Sub-zero temperatures and wind are a rather dangerous combination for the human body. Our body is not designed to adapt to extreme cold, and being in such conditions without protective equipment can lead to really terrible consequences, when the word "freeze" acquires the utmost meaning.
Here are the main ones:
1. Freezing of the cornea of the eye
If you are outside for a short time in cold weather while running or walking, your eyes will watery, lowering the freezing point, and regular blinking will keep your eyes working. But if you like active rest and do winter sports, spending a lot of time in the cold with the wind in your face, you should not forget about safety glasses.
Experts recommend warming up frozen eyes with a warm hand or with a compress, but this will not help to avoid short-term blurred vision. In addition, contact lenses can freeze to the eyeball under the influence of wind and cold.
Typically, the eyes thaw by the time the victim is seen by a doctor, and any damage usually heals within a few days or weeks. But in severe cases, tissue loss can occur, requiring reconstructive surgery.
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2. Freezing of skin, muscles and tissues
Unlike your eyes, your limbs can freeze completely, causing you to fall or even lose a leg, ear, or toe.
Frostbite not only causes a burning or tingling sensation in the skin, but often affects the muscles, tissues and fat underneath. The risk is especially great if your clothing is not suitable for the weather. When the temperature drops below -40 ° C, the skin can freeze within minutes.
The longer you are exposed to extreme cold, the more likely your organs will freeze to a state requiring amputation. This applies not only to people, but also to animals, which also have a hard time in winter, despite their fluffy coats.
If frostbite spreads into the body, life is threatened.
3. "Disconnecting" the body
The human body is adapted to maintain an internal temperature of 37 ° C. Any deviation causes serious problems, and when the body temperature begins to drop, hypothermia, or hypothermia, occurs.
A drop in temperature to 32–35 ° C triggers a process that is accompanied by constant tremors, fatigue, rapid breathing and other symptoms. Cooling to more than 32 ° C is called mild hypothermia. In this case, the breathing of the victims slows down due to hypoventilation of the lungs, and their actions resemble a state of alcoholic intoxication with poor coordination and slurred speech. The cessation of tremors is a warning sign.
When the body temperature drops below 28 ° C, the risk of death increases. Looking at a person in this state, one might think that he is already dead. Around the same mark, loss of consciousness occurs, the pupils dilate, and breathing and pulse become barely noticeable. Severe hypothermia requires immediate resuscitation.
4. Confusion of consciousness
Rarely, but it happens that people dying from hypothermia, in their last throes, take off all their clothes. There are stories that tell of whole groups who were found dead and completely naked on the side of a mountain, their clothes neatly laid alongside. Sometimes the police mistake such pictures for a robbery.
Hypothermia impairs mental capacity and confuses thoughts. In the later stages, blood flow slows down and the blood vessels dilate, making the victims feel as if they are engulfed in flames, when in fact their body is rapidly losing heat. As a result, they throw off their clothes and doom themselves to death.
Another bizarre reaction to hypothermia can be the so-called burying behavior. Scientists believe that in the human brain, under the influence of cold, an autonomous process is activated, similar to the instinct of animals that dig holes for themselves before winter. With their last strength, the unfortunate are trying to protect their bodies, burying themselves in the snow as much as possible.
5. Transformation into a mummy
If a person dies where the frost is strong enough and hardly anyone will find his body, then over time he will most likely turn into a frozen mummy.
George Mallory, the explorer of Mount Everest, went missing in 1924. The team found his body only in 1999. Most of his clothing was torn, but the frozen flesh underneath was remarkably well preserved. In 2004, tourists on the border with Italy and Austria found the surviving bodies of three Austro-Hungarian soldiers, which had been in the glacier since 1918. And this is not the limit. In Italy, at an altitude of 3200 m, as a result of ice melting, a mummy of a Stone Age man named Etzi was discovered. Although the appearance of this body cannot be called primordial, without cold conditions nothing would remain of it but bones.
To prevent these chilling nightmares from becoming a reality, remember to take precautions when staying in the cold and doing winter sports, especially in the coldest corners of our planet. Choose the right clothing, do not neglect your protection, and take extreme weather alerts from authorities seriously.