how people in extremely cold places can survive? For example, Oymyakon in Siberia regularly gets below – 55°c / – 67°f, and I’m sure we’ve all seen those videos of people throwing boiling water into the air where it freezes instantly. How does blood not freeze? How are mucous membranes and eyeballs not frozen within seconds? How does anybody pee without it instantly freezing?
Obviously people live in heated housing, but how can people go outside/ pee outside without injury? I’ve wondered about this for years, and even more so when I see pictures of animals seemingly frozen in place mid-movement.
Thank you
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Lots of people are going over the practical aspects of how they make it work for them, but I thought I’d come at this from another angle…
You may have heard that humans are warm-blooded. What that really means is, our bodies have a specific temperature they like to be, *and they have ways of maintaining that temperature!* That last part is key.
“Cold-blooded” animals don’t necessarily have colder body temperature than we do. What that term really means is they have no ways of *regulating* temperature, their bodies get warmer or colder with the surrounding environment.
But mammals like us have tons of things we do to keep warm. Our bodies just naturally produce more heat than cold-blooded animals, and more importantly, we naturally increase those heat-producing processes when we start to get too cold.
So, from a scientific perspective, you survive in a cold environment by making sure you don’t lose heat faster than you can make it. That’s what coats and hats and winter clothes are doing, slowing down heat loss so that we can replace it fast enough. Exposed skin cools faster, but our blood pumps heat throughout the body and that can keep it warm.
In theory, a well-fed person can survive almost any temperature indefinitely, provided they have enough insulation.
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