# How exactly do people freeze in winter? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [June 16, 2018, 6:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-exactly-do-people-freeze-in-winter/816211 "2018-06-16T18:15:20Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 15\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![md2000](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/73ab20/32.png) [@md2000](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/md2000)\ **Post date:** [June 18, 2018, 5:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-exactly-do-people-freeze-in-winter/816211/21 "2018-06-18T17:20:27Z")
> [@pool](#): > > Stuff like the jeep story seems weird to me, I wonder how cold it was. It seems like as awkward as it might feel that 4 guys getting as close as they could to one another could generate enough heat to stay alive, I wonder how cold it has to get before it’s not possible for a small group of people like that to die. Minus 40 or lower. You figure out whether it matters if minus 40 is F or C. I heard they were in sneakers and jeans and thin coats in moderately deep snow. The miracle is the guy that survived after walking about 10 miles. I’ve been out in that weather in dead calm. It doesn’t take long for you to feel it, and a metal car is not a good shelter. There’s a really interesting Jack London short story about a guy who falls through the ice to his waist in Alaska or the Yukon, and then struggles to get a fire going before his fingers go numb. The dog, meanwhile, is clever enough to stay out of reach so he can’t warm his hands in the dog by slicing open its guts. When I see a movie like the original Superman where a now-powerless Christopher Reeves is walking down the Alaska Highway in a windbreaker, I know the scriptwriters have never experienced real cold. ---
**Author:** ![rat\_avatar](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/rat_avatar/32/255_2.png) [@rat\_avatar](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/rat_avatar)\ **Post date:** [June 19, 2018, 6:57am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-exactly-do-people-freeze-in-winter/816211/22 "2018-06-19T06:57:39Z")
Hypothermia kicks in at 95 F which isn’t much below 98.6 F. In the case of snow, wet clothes, often from overexertion can accelerate the loss. Windchill adds to this, but it doesn’t take much to think that “just 5 more minutes” and you will be unstuck, find a house or… By the time you reach 95 F lethargy and confusion is already kicked in and decision making just gets worse the colder your body gets. If you get much colder than 83 F the risk of heart attack goes way up and if your core gets below 68 F Brain function stops. Typically your will expire before anything but your exterior appendages suffer frost bite. Most people aren’t told to look out for the _'umbles_ ( stumbles, mumbles, fumbles, and grumbles ) when out in the cold or don’t see it as a life threatening. If you are out in the cold and notice them in yourself or another you have to stop _then and there_ and take care of it or it will probably just be too late. ---
**Author:** ![msmith537](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/d9b06d/32.png) [@msmith537](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/msmith537)\ **Post date:** [June 19, 2018, 12:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-exactly-do-people-freeze-in-winter/816211/23 "2018-06-19T12:00:35Z")
So medically, how do you get these cases where people survive because they are exposed to cold temperatures? ---
**Author:** ![Shagnasty](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/9dc877/32.png) [@Shagnasty](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Shagnasty)\ **Post date:** [June 19, 2018, 12:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-exactly-do-people-freeze-in-winter/816211/24 "2018-06-19T12:58:51Z")
> [@Siam\_Sam](#): > > I have heard freezing to death is relatively painless. But I’ve also read an account where two people froze to death in a car stuck in the middle of nowhere during a storm and left some writings behind. In them, they wrote that freezing hurt a lot. Which is true? It isn’t painful but it is still terrifying. To make a long story short, my best friend and I decided to try to ride rapid floodwaters in the winter in a very small boat as a thrill. Then, we lost the boat and had to try to try to walk out of waist deep, very cold water for hours while losing function after function. The only reason we lived was because he kept lying to me telling me that he knew exactly where we were and help was just around the corner. Neither one of us could walk when we reached and edge and found a house with someone willing to help. He was completely incoherent by that point. A very smart local college student here in Massachusetts decided to take a shortcut home in May last year through a local swamp late at night. He never made it because he got hypothermia and made poor decisions even though it was a fairly short walk. It took days and teams of people to find his body. He wasn’t even that far from home. I already knew what happened to him because I lived through it. ---
