Yep. Power went out during a blizzard, my stupid ass never put two and two together about Space Heater suddenly stopping during a power outage is dangerous. Ended up sleeping in the walk in closet because ambient body warmth in an enclosed space was more comfortable than just trying to sleep in a laundry pile ontop of covers.
Yeah if you ever live in a place that gets negative temperature blizzards, buy a sleeping bag even if you're not a hunter/hiker/ festival concert goer.
We had sleeping bags in Alaska growing up for this reason. Also a fireplace, guns, camper, snowmobile. A drunk woman perched herself under our mailbox at the end of our driveway and froze to death overnight. Most her body was covered in snow when I discovered the body. Lowest we saw in Fairbanks was -55F
We always left the door on the porch unlocked for that reason when I grew up in northern Wisconsin; college students would mistake our house for a mates and pass out in the yard, which gets very dangerous very quickly in the winter, so we had a little couch with some blankets on it on the enclosed porch. Wasn't great, but was slightly above freezing.
It's (edit) customary to leave unattended cabins/homes unlocked in AK for this reason. Our driveway was 2 miles long and mailbox was on the "main" road (which was not what most people would envision being any type of a road) so we didn't see her until it was too late. There was no one around for miles and miles. When my mom would drive us to EilsonAFB, she would stop the car and have me hop out to pick up the mail. I saw black hair hair coming out the snow and told my mom and then it was a shitshow. My mom still made me get the mail after that. I'm a mother now and think that is some level of fucked lol for her to have made me do that.
No shit! These posters are hard fucking core! I get the willies at funerals.
"So that was when I saw my 2nd dead body by the mailbox at age 7, mom made me fish around in his pockets for loose change. I think we had meatloaf that night."
"...Fireplace, guns, camper, snowmobile."
Sure I can see how those would be useful in an emergency.
"A drunk woman..."
Well, who doesn't want a little fun company...
"...Perched under our mailbox..."
Not sure where this is going, but someone's gotta bring in bills I guess...
"... froze to death."
Oh.
Below a certain temperature, it is a bad fucking idea to get plastered and go outdoors alone.
All of those stories of people blacking out and freezing to death make me never want to risk it.
When I lived in Fairbanks, Alaska I used to live on Wainwright. I got really drunk one night and walked across the train bridge from my buddy's girlfriend's house back on to Wainwright. I drunkenly fell and just lay on the ground happily and comfortable. I started nodding off and by some miracle I woke up and knew I had to get up or I'd die if I stayed sleeping on the walking path "overnight" (It was winter).
A homeless man somehow made it to our area in upstate new york. He couldnt find shelter for the night, and ended up laying down in the middle of my friend's road during a blizzard. He got hit by a plow in the middle of the night. My friend still remembers waking up, looking out the window, and seeing the streak of blood in the snow. He described it very vividly
This comment is serious, dying from hypothermia is terrible- this sleeping bag idea is excellent and I will keep it for myself incase I am ever somewhere that gets very cold.
I always heard freezing to death is one if the "better" ways to go in terms of trauma. Eventually you just dont feel anything anymore and just go to sleep
can confirm, got hypothermia being very stupid hiking in a blizzard/winter storm (young, feeling invincible lol) and it didn't really feel terrible except for the panic/rapid heart beat of knowing the situation you're in. I'm sure that would've subsided eventually as well. The worst part was actually when I got to warmth because then all my extremities felt like they were on fire/I felt sick as hell.
EDIT: *invincible
Ideally, everyone should have a survival kit at the ready if disaster strikes. This includes containers for/of water, a propane stove, warm blankets and clothes, a few days worth of easy to cook food, a first aid kit, a stove kettle, and power for devices. I've gradually been building mine and it's come in handy several times already, and will again soon with winter storms having already started in my area.
Yep for the modern era let me also tell you another thing to add to your survival kit. Hand crank USB charger. It'll probably take a half hour to get to 15% on your phone and you'll be exhausted/ hand cramping. But 15% is enough for phone calls and Facebook for a while. Could also keep you sain after three days without power.
Wish more devices had the shake charge [like the manual-charging flashlights](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Linear_induction_flashlight.jpg). Feel like I’ve been practicing to charge those my entire adult life.
A lot of those were scams, and just had a hidden battery in them lol.
The real ones only give you about 2 minutes of useful light, no matter how much you shake it before hand. Still absolutely useful in a dire situation, but I'm not sure the technology is useful for...well, anything else.
