Recently my friend told me the best thing to keep you warm in really cold weather was animal furs. He claimed to have read in the newspaper about people in Siberia throwing away their store bought coats and using animal furs. I would have thought that if this was true then all coats for use in freezing weather (eg Siberia, Everest ect) would be made of animal furs. Was my friend just making this up or is it true?
I have always found that there aer synthetic fibers that work better.
Gore-Tex, for example.
Of course, the best way to keep warm, that I have found, is to pay my gas bill.
Your friend’s story is ridiculous. Why would they throw away the store bought coats? If they were so crappy and furs were so readily available, why did they buy coats from the stores in the first place? Makes no sense.
The answer to the more general question is not straight forward. Animal fur and man made coats are all over the spectrum in terms of their material properties. It just depends. I would guess that the best man made coats are better than any animal fur but that animal fur is better that most man made coats. Obviously, mink keeps you warmer than a wind breaker but the top level moutaineering gear is the best of all.
Haj
Am I the only one who thought that this thread title/poster combination was especially funny?
I saw a documentary type thing a few years ago where they put people in a big freezer wearing either fancy multi-hundred dollar man-made coats, or cariboo fur coats and ran experiments. For the particular man-made coats they tested in that study, the real fur coat was as good or slightly better. That doesn’t mean it’s that way every time. We CAN come up with warmer synthetic coats than we can skin off animals. However, if you’re not shelling out the big bucks for the best “fake” coat, then fur would probably work better (I don’t know - what do fur coats cost?) You see different kinds of coats in different (but still fridged) places for reasons other than the properties of the coats themselves. Most people in Antarctica are reasonably well-paid scientists, whereas many people in Northern Canada are poor inuit who hunt for a living. People climbing Everest are mostly younger adventurous thrill-seeker types who have some extra time and money on their hands. All three would probably choose a different coat based simply on income and lifestyle… as long as it was “warm enough”.
Your selection of coat depends on several factors:
How windy is it?
How wet is it?
How much does it weigh?
How durable is it?
How easy is it to maintain?
How expensive is it?
Does it look good on you?
So, if you expect to be getting wet a fur coat probably isn’t such a good idea. If it is very windy the leather of a fur coat is a great windbreaker. If you’re climbing Mt. Everest weight is probably an important factor so a fur coat would be a bad idea.
In short I don’t think there is one correct answer but rather many different answers depending on your circumstances.
I read an account online a few years ago by someone who, along with a friend, took dogsleds across Canada above the arctic circle, east to west, coast to coast. They started out in modern stuff, then stayed with some eskimos for a while. While they were there, they learned how to make seal fur parkas, pants and mukluks, and travelled about half their trip wearing that stuff. Once they got close to Alaska, they ran into a modern settlement and traded the furs in for modern stuff again.
Both performed adequately; the only factor determining which they wore was availability: the eskimos had seal furs, the people in town had gore-tex.
Your friend was quite correct.
Provided your friend’s fur coat is one that he grew himself.
Stay tuned for the following threads from Jockstrap:
[ul]GQ: Why do we itch?
IMHO: 3 ways to give better support
MPSIMS: I’m having a ball!
Cafe Society: Dressing right for formal Balls
IMHO: Am I nuts?[/ul]
That is too funny attrayant!