**Author:** ![Shodan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/9f8e36/32.png) [@Shodan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Shodan)\ **Post date:** [June 19, 2018, 1:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-exactly-do-people-freeze-in-winter/816211/25 "2018-06-19T13:44:27Z")
There’s the [30-30-30 rule](https://lacrossetribune.com/news/opinion/air-force-rules-for-cold-weather/article_39e83c39-fef6-5a78-9c37-a512f1aa51ff.html) I learned as a wee **Shodan** - at -30F with a 30mph wind, any exposed flesh will freeze in 30 seconds. Regards, Shodan ---
**Author:** ![Leo\_Bloom](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/leo_bloom/32/10377_2.png) [@Leo\_Bloom](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Leo_Bloom)\ **Post date:** [June 19, 2018, 2:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-exactly-do-people-freeze-in-winter/816211/26 "2018-06-19T14:51:54Z")
> [@rat\_avatar](#): > > … > > Most people aren’t told to look out for the _'umbles_ ( stumbles, mumbles, fumbles, and grumbles ) when out in the cold or don’t see it as a life threatening. > > … Excellent. That and 30-30-30 I’ll remember. (Although probably not by the time I’m 'umbling.) And it occurs to me the 'umbles perfectly describes me when getting up to pee in the middle of the night negotiating a cluttered toy filled hallway. ---
**Author:** ![rat\_avatar](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/rat_avatar/32/255_2.png) [@rat\_avatar](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/rat_avatar)\ **Post date:** [June 19, 2018, 10:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-exactly-do-people-freeze-in-winter/816211/27 "2018-06-19T22:46:21Z")
> [@msmith537](#): > > So medically, how do you get these cases where people survive because they are exposed to cold temperatures? Are you talking about cases where they are lucky enough to receive _extracorporeal life support_? IIRC in those cases external life support systems take over for the heart until it starts to function again. Here is a study about that. [No patient survived prior to 1999, while nine out of 24 (37.5%) survived hypothermic cardiac arrest from 1999 to 2013.](https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0300957214005243) ---
**Author:** ![AK84](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/85e7bf/32.png) [@AK84](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AK84)\ **Post date:** [June 20, 2018, 7:39am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-exactly-do-people-freeze-in-winter/816211/28 "2018-06-20T07:39:38Z")
> [@Siam\_Sam](#): > > I have heard freezing to death is relatively painless. But I’ve also read an account where two people froze to death in a car stuck in the middle of nowhere during a storm and left some writings behind. In them, they wrote that freezing hurt a lot. Which is true? There are radio recordings of trapped soldiers on Siachen Glacier. They seemed inhumanly calm. ---
**Author:** ![outlierrn](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/outlierrn/32/3005_2.png) [@outlierrn](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/outlierrn)\ **Post date:** [June 21, 2018, 4:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-exactly-do-people-freeze-in-winter/816211/29 "2018-06-21T16:28:01Z")
It’s possible to ‘freeze to death’ in temperatures well above freezing. ---
**Author:** ![ssgenius](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/b5ac83/32.png) [@ssgenius](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ssgenius)\ **Post date:** [June 21, 2018, 8:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-exactly-do-people-freeze-in-winter/816211/30 "2018-06-21T20:29:51Z")
> [@engineer\_comp\_geek](#): > > Our company did a project on the North Slope (Alaska) many years ago. At -40 deg F (which is also -40 deg C, incidentally), if you take a cup of coffee and throw it into the air, it is so cold that the coffee freezes into a “coffee snow cloud” and blows away in the wind. It doesn’t hit the ground. > > -40 is really fricken cold. > > Sad story about the guys in the jeep. If they had tunneled into the snow and made a snow cave of sorts, their body heat might have kept them alive, but exposed to the air, they probably didn’t stand a chance. The coffee story is a bit of an exaggeration. It doesn’t freeeze instantly in the air even at -40 C (Yes, I have tried it and most of just ends up on the ground) Some of it will vaporize creating a nice effect for a youtube video but most of it will hit the ground still as a liquid and then freeze. ---