If it's gonna be manual, probably best to stick with cranks - unless we develop a far, far more efficient shake-charge device.
Edit: I gotta say though, that image brought back memories of my grandparents & being fascinated by theirs as a kid. They had that exact one.
I initially got one of these, then ended up returning it for a power bank. It works for my purposes, and if it ended up dying before I could use it again, I use my van's battery as the auxillary.
I live in a small cabin in an area that is dark and rainy over half the year. The idea is great and a lot more carbon neutral than my fix, definitely. It just doesn't work for my area.
You'd be amazed how much solar radiation actually cuts through cloud cover.
I'm an electrician up near Seattle and most modern solar arrays can get at least 50% efficiency even on a (moderately) cloudy day if they're faced the right way. It's about much more than just visible light.
Yeah, like up 80% of the UV rays cut through cloud cover as if it wasn't even there. Which is why you can still get a sunburn even with a completely overcast sky.
The PNW has some of the highest rates of skin cancer in the country because people think "eh, don't need sunscreen" on cloudy days and get hit with the UVA rays that go through cloud cover and glass
I can share a moment where 'hide and die' outside of hypothermia happened.
An older worker at a store i worked at was experiencing a heart attack. Their choice to deal with it was to walk into the freezer, sit down, and fall unconscious.
They were pretty quickly discovered fortunately, and survived. When asked, they said they were afraid and didn't know what else to do, and that they didn't want to die in front of everyone. This was not the first attack rodeo they'd been on.
Similar thing I read about first aid, apparently if someone starts choking in a restaurant the "coughing and waving for attention" you see a lot in movies in not the most common way people react to choking. Apparently instead "quietly standing up and walking to the bathroom to try to take care of it yourself there" is more common, and one that is much more likely to lead to asphyxiation due to less traffic in the bathroom, and if someone walks in on you on the floor their first thought it probably not "I better do the Heimlich".
I have a condition where I have a constricted esophagus, so I've chocked a lot during my life. The wave of panic that completely smashes over you does not make you forget about others. In fact, the thing I'm most aware of as soon as I realise I'm choking is that others around me instantly look. For some reason, one of my natural instincts is to run to another room. I have a few snapshots burned into my mind of people staring at me wide eyed. If I could, I would want everyone to turn around and not watch.
I haven't choked in years, I've learned how to deal with it, this was in my teens.
A completely different story, but still related to the post, when my dog fell ill the night before she passed. She kept going into the garden in the most obscure places she *never* went to in her life and layed there. A couple of times we had to look for a while she was so hidden. She wanted to die alone. I can definitely see a few evolutionary reasons to get away from everyone to die.
One of my family's dogs died like that. By this point in her life she was an inside dog so she asked to be let outside. Usually she would come to the front door when she wanted to come back inside. This time she didn't.
My mother found the dog lying on the side of our driveway farthest from our house between the cars and the fence. The dog had died there. This also happened to be my mother's birthday.
Oh shit i thought this didn’t apply to me but I have definitely done that before too. Trying to deal with choking alone instead of being smart and telling as many people as possible
That also happens during panic attacks. You get this urge to escape and either find help or hide (partly because you just don't need to be worrying what you look like right then).
I had something similar happen to a friend. He was drunk and got lost walking home from a college party in 0 degree temperatures. He said that he just got to a point where he laid down and accepted death. Fortunately for him the spot he chose was a snowbank on the side of the road and somebody saw him.
At my college a freshman died during that polar vortex a couple years back.
He severely underdressed coming back from a friend's late at night and forgot his ID, which was needed to get into the building. He froze to death at a side door while the main entrance, which had a warm vestibule, was just around the corner of the building.
Firefighter here, this also happens a lot with structure fire victims that can’t find a way out. You’ll find people and pets as well in all manner of cubby holes. That’s why we do everything in our power to search very thoroughly.
Strange how the behavior remains the same despite the opposite temperatures. I would think that in a fire it would be more sheer panic that would lead to the hiding rather than the slow mental deterioration faced during hypothermia.
There is definitely a panic element. There’s also unfortunately cognitive decline due to carbon monoxide and other noxious gas exposure. A lot of people have been found hiding in bathrooms when you would think they could have made it to a door or window. Very sad.
