Aren’t hot boxes designed for torture 140F+, and don’t they usually deprive people of water when torturing someone in a hot box? If so, how do people survive w/o ending up dead, in a coma or with long term damage? I’ve heard stories of people being kept in these for days or weeks, and then they recover after being let out.
Obviously, the ones where people survive aren’t actually that hot for very long.
Once a human’s internal temperature exceeds ~104-108 farenheit, a person just dies. There’s no possibility of survival because the elevated temperatures causes proteins that compose the machine parts keeping us alive to denature and quit working.
Basic physics says that if the ambient temperature throughout the entire box exceeds the heat stroke temperature, and a person has run out of water for evaporative cooling, they will die just as soon as the heat transfers into their body. Humans produce waste heat as well. Thermodynamics means the heat will transfer over time.
Evaporative cooling is also limited in how effective it can be. This is why there’s a measuring instrument called a “wet bulb thermometer (or modern electronic equivalent)”, used to calculate the heat index. If the index is above the temperature for heat stroke, it’s going to happen to every human being alive if exposed to that temperature for long enough.
Maybe 140F is high, but these are used in areas where the heat is 90F+, plus it is humid so you’d assume 110F heat index is not unrealistic. Plus the metal is going to trap heat, so the internal temp in a hot box is going to be higher than 108F. People have been kept in them for days or weeks, how could their bodies keep their internal temps below 104F, and how could they avoid losing 10% of their bodyweight in water if water was being restricted? A person can lose 10-14L of water a day in a hot environment due to sweating, which is 20-28 pounds of water. With a 150 pound person, it doesn’t take long to lose 15 pounds of water and 10% of their bodyweight which will lead to long term damage if not death.
Frankly, this sounds like it kills people a decent percentage of the time.
In 1982 an official at a Louisiana prison farm was indicted after the deaths of two teens who were kept in a hot box for 15 hours.
Does a “hot box” (as discussed in this thread) exist for any other purpose than to be a torture device? Seems surprising that such a thing would exist in any U.S. prison even as recently as 1982, even is such a backward and barbaric state as Louisiana.
Not really an answer, but i remember reading in “Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine” that the crew below the deck in a steam ship, the people have to tend to the engines, typically work ten + hour shifts in temperatures exceeding 150 F.
Also, the salt farmers in Ethiopia who work all day in 110 degree heat.
They chalked it up to just getting used to it.
Well that depends upon your definition of torture. You could call a hot box or sweat box a form of solitary confinement used to enforce prison discipline. That sidesteps the torture question.
The wikipedia link is helpful. Box (torture) - Wikipedia
The US apparently stuffed Iraqis into crates during the Iraq War. Cite. The article addresses the OP: [INDENT] The military said the boxes are humane and are checked every 15 minutes. It said detainees, who stand inside the boxes, are isolated for no more than 12 hours at a time.
“Someone in a segregation box is actually observed more than those anywhere else,” said Maj. Neal Fisher, a spokesman for Task Force 134, the Marine unit in charge of detainees. “Their care and custody does not change simply because they are in segregation.”
A prisoner has never fallen ill or died because of being held in a segregation box, Fisher said.
Human rights advocates say little is known about how the military treats prisoners inside these boxes.[/INDENT] The possibility of death is inherent in most torture devices, which is why they require careful monitoring if the victim is to remain alive.
The laws of physics disagree.
Maybe they were well hydrated. Perhaps the human body can withstand high heat as long as it keeps sweating profusely.
150 F, though? That really sounds too high for survival.