**Author:** ![msmith537](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/d9b06d/32.png) [@msmith537](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/msmith537)\ **Post date:** [June 22, 2018, 4:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-exactly-do-people-freeze-in-winter/816211/31 "2018-06-22T16:07:45Z")
> [@rat\_avatar](#): > > Are you talking about cases where they are lucky enough to receive _extracorporeal life support_? > > IIRC in those cases external life support systems take over for the heart until it starts to function again. Here is a study about that. > > [No patient survived prior to 1999, while nine out of 24 (37.5%) survived hypothermic cardiac arrest from 1999 to 2013.](https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0300957214005243) Interesting. Although in the case of that woman who was “frozen solid” in Minnesota in the 80s, I’m wondering was she literally frozen like a popsicle, or did her muscles just cramp up or something making her appear that way. Because it’s my understanding that the problem with actually freezing a person is that the human body is mostly water. And water, when frozen, expands and forms ice crystals which damage tissue at a cellular level. Basically that’s how you get frostbite. > [@Shagnasty](#): > > It isn’t painful but it is still terrifying. They say freezing to death is just like falling asleep…in a meat locker. ---
**Author:** ![Siam\_Sam](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/d78d45/32.png) [@Siam\_Sam](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Siam_Sam)\ **Post date:** [June 24, 2018, 7:08am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-exactly-do-people-freeze-in-winter/816211/32 "2018-06-24T07:08:37Z")
> [@msmith537](#): > > They say freezing to death is just like falling asleep…in a meat locker. I hate it when that happens. ---
**Author:** ![Leo\_Bloom](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/leo_bloom/32/10377_2.png) [@Leo\_Bloom](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Leo_Bloom)\ **Post date:** [June 24, 2018, 6:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-exactly-do-people-freeze-in-winter/816211/33 "2018-06-24T18:53:40Z")
🙂 During the crazy heat of summer, before I had an a/c, or even nowadays when I’m in the neighborhood, I would head for a meat distributor–one of the last in the Meatpacking District in NYC–and hang out in their huge walk through, changing aisles when I got bored. ---
**Author:** ![Tim\_T-Bonham.net](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/46a35a/32.png) [@Tim\_T-Bonham.net](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tim_T-Bonham.net)\ **Post date:** [June 24, 2018, 11:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-exactly-do-people-freeze-in-winter/816211/34 "2018-06-24T23:13:06Z")
> [@Leo\_Bloom](#): > > 🙂 During the crazy heat of summer, before I had an a/c, or even nowadays when I’m in the neighborhood, I would head for a meat distributor–one of the last in the Meatpacking District in NYC–and hang out in their huge walk through, changing aisles when I got bored. My parents mentioned going to a movie theatre – most of them were air conditioned (or air cooled) long before other places, and you could stay for hours. Some even operated qall night, so people would actually sleep in them. ---
**Author:** ![Tim\_T-Bonham.net](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/46a35a/32.png) [@Tim\_T-Bonham.net](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tim_T-Bonham.net)\ **Post date:** [June 24, 2018, 11:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-exactly-do-people-freeze-in-winter/816211/35 "2018-06-24T23:21:00Z")
> [@msmith537](#): > > So medically, how do you get these cases where people survive because they are exposed to cold temperatures? The body shuts down circulation to the extremities, to preserve heat for the vital functions (heart & brain). So they may survive, if rescued in time, but lose many fingers, toes, hands, etc. to severe frostbite. Also, all such medical info is a statistical summary of what happens on average. There are always exceptions to that – some people who survive despite freezing conditions, and others who succumb in moderate conditions. Doctors always go with the odds, but hope that their patient beats 'em this time. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-exactly-do-people-freeze-in-winter/816211.md?page=1)