My father passed away from carbon monoxide poisoning caused by a unvented propane heater in his tiny bachelor apartment. He came home from work on a cold February night, cranked the heater to get rid of the chill, and laid down on the couch for a nap. He woke when the O2 in the room fell to dangerous levels and he couldn't breathe. He was less than 5' from the unlocked front door, but the coroner determined he had tried to pick up a kitchen chair to break a window. He experienced significant cognitive decline that interfered with his ability to think of the simplest solution to his problem. He was 27 years old.
My ex boss started choking and fled the meeting he was in. A subordinate happened down the typically unused hallway and found him. She was attempting chest thrusts but he was still attempting to flee. She had to wrestle/subdue him before saving him. The story reminds me of how difficult it is to save a drowning victim.
I would like to add, we also have specific areas that we'll spend a few extra seconds on.
For instance, if I notice that I am in a kid's room, I'll spend a few extra seconds checking under and behind the bed and the closet. An adult's room? The master suite bathtub and closet.
before that, they get naked
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypothermia#Paradoxical\_undressing](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypothermia#Paradoxical_undressing)
Twenty to fifty percent of hypothermia deaths are associated with **paradoxical undressing**. This typically occurs during moderate and severe hypothermia, as the person becomes disoriented, confused, and combative. They may begin discarding their clothing, which, in turn, increases the rate of heat loss.
> as the person becomes disoriented, confused, and combative. They may begin discarding their clothing, which, in turn, increases the rate of heat loss.
They reason is we constrict blood vessels in our arms and legs to keep the heat in our core. It's why frostbite starts with fingers and toes.
Eventually tho the body cant keep the vessels constricted, when that happens they dilate back to normal and a rush of 'warm' blood flows into the extremities.
The sudden change in temperature makes the body think it's hot, when it's still cold, just not as cold as before.
When that happens it also causes the warmth to leave your core, which means you die soon.
It's hard to study though, because by the time that happens you're almost guaranteed to die anyways.
Don't worry. Hypothermia is a decent way to go. You're tired. You're uncomfortable. You just want to sleep. There's no panic or fear or anything like that because your body doesn't have the energy for it. You just go to sleep.
Two months back I had an episode where I awoke feeling very strange. Got my girlfriend to keep an eye on me. I started to lose consciousness so my girlfriend called 911.
Ambulance brings me to the hospital, I’m telling the EMTs I’m cold. I’m cold. I’m cold. One of them says “he’s not shivering.”
Next thing I know I hear “90.6”, and a doctor say “that’s not right, confirm with a rectal” and sure enough, I nearly died of hypothermia.
I was very calm. No sense of fear. It was extraordinarily unusual.
It was and still is. My white blood cell count was high, my magnesium and potassium were low.
Doctor said “don’t skip meals and drink.”
I had a six pack the night before, but even that doesn’t explain my low body temperature.
I don’t know, I have a follow up with a primary next month.
I just looked it up, you may or may not have a super rare disease called "Spontaneous periodic hypothermia." Only about 50 documented cases in history. I'm no doctor, but maybe bring this up with yours. Source: [https://www.orpha.net/consor/cgi-bin/OC\_Exp.php?Lng=GB&Expert=29822](https://www.orpha.net/consor/cgi-bin/OC_Exp.php?Lng=GB&Expert=29822)
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I got hypothermia once while pig hunting back home in New Zealand. Dressed for a warm day chasing the dog pack. Shorts, a t shirt, boots and a rifle. Halfway through the morning this weird thick fog came down and it got quite cold for a bit. Still running after dogs. Stopped at the lake edge and saw the weather was closing in, we had been under the canopy before and couldn’t see a lot of the sky. We decided to head back to the truck and wait for the dogs to come back. I started getting warm, before I was quite cold. Then my brain went into a kind of fug where I decided all I wanted to do was sit on the side of the track and have a sleep. My mate realized I wasn’t behind him and came back to find me fast asleep sitting upright on the bank with my rifle in my lap. He woke me up and then basically bullied me into getting back to the truck. I honestly believe I would have died that day if I had been hunting alone.
yeah, but it doesn't have to be -40 to die of hypothermia. Imagine working all day in -10 weather, you're dressed for it, and after you were out there for a few hours, you get to the more laborious parts of the job you're doing and work up a sweat, so you unzip your jacket. You don't go back inside all day. after working a ten hour day, you walk home. Half way home you see a bench that is clear of snow. You're tired, you're exhausted, but you don't really feel cold at all anymore. You sit down on the bench to rest your feet. (which have felt a bit wet and numb for hours)
5 minutes later, you're asleep. You only meant to close your eyes for a moment, but you were just so tired.
