I always wondered about this. For anyone who’s ever almost died, lost consciousness, or experienced extreme cold for a long time how did it feel like?
Its kind of late to ask this since winter is over and now it’s spring.
You suddenly feel really warm and comfortable and want to just fall asleep.
Before I hit that state, my body went into convulsions in a successful attempt to 1) wake me up & 2) use muscle contractions to generate a bit of heat. I did feel slightly warmer for a few minutes every time that happened. About 2 hours later I was able to get someplace warmer.
Never happened to me, but this is what I’ve heard.
Forecast 3’-5’ feet of snow above 7000 feet elevation in the Sierras Thursday-Friday. 
Have you ever actually experienced that or is this just what you read/heard?
Yes, a couple times. Just from being out in the cold too long in wet clothes when I was a kid. While not exactly a bad way to die, it is a huge reason I left Ohio for sunny socal.
Just a WAG but I think it would feel pretty horrible. I’m going out on a limb here tho.
Well, being cold is horrible and painful. But when suddenly it all goes away and you just wanna take a nap…I’ll take that death over burning and in agony until your last breath.
Don’t people start taking their clothes off because they feel so hot?
Ah yeah: Hypothermia - Wikipedia
Has anyone here actually fell unconscious, or passed out from intense cold?
I almost died from hypothermia when my best friend and I decided to ride flood waters in the winter in a small boat and then capsized the boat and had to walk out in waist deep water for hours. The water temperature was in the low 50’s at the best and the air temperature was in the mid-40’s (that is not literally below freezing but very cold especially if you are wet for those that don’t speak American).
There wasn’t anything pleasant about it. It took a while to lose muscle control in our legs but the violent shaking started much earlier. My best friend started falling and going under and we wouldn’t have made it at all if he didn’t keep lying to me and saying that dry land and help were only a 100 yards away through the flooded night woods so I just had to keep us both going.
That eventually turned out to be true but we couldn’t stand up on dry land when we reached the edge. It took a whole lot of effort to reach a trailer home in the distance. We collapsed on the steps and knocked on the door. Thankfully, an old widow woman answered. She took one look at us in horror, pulled us inside, stripped us down and put us in a bathtub full of warm water for a couple of hours.
No thanks, that was one of the most unpleasant and dangerous experiences I have ever had. It may be different if you slowly freeze to death on dry land. I hear that some people start hallucinating and interpret the burning sensation as heat so they rip off all their clothes before they die but that isn’t like sitting beside a warm fire either. A lot of the so-called pleasant deaths aren’t at all. That is just what they tell the families as consolation.
Dr. Popsicle (Dr. Gordon Giesbrecht).
The three videos are about half an hour all together but they are well worth watching on what to do in water submersion or being soaked in freezing weather, and how the body responds…
Stranger
Sleepy, euphoria, not really feeling anything.
No, no, that’s getting drunk and peeing yourself.
I used to do an early spring (late March) group canoe/kayak adventure every year. The last few years there were over 100 guys participating, many with zero experience. Many canoes flipped each year.
After being overdressed (wet suit) and staying completely dry each year, I decided to just wear jeans, shirt, and a hoodie. That was the year I made a silly maneuver and dumped my kayak in ice cold water with 35 degree air temperature.
I was fucking miserable. I never reached the sleepy/euphoric point, but I would have appreciated it over the discomfort I felt.
And that, my child, is how granny porn started.
[sub]So sorry to butcher your story, Shag. I blame a sick, sick mind.[/sub]
I lived in the frozen north a few times. I was told if I was ever outside and suddenly felt warm and dizzy to get inside to warmth immediately.
A coroner once told me the most painful way to die is being burned alive, and the least painful to freeze to death, particularly if you’re under the effects of alcohol.
I have never come close to freezing to death but have spent some miserable nights for over 8 hours at close to freezing and it was miserable. Maybe the end isn’t too bad but getting there is not so much fun.
Not at all true. We used to plan an annual river inner-tube trip with a group of friends, and I’ve seen people in mild hypothermia on an 80° day in June, because a large portion of their body was in 50° water for a number of hours.
I helped rescue a guy in a winter survival course who was pretty far along the symptoms chart. To all appearances, he was drunk as a skunk, but there was no way he had consumed any alcohol. The lack of coordination, and stumbling, slurred speech was very similar to what you would expect from someone severely intoxicated.
I suffered from hypothermia at a BoyScout camp held at a high altitude glacial mountain lake when working with a fellow scout to earn our canoe merit badge. He was unable to climb back into an intentionally swamped boat which we were required to demonstrate.
I can remember being very cold at first, then panicking and then just feeling lethargic but not nearly as cold but not warm. While obviously others intervened and I was lethargic, confused and not shivering.
I didn’t have enough motor control to even grip a zipper pull or help pull the sleeping bag up when they got me to the shore, dry and near a fire. It was quite a long time ago but I had to even have assistance to walk which may be the only reason they realized how serious it was due to the lack of shivering.
It was amazing how quickly in cold water I went from a fighting panic to a confused almost non-caring state. But I was 6’2" and 140 pounds when I graduated high school so there wasn’t a lot of thermal mass to protect my core.
I would highly recommend taking precautions to ensure that this experience remains a hypothetical in your life.