing heavily as a consequence, it tin quickly atomic number 82 to dehydration.

A French soldier melts snow as office of a training exercise (Credit: Getty Images)

"You tend to come across a lot of issues with cold compounded by dehydration," says Mike Tipton, professor of physiology at the University of Portsmouth.

Having found fresh water, however, aridity was not Friðþórsson'south biggest problem. His wet clothes were quickly making his status worse, putting him at take a chance of hypothermia, which occurs when the core body temperature drops below 35C (95F). While exercising, he could keep his core temperature loftier. Just having stopped to have a potable, his source of heat – generated by the motility of his muscles – had been cut off. While he however had calories to burn, he had to continue moving.

"A man in the common cold is not necessarily a common cold man," says Tipton. "If you proceed moving and you are reasonably insulated you will produce enough heat to stay warm. At maximum exercise, information technology is like you are running a 2kW burn. When you practise reasonably hard y'all tin do that in shorts and t-shirt in the common cold. Even when you have to shiver yous are substantially engaged in light practice."

People at loftier altitude might find exercising more difficult. Tipton says that climbers on Everest might merely exist able to manage one step every x seconds. Estrus production at this rate of exercise is minimal, so staying warm is very difficult.

Records of climbers who accept succumbed to the cold at altitude are plentiful, often because radio communication can be maintained until they fall unconcious. In one harrowing account of several climbers stranded on Summit Lenin in a blizzard in 1974, their terminal moments were relayed to base camp.

The group, led past Elvira Shatayeva, were attempting to become the first all-women group to calibration the mountain, in mod-day Tajikistan. As they grew colder, their thoughts became increasingly disoriented and they spoke of how weak they were becoming: "Another has died," Shatayeva is recorded every bit maxim in one of her last letters, "... I do non accept the forcefulness to concur down the transmitter button."

At maximum practice, heavy layers of protective clothing are not required to stay warm (Credit: Getty Images)

While in that location is prove that farthermost rut affects people's cerebral abilities, information technology is less articulate what, if anything, farthermost common cold does to the mind. In i paper, people dunked in 2-3C water for three minutes (enough fourth dimension for someone to develop and get over the cold shock response) saw a decline in their short-term retentiveness just improved in other areas, similar their alertness. Another paper constitute that people brought very close to the point of hypothermia (their core body temperature was lowered to 35.5C) suffered no reject in cognitive function at all.

It would appear that our brains are much amend at coping in the cold than dealing with existence also hot. This is because our bodies' survival strategies eye around keeping our vital organs running at the expense of less essential body parts. The most essential of all, of course, is our brain. By the time that Shatayeva and her fellow climbers were experiencing cognitive bug, they were probably already experiencing other organ failures elsewhere in their bodies.

Our bodies are very expert at reducing blood flow, through a process chosen vasoconstriction, to our hands and feet to preserve our core body temperature. Simply in doing and then, nosotros sacrifice rut in those extremities. Human tissue freezes at around -0.5C. As fluid in our tissues begins to freeze, our prison cell walls break leading to necrosis, or cell death. We call this frostbite.

However, being close to the point of decease from hypothermia tin can patently exercise strange things to the mind. In some rare cases, people suffering from extreme cold appear to feel hot in the moments before they die. Some bodies of hypothermia victims are found partially dressed, or fifty-fifty fully undressed, in a phenomenon called "paradoxical undressing".

It might exist that at the very concluding moments earlier death, the mechanism that holds blood below our fat layer fails, causing it to rush to the surface of the skin and giving the sensation of beingness flushed with warmth. In reality, the victims suddenly lose huge amounts of heat. Getting undressed only speeds up how quickly they die.

Most of these cases (67% of men and 78% of women) involve people who have consumed alcohol, which is known to inhibit our thermoregulatory response.

Even at -32C (-20F), people who are strenuously exercising do not need gloves. The best gloves will only work for up to three hours at remainder (Credit: Javier Hirschfeld/ Getty Images)

Similar with paradoxical undressing, it would announced that in the very concluding moments before death the victims are overcome with confusion. About a quarter of these people besides undressed themselves before hiding.

Those few people who accept been found frozen to death and paradoxically undressed oftentimes fell victim while walking home at dark in improper vesture, sometimes drunk. For anyone in a survival situation, at that place are three lines of defence that protect against the cold.