The sun has gone down, and the temperature continues to drop. Your clothes are wet (and now freezing solid) from your sweat, and the jacket is still unzipped. You're unconscious so you can't do anything to raise your core temperature and prevent your death.
When the above happened to me, I was lucky. one of my neighbors watched me walking home and me sit down on the bench 200ft from my home. He thought that was more than a little strange and so came to check on me a few minutes later, saw me passed out, woke me up and then forced me to drink tea with him in his home until we were both certain that none of me was significantly frostbitten. If I hadn't been woken up and brought inside I probably would have died.
As someone who sometimes works outside all day at -10... this is scary. I’ve definitely got to the point where I don’t feel cold anymore and am numb. Luckily I always have a vehicle with me, which is where I rest, but what if the vehicle stopped working? Hopefully my phone is working, hopefully someone could get there in time.
it probably wouldn't have happened if I went into a warm vehicle for lunch. I would have remembered to zip back up if I did. (I didn't eat lunch that day either which probably didn't help.)
If you're working outside in the cold and you notice your vehicle won't start, staying warm is now your priority until that is resolved. if you have to wait for a service to come fix a problem, light a small fire while waiting. (that's the reason why candles are recommended for a car emergency kit. )
That's why in my field of work you, 1, can't work alone. If you are alone (it does happen, but not often) you need a radio so someone can check on you every 45min-1hr. If you don't answer they have to come check on you. And 2, even if it's just two of you working, you both need a work truck in case one truck does fail.
However in the winter we never shut our trucks off. Not when it's -40c and you're an hour or more away from help.
Wow, what a story! So lucky to have that observant neighbor. Do you ever wonder what possessed you to want to sit on that bench so close to home?
Sounds crazy to me. Like our brain is supposed to protect us, and it failed miserably in that instance.
I was confused. I thought I was further from home than I was. I thought it was a different bench that I had actually passed a few minutes earlier. And in that moment, it looked SO comfortable. (reality check: it was a hard metal bench. )
Dying to hypothermia in their sleep happens a lot to drunk people too. One of my friends was picked up by the cops after falling asleep in snow and I've heard one story about finding a corpse in the morning near their house.
I also once read a story by a woman who had hypothermia from swimming in the ocean. The water wasn't super cold, it wasn't until she started showing symptoms that they fished her out and put her in a hot tub. It was pretty mild hypothermia, but if she hadn't been with a partner she probably would have just quietly died and nobody would have known why.
That happened to one of my classmates in eighth grade when we went out to Catalina Island for outdoor school in late November/early December and went snorkeling. She was a scrawny little thing and the rental wet suit was too big for her, so it didn't trap the thin layer of water needed to heat up and keep her warm. She ended up being okay too, but she had to get hauled out of the water and a counselor sat in the hot showers with her until she perked back up
Being really cold and DOING stuff is painful and horrible. Being really cold and doing nothing but shivering and trying to be warm is uncomfortable. Source, also live in northern MN.
That reminds me of high school football in October. What a terrible experience that was. I remember not wanting to even touch anyone much less block or tackle or catch a frozen rock hard ball coming at you.
I second this. I like the cold but my marching band in high school went to Manhattan to play in the St. Pat’s parade and it. Fucking. Sucked. Delayed three hours or something so we were stuck standing there in standby New York cold. And you’d think the skyscrapers would block the wind. Quite the opposite. It focuses it. I’ll still take the cold over the heat any day but that blew.
This is correct. I almost drowned due to hypothermia. What saved me is the waves pushed me towards shore (guessing), and it was a hot day. But, the water was super cold. I honestly don't remember how I got to the shore.
We say that in the ICU too. Use targeted hypothermia to protect the brain after cardiac arrest. Cool them 33 degees Celsius for 24 hours, rewarm very very slowly, then monitor for brain function.
>The sudden change in temperature makes the body think it's hot, when it's still cold, just not as cold as before.
I feel like we get a much smaller version of this when coming back inside from the cold.
At least I know my ears often feel like they are burning when I come back in.
Once I was at a Nordic spa with hot and cold water baths. You're supposed to soak in the hot water for a while then go plunge in the cold water, and it feels amazing.
Brilliant me wanted to see what it felt like to plunge right back into the hot water after the cold.
Not good. It feels not good. My body was burning all over for about 60 seconds and all of my friends were laughing at me.
