I was reading a novel recently (omitting the title so I don’t have to worry about spoilers), where a character accidentally kills himself by drinking high-proof rum out of a metal flask that had been sitting in snow for a couple of hours. The scene takes place in Alaska in the winter with the temperature in the -40s to -50s.
In the story the guy realizes he’s done something stupid the instant the rum hits his throat, but by then it’s too late. After a few minutes of agony, the lining of his esphagous sloughs off and he chokes to death.
Is it possible? Has it ever actually happened to anyone?
Immediately after taking a big swig he drops to his knees gagging, and eventually starts coughing up the lining to his throat. He’s lying dead in a pool of frozen blood when some other characters find him an hour or so later. I’m assuming that he choked.
It says that the flask was in the snow. So if the outside air temperature was -40 or -50, thats just the temperature of the air, not what it would be within the snow. No ?
Everything would be at that temperature if it was that cold long enough. Although snow acts as an insulator and slows down the cooling process, it could still get to -40 near the surface of the snow bank.
I’d don’t have the book here at work with me, but as I recall it was 151 rum, which according to the table above would freeze at around -40. So given the circumstances of the story it could still have been liquid (but just barely).
So … can you kill yourself by swallowing a big swig of rum chilled to 40 below? It sounds like whuckfistle is saying “yes”.
The guy would also have trouble because the metal flask would freeze to his lips so he would have trouble taking the flask away so more supercooled liquid down the gullet.
etgaw1
I seem to recall we recently discussed physiological damage that could occur from drinking overchilled alcohol, specifically with respect to vodka. Off to search.
Ah yes, here we go. Some specific information about how something that cold could hurt you from one of our resident physicians.
My understanding is that the extreme cold froze all the water in the rum, leaving only pure alcohol in liquid form. The character drank this essentially pure alcohol (while the rest of the rum was frozen in the flask), thus killing him by alcohol poisoning.
Hmm, on second thought that wouldn’t cause the stated damage to the esophagus. But even if it wasn’t that cold (say, only 20 below), he’d still stand to suffer soon enough from drinking pure alcohol, right?
It would have to be a pretty big flask. Just separating the alcohol from the water doesn’t change the amount of alcohol. It wouldn’t be any more dangerous than drinking the entire flask of normal rum, in terms of toxicity.