"Article of clothing or equipment is the first line of defense force, shelter is 2d and third is fire," says Jessie Krebs, a old US Air Force Survival, Evasion, Resistance and Escape (Sere) Training Instructor. "People will skip correct to fire after habiliment has been compromised, which is a mistake. If they are not successful they die trying to start a fire."

This was the state of affairs that faced 30-year-old charlatan Tyson Steele at the stop of 2019. Thick snow blanketed the remote, forested corner of the Susitna Valley where Steele'south cabin stood. He slept wrapped up warm against the freezing temperatures exterior while the remains of his burn glowed in the forest-burning stove.

A tiny ember drifted upward the chimney and settled on the tarpaulin, that formed much of the roof of his hut, where it quietly smoldered. At the smell of the burn down, Steele dashed outside to find flames bursting from the plastic roofting. Inside a few minutes the whole hut was ablaze.

This was the start of what would become a three-week ordeal for Steele, stranded twenty miles from the nearest town in sub-zero weather in the Alaskan wilderness. Over the following 20 days or so, he faced a boxing to stay warm and live in the promise of rescue.

Unable to move far in the deep snowfall, his plan was to stay put, which nether the circumstances was not a bad one. After vesture, shelter is next in the hierarchy of defense force confronting the cold. He salvaged some canned food and blankets, built a shelter out of droppings from his hut, and lit a fire.

Tyson Steele waves to the circling State Trooper helicopter surrounded by the debris of his hut (Credit: Alaska State Troopers)

At this indicate, Steele's outlook was pretty positive; his three lines of defence were in society. He stomped out an SOS message adjacent to his hut and waited for help.

"If you know help is coming, you are ameliorate off digging a snow hole and staying put," says Tipton. "People in Canada say all y'all are doing is staying put until yous die because no one volition observe y'all. But if y'all are fit and accept food, if you lot sent a mayday and you know they will be coming you are better off edifice a snow hole and not heading into a blizzard."

While staying at the cabin he had kept in bear upon regularly with his family, and posted on social media. Simply when those letters went repose, his family unit grew concerned. Fortunately for Steele, his silence was noticed and ultimately saved him, not his SOS.

"The SOS signal is what almost people know, merely the downside is information technology is very curvy," says Krebs. "Nigh of nature is curvy – it is rounded hills and lakes and streams, then curvy blends in."

In the war machine Krebs was taught to use the letter "V" to asking general assist or an "X" specifically for medical aid. The long straight lines stand out on a hillside. It also takes less time to create ii directly lines thirty feet long compared to two loopy Ss and i O, each 10 anxiety high.

The footage of his rescue, recorded from a helicopter circling above him, shows Steele waving with ii arms aloft to his saviours while standing in front of his SOS. While two artillery in the air is widely recognised to be a request to be picked upward (only one arm could exist misinterpreted as a greeting), Krebs says the most constructive mode to communicate distress is to lie down on the ground. Provided y'all are certain that the pilot has seen you lot, lying downward quickly communicates that yous are injure or sick and therefore demand help urgently.

Other forms of footing to air communication include using point mirrors. A mirror from a car sun visor can exist repurposed for this. Property the mirror over one eye and aiming past fixing the target between your fingers held out in forepart of you in a "V", a signal mirror tin depict attending up to 50 miles (80km) abroad in clear skies. Other alternatives are smoke signals – the water in branches and leaves from fresh vegetation creates white smoke when burned, which is useful in dark forests. Called-for rubber or car tyres can produce blackness fume that volition stand up out against snow. But Krebs warns this is just really useful if there is an aircraft in the area.

Steele afterwards admitted he had no formal survival preparation, simply had picked up some knowledge from YouTube videos. A few matches, a candle and some birch bark helped him to start a fire, which he could utilize to keep dry out.

Being able to maintain and repair habiliment is essential to increasing your chances of survival says Krebs. In a worst case scenario, wet clothes can be wrung out and pushed through powdery snow to blot some water. But in Friðþórsson's case, he was already way beyond this point.

A soldier takes function in Sere training in Colville National Forest, Washington, on a freezing January forenoon (Credit: Getty Images)

Friðþórsson had fallen into the bounding main just east of Stórhöfði peninsula when his the small fishing vessel, Hellisey VE 503, ran into trouble. At 10pm, her trawl internet caught on the ocean floor capsizing the boat so quickly the coiffure had no time to transport a distress signal.