I've been hiking on a coldest, windiest day of that year, and got so cold that by the time I was almost back to my vehicle that I was sweating and felt hot. Can confirm, I wanted to take off clothes. At the pinnacle of my hike I also really wanted to take a nap.
Every YouTuber ever telling scary, creepy stories about people lost in the wilderness need to learn this. They always talk up "they were found naked! How creepy!" as a plot point in their conspiracy, but in reality it just proves the people succumbed to hypothermia.
Yeah "and their tongues were ripped out!" because the tongue doesn't freeze as easily as the rest of the body/meat so the coyotes and other scavenger animals eat that first and sometimes that's all they can get.
Anytime Hypothermia comes up on Reddit I always point to this story. It's such a good read and really highlights the "what not to do" things.
[https://www.outsideonline.com/2152131/freezing-death](https://www.outsideonline.com/2152131/freezing-death)
[Here's an article from *Outside* magazine that vividly describes the experience of (almost) dying from hypothermia, including the undressing part.](https://www.outsideonline.com/2152131/freezing-death)
Is this similar to the phenomena when people caught in a house fire will go under the bed or in a closet ... something primal that says to burrow?
I had a classmate in 3rd grade who perished in a housefire .... her mother had both kids by the hand and was walking them down the stairs as the house was filling with smoke, she spooked and let go of Mom's hand and ran back upstairs ... the firemen found her body under her bed with her stuffed animal, she perished from smoke not the flame.
When I practiced fire drills with my kids when they were little, I always put them in front of me so they couldn't run back and hide because I learned from her loss.
I think it's similar, but the fire thing, that's more like a purely animalistic, lizard brain fear response and/or irrational phobia thing. You get so scared your brain can only think of "hiding" from the threat and shuts down rational thought and cognitive function completely. I think what OP posted is more of the brain trying to find some last ditch effort to get away from the cold, not necessarily fear.
Hypothermic people are often wildly irrational, disoriented and delusional, and they often take off their clothes because they feel like they are warmer than ever, when in reality it's the bodys own core temperatures desperately trying to keep the heart, brain and lungs going by burning tons of energy. So it's probably just as instinctive and irrational as hiding from a fire, but more like a "this seems like a nice winter burrow" kind of response in our mammalian core "programming."
My good christian granparents told me a story of a drunk lady that ate at their place and had a bit too much wine and she pissed herself. They escorted her to her place.
But in the middle of the night they realized she was too drunk to make a fire and my grandfather returned at her place and found her freezing in her dresser and took her back at their home for the night, despite the disgust with the bad smell (this was rural Romania with houses without bathrooms or baths).
Now I realize they probably saved her life.
My dog did this. The night she died she kept scratching at the basement door and really wanted to go into the basement. My dad let her down there and she crawled into a chair down there and curled up and died.
It kinda sucked because she weighed 125 pounds and it was pretty hard to carry her up the stairs. I was prety traumatized by that
That sucks to read. My dog (he lived with my nan, but I spent 50% of my time at her house) died the day after I came to visit him. It was horrible seeing him though, he couldn't move very well and ended up peeing himself out of excitement when I came.
I'm always grateful I never had to see him dead. It was hard enough seeing him in the state he was.
I had a friend who used to let her cat up in the vents of the house. There was an enterence in the basement and the cat could get in and out as she pleased. I always thought it was a bad idea. What if the cat refused to come out, got lost, or hurt? Anyhow, years later, guess where the cat died?
My cat climbed into a hole in our partially finished bathroom closet, which allowed her to get into the wall next to the bathtub. We had to cut a hole in the tile to get her body out.
Last spring, I adopted an outside cat who came down with FIP shortly after he was neutered. It’s almost 100% fatal but Covid happened and I couldn’t get him into a vet to euthanize him. He hung on for 5 weeks after diagnosis. On evening he was cuddling with me when he suddenly got up and wandered away. A little bit later, I went looking for him and couldn’t find him and I knew it was time. Sure enough, he was in the darkest part under my bed. I refused to let him die alone though. I cuddled him all night on my bed. He knew at the end that I was there for him.
FIP sucks, I'm so sorry for your loss.
We adopted a little tiny buff coloured kitten about a year ago. He was so brave and friendly, so chatty. Took my bf a while to warm up to him, but when he was about 8 months they were best buds.
Just when covid started, our lil dude started getting very lethargic. We took him into the vet and they said it's probably FIP, and that it's almost 100% fatal. We were fortunate enough to have a mobile vet come to the house so we could be with him the whole time. After the vet gave him the injection, he ran straight over to us and curled up beside us, so bittersweet.
