If the heat goes off in your hosue or apartment, and it is 40 degrees outside, would you actually be in danger of dying if it lasted a long time?
Or at least hypothermia?
Possibly if you were naked with no blankets.
Haj
To expand on hajario’s note as long as you can keep your core temperature high enough for metabolic functions to operate you won’t die of hypothermia. It’s all a heat loss equation. You could easily survive at 40 (and potentially much lower) as long as you had clothes and food. Think about the Arctic and Antarctic explorers. Months at a time in near-and below freezing temps with only clothes, tents, food and the occasional fire.
Conversely you could also easily die of hypothermia with a belly full of food swimming for a brief time in a slightly chill ocean as the heat is being taken away faster than it can be generated. That why wool and other wicking fibers and rain protection is so critical to survival in the wild.
Thanks.
Many years ago the heat went off in our apt. for an hour. It got really cold.
Of course, it was all heat, so no using the stove.
I suppose if you covered up with lots of blankets…what if it were 20 out?
40 deg F isn’t really that cold.
Where I live on winter nights it can get down to as cold as -10 deg C and that’s before wind chill, which I admit isn’t that cold compared to more northerly places.
I always sleep with the heat off and the window open and I never wake up feeling cold.