Her five fishermen were thrown overboard. Three of them managed to scramble onto the keel of the upturned angling boat, two never resurfaced.

The survivors constitute themselves separated from shore past three miles (5km) of five-6C (41-43F) ocean. An boilerplate person will survive in h2o colder than 6C for about 75 minutes. Accounts of people surviving for longer are anecdotal and few. In laboratories, test subjects brainstorm to endure adverse effects within 20 or xxx minutes before they are pulled out. To swim 3 miles in these seas would accept hours.

Seawater cannot get really, really cold like air. Seawater freezes at about -1.9C (28.6F), just around Iceland in March the sea is simply above freezing. Information technology is theoretically possible to get frostbite in cold water, then, but very unlikely.

On the keel of the upturbed boat, however, the sub-feezing air temperature was taking its cost. The fishermen'south moisture shirts, sweaters and jeans were quickly exacerbating their coldness. Staying put was not an option.

"When you come out of the water yous go evaporative cooling," says Tipton. "This is a really stiff way of losing heat from the body." Ordinarily you would desire to strip off and put dry out article of clothing on, but in the absenteeism of that, climbing into a big plastic purse volition reduce evaporative cooling and convective cooling.

"If you get someone wet at 4C and they have got a litre of water in their clothing; if all of that water evaporates they are going to have a fall in body temperature of 10C," says Tipton. "If y'all put them through the aforementioned scenario and then put them in a plastic handbag they tin can use their body to heat upward that h2o. It is contained in the bag then it cannot evaporate away. Those people lost half a caste, so they were xx times amend off."

The fishermen were separated from land by three miles of frigid sea (Credit: Getty Images)

Tipton says i of the big successes his team at the Academy of Portsmouth have had was to encourage the Royal Canadian Mounted Law to ditch their expensive foil space blankets in favour of cheap, tough, plastic survival bags. Infinite blankets, the kind that are wrapped around marathon runners at the stop of races, are proficient at protecting confronting radiative heat loss, just less proficient when it comes to evaporative heat loss, because they practise not trap fluid. In a survival situation, a plastic bag would be far more than useful.

Without a plastic survival bag, and now in the cold air with the seawater evaporating off him, Friðþórsson'southward take chances of freezing cold injuries was very high.

Afterwards a curt while deliberating, the iii men decide to risk the swim. Within 10 minutes, the two others had succumbed to the cold. In all, it took Friðþórsson six hours to swim to land. How was he able to survive for then much longer than his compatriots?

For the fishermen, the first few minutes subsequently hitting the h2o were disquisitional. Cold water takes rut away from the body quicker than air at the aforementioned temperature. Those that succumbed rapidly were probably unable to control the common cold shock response. Gasping and panicking, they inhaled water. Friðþórsson, by contrast, managed to control his breathing.

He later described remaining clear-headed throughout his swim. He even chose to get dorsum in the sea to swim further along the shoreline after the cliffs at his beginning landing spot proved too difficult to climb. The presence of listen to practise this probably saved his life.

Finally, Friðþórsson reached a village, and around 7am on Monday morning time he knocked on someone'due south door. He was later discharged from hospital having been treated for his cuts and dehydration. In that location was no sign that he had suffered from hypothermia at all.

Friðþórsson, at present 58, is a large homo. He stands 6'three" (193cm) and weighed 19.6 rock (125kg) in his twenties. A generous layer of fat near two and a half centimetres thick wraps his belly. His body fatty kept him insulated, but it was also a vital source of energy.

Even so, his ability to stay warm was exceptional. Researchers who conducted tests on Friðþórsson after his ordeal concluded that he must have been able to maintain near normal body temperature for the entirety of his swim.

Unlike other extreme survivors, Friðþórsson has non made his story into a money-spinner. A 2012 independent Icelandic film is the sum full of the mainstream coverage. The apparel that he wore, now on display in the Eldheimar Museum on Heimaey in a small exhibit to the island's fishing history, are a modest recognition for his remarkable story.

--

Join ane one thousand thousand Future fans by liking us on Facebook , or follow the states on Twitter  or Instagram .

If yous liked this story, sign up for the weekly bbc.com features newsletter , called "The Essential List". A handpicked selection of stories from BBC Future, Culture, Worklife, and Travel, delivered to your inbox every Friday.

hoffmancontery.blogspot.com

Source: https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20200226-how-to-survive-in-the-extreme-cold