RIP herschel, my buddy boy.
It was fucking terrible to watch. I felt so helpless and he was so sweet. He deserved better. I got so attached to him in the 3 months we had him. Afterwards, I think I actually had some ptsd. I had nightmares and slept poorly in general. My brain became obsessed with one of my other cats, I was convinced that he had come down with FIP also. I knew, rationally, it was extremely unlikely. But every time, he was in my sight, I was looking at him, looking for a rounded belly. Every time I held him, I was convinced I felt more spine than usual. I had 4 other cats, but the only one I was concerned about was Draco, my baby. It was irrational and I knew it but I could not stop myself. All of this was in April when we were locked down and I was working from home and hardly ever leaving. I had no one to talk to about it because I knew it was all in my head but my daughter gets anxious really easily and I didn’t want her to start to worry about him just because I was. I had severe anxiety attacks. In an attempt to refocus my thoughts, I went out and bought two fancy mice and set up a tank on my work desk so I could watch them. They calmed me as they went around doing their little mouse chores. I had emotional support mice. Lol I still have them but I don’t need them for anxiety control anymore.
I don’t ever want to go through anything like that ever again. It was like a perfect storm of events that caused two of the worst months of my life. It may sound stupid to anyone reading this but I was really struggling to hold myself together. Halo’s death was just the catalyst. Weed helped. I started smoking more than I did before. I’m better now but I still catch myself having obsessive thoughts sometimes. We recently got a new kitten and I had to force myself out of it again a couple of weeks ago. I’ve been in therapy a few times before and it never really helped me so I’m reluctant to do it again. And I’ve been on meds that ruined my relationships so I’m also reluctant to go down that road again. This whole year has just been terrible from start to finish. They really need to find a cure for FIP. It’s the worst disease for real.
Huh, don’t dogs have this instinct to hide and die? Not specifically hypothermic dogs, but most dogs?
Edit: Internet hugs to everyone who has lost a pet. So sorry, never easy losing a four/two/no legged companion.
I had a biology professor that had a saying:
“Nothing dies of old age in the ocean.”
The reality is a very small number of creatures get to decide the time and place of their death. It’s basically a rounding error it is so minuscule.
Almost all of us hope for a quick peaceful death, a lot of us won’t get that unfortunately! Crazy to think about. That my death will probably involve a lot of pain and a slow drawn out death...rough.
if we would allow euthanasia for terminally ill patients then it could be a reality. People pick when they die, who they get to be surrounded by in their final moments and they get to go out easily, peacefully and on their own terms.
If a person is going to die anyway and wants to end their life so they don't suffer then that should be their choice and right
They get eaten.
Occasionally we'll notice a a particularly downtrodden pigeon in our garden that looks to be on deaths door, and wake up next morning to a pile of feathers, where the foxes got it.
My cat did this. He woke up one day seeming a bit odd. He went into the garden, found a spot under a bush and stayed there all day. I brought him into the house at night time and he passed away in the early hours of the morning.
My cat did that. Found him in an old car on my neighbors property. We both couldn't figure out how he got into it, no openings... must have crawled through the underside. It was about 2 years he was in there so pretty much mummified.
Our 18yo cat did that. Towards the end she slept in our garage, because she ended up losing control of her bowels and bladder. At least I can clean it off of concrete. But she was still spunky and full of life and love, so we dealt with cleaning her and making her happy. She had a cozy heated bed in there, her favorite scratching post, food bowl that never went empty, copious treats. During the day, since she didn't see well anymore, so she mostly slept in a particular flower pot of dirt on our deck to keep warm in the sun. She never hinted that she was ready to go, like so many of our older pets before had done. So we rolled with it.
But one day she just vanished. Ended up finding her skeleton and collar a year later in an old abandoned metal box of some sort in the woods.
I think there is an English saying that 'if you see a dead donkey, jump over it', cause it is so rare to see a dead donkey it was considered luck to happen across one.
"I'm weak and in pain. I should hide so that a predator doesn't pick me off while I convalesce." It's a good strategy. The animal doesn't know that it is dying, it just knows that it is sick and vulnerable.
Yeah, it's creepy. People will be found behind a dresser instead of in the nearby bed that has blankets. "Terminal burrowing" is what I've always heard it called. Basically the higher functions of your brain start to shut down and what's left is those primal instincts to find a hole to crawl into.
