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
In: 5357
Bluf: don’t be outside any more than absolutely necessary, and proper clothing. You’ll live.
Live in Fairbanks, AK, and have to do multiple annual arctic survival type things (army) each winter. Yeah, people generally don’t just stand around in those temperatures. When you are outside, it’s impressive how quickly thermodynamics works. Your stored body heat in your clothes is sapped in minutes. Layered clothing has a huge role to play. Layer up, have insulated layers under your outermost layer. That insulated layer stores the heat your body generates. Have as little exposed skin possible. Always use gloves to avoid contact frostbite. I could go on.
In training it was (cleverly) pointed out to us that basically your body is attempting to heat up the world surrounding you, from the atmosphere to the ground below. That’s obviously a huge struggle. Any wind, or you walking around, and any air you’ve heated leaves. So your body is constantly struggling a losing battle, burning tons of calories to warm the insulated layer you have on. Without that layer, you won’t last long.
Edit: wording.
Edit again: I put it at the top, since my use of bluf seems to be the highlight of my comment lol
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