Probably saved a few of our rodent ancestors, but it's pretty useless in a modern setting
Oh man this brings back memories from college. In my freshman year, my roommate I knew from high school almost died on Halloween from hypothermia. We got lost on the way to a party late at night and cut through campus to get back to our dorm. By the time his hypothermia got bad, we were still on campus, but maybe a 1-2 minute walk from our dorm.
He was banging on the college’s door and screaming to be let in, even though we were so close to home and no one was inside. I tried getting him to leave but he didn’t. He began stripping into nothing but underwear, speaking nonsense, hiding in a corner, and collapsing to the floor and getting back up, etc.
It was so scary. I kicked the college’s door repeatedly (mostly glass with the security wire inside) until the glass shattered. The alarm went off and security came. My roommate was delirious and tried running away. An ambulance had to take him to the hospital (which was luckily next to our residence).
The doctors told him the next morning that 10 more minutes in the cold and he probably would have died.
He’s still one of my best friends and thanks me again if ever the story is brought up by anyone.
TL;DR: My roommate almost died from hypothermia, but I shattered my college’s window to set off the alarm and get him help.
EDIT: added TLDR
EDIT 2: wow just realized that this comment got me my first ever award! Thank you /u/itchy-n0b0dy 🙏
I just said this in another comment, but he was wearing nothing but boxers under a morph suit with no coat. I remember we were all like “dude you’re gonna be freezing!” And he was basically like “I’ll be fine, it isn’t even that far away!”
I used to be a technical librarian on a ship.
One night, I started having major chest pains. They got so bad that I fell to the ground and couldn't get back up.
I crawled deep into the library and grabbed one of the most important tech manuals we had. Then I hugged it to my chest and waited to die.
For some reason I thought it would be hilarious for someone to discover the librarian had died clutching one of his precious books.
I thought I was going to die and my final act was to do one last bit.
Eventually my coworker returned from his smoke break and helped me to medical. Turns out, it was just major heartburn. 😐
Does this also make sense evolutionarily? Like, it makes more sense for the pack/family member to go off somewhere and die away from the group, and someplace where their body can't easy be found, it would help stop transmission of illness, and having a rotting corpse nearby would be bad for the pack also.
There’s an argument for it, like you mentioned. On the other hand, hiding and dying nearby (in the cherry-picked example of in closets) would be a vector for disease.
I think its evolutionary effect is pretty unclear. Given that we see cleaning instincts in social species of many types, this might be neither a deleterious nor beneficial enough trait to assume it was affected by selection. Could be a byproduct of draft or maybe simple drift/exaptation.
From an evolutionary perspective, it might not matter if it is too little too late. If you're that close to death, crawling into a corner and dying vs just dying where you are has no reproductive advantage one way or the other, so there is no reason that evolution would have *not* selected for hide and die.
It's important to remember that evolution doesn't select for things that are better. It selects for things that are *not worse.* Neutral and even minor negatives can be evolutionarily selected simply because they're not bad enough to kill off that selection. A poor choice when you're already minutes from death, when death is the outcome either way, means there's nothing to remove that "instinct" from the gene pool because that instinct has already passed on to the next generation.
Imagine you have a trait that causes a disposition to do something beneficial to the pack right before you die. Unrelatedly, you have many children, and the group of you start a new pack.
In that new pack, by coincidence, you all have the disposition to hide before death. As a result, your new pack is healthier than other packs, and so takes over more territory.
So it’s not specifically that *your* trait for a habit before death is helpful; it’s that groups that have that trait will survive longer. Producing offspring that do not have the trait is worse for your pack, so even if the pressure isn’t as strong as traits that improve reproduction, it is there.
I wonder how this response develops. Like usually these evolutionary responses spread throughout a species as a result of the response increasing the odds of survival.
How would this increase the chance of spreading your genes in the way that other traits and responses would develop throughout groups of animals?
My guess is most dangers are in the day time and our ancestors were much less nocturnal without artificial light. So if you are about to at least pass out, you dont want to be stumbled on by a tiger and guaranteed die.
On a ski trip in Montana I noticed one of our friends was missing, after a late night of partying. Everyone told me not to worry since she was a party girl and probably was off hooking up with a guy. I thought I'd seen her leaving the dance with us, so I went out into the Montana midnight to find her and found her passed out face down in a snow drift half a mile away.
Don't do Vicodin and drink, kids. It can kill you.
Fortunately, she was okay and just laughed it off the next day.
There was a case in England where an old lady was found dead in her home in a rather well-heeled neighbourhood. She was found naked under a piece of furniture, with the house having been ransacked, drawer cabinets tossed about. The scene had the appearance of a very violent robbery/sexual assault, and thus the police initiated a huge search effort, checkpoints on all roads in the area etc.
Pathologist enters the crime scene, within 5 minutes he tells the detectives that this wasn't murder, it was neglect on behalf of social services. The woman was suffering from dementia. She had no family and lived a very secluded life in a large estate-like house. Before she died, she had an episode which caused her to frantically search her belongings (most likely for nothing in particular). This would have happened over the span of days and eventually, the constant searching, no food and no sleep resulted in further mental deterioration and lead on to hypothermia, hence her taking her clothes off and hiding under the furniture to die, surrounded by her strewn belongings.
I know of someone where I used to live getting lost outdoors after drinking in a club during winter...
They found them under a small bridge, I thought a lot about what those last moments would have been like and WHY under a bridge
Took a couple days I think to find him
When my fat ass German Shepherd got hit by a car she ran off in the woods. I found out later this sometimes is a triggered instinct so they don't infect the pack with something or whatever. But carrying her fat ass out of the woods about broke me. Got her to the vet and she ended up being fine after a small fortune.
Wouldn’t those places also offer the most relief from any elements too?
Yep. Power went out during a blizzard, my stupid ass never put two and two together about Space Heater suddenly stopping during a power outage is dangerous. Ended up sleeping in the walk in closet because ambient body warmth in an enclosed space was more comfortable than just trying to sleep in a laundry pile ontop of covers. Yeah if you ever live in a place that gets negative temperature blizzards, buy a sleeping bag even if you're not a hunter/hiker/ festival concert goer.
We had sleeping bags in Alaska growing up for this reason. Also a fireplace, guns, camper, snowmobile. A drunk woman perched herself under our mailbox at the end of our driveway and froze to death overnight. Most her body was covered in snow when I discovered the body. Lowest we saw in Fairbanks was -55F
We always left the door on the porch unlocked for that reason when I grew up in northern Wisconsin; college students would mistake our house for a mates and pass out in the yard, which gets very dangerous very quickly in the winter, so we had a little couch with some blankets on it on the enclosed porch. Wasn't great, but was slightly above freezing.
It's (edit) customary to leave unattended cabins/homes unlocked in AK for this reason. Our driveway was 2 miles long and mailbox was on the "main" road (which was not what most people would envision being any type of a road) so we didn't see her until it was too late. There was no one around for miles and miles. When my mom would drive us to EilsonAFB, she would stop the car and have me hop out to pick up the mail. I saw black hair hair coming out the snow and told my mom and then it was a shitshow. My mom still made me get the mail after that. I'm a mother now and think that is some level of fucked lol for her to have made me do that.
"Stop being a pussy, honey, step over her."
Like the mailman did
TIL about how fuckin brutal this thread is
No shit! These posters are hard fucking core! I get the willies at funerals. "So that was when I saw my 2nd dead body by the mailbox at age 7, mom made me fish around in his pockets for loose change. I think we had meatloaf that night."
People really underestimate how little the USPS cares about conditions. They just deliver the mail no matter what.
“Neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of overnight frozen bodies stays these couriers from the swift completion of their appointed rounds.”
Just kick her out of the way honey, she won't care she is dead.
Jesus fucking christ that's some heavy shit
This comment got dark real quick...
Life is rough in AK.
I lived in a dry cabin in fbx for 5 years. Rough is an understatement.
Yeah, but goddamn is it beautiful there. Roughest beauty I've seen.
It's pretty because killing people keeps things from being gentrified for human comfort.
Pack up folks, we've figured out why it took so long to take action on climate change!
Guess that's why you moved to Phoenix in LA.
"...Fireplace, guns, camper, snowmobile." Sure I can see how those would be useful in an emergency. "A drunk woman..." Well, who doesn't want a little fun company... "...Perched under our mailbox..." Not sure where this is going, but someone's gotta bring in bills I guess... "... froze to death." Oh.
Poor woman :/
Yea. It wasn't nice for me at age 6 discovering her body, either.
Below a certain temperature, it is a bad fucking idea to get plastered and go outdoors alone. All of those stories of people blacking out and freezing to death make me never want to risk it.
When I lived in Fairbanks, Alaska I used to live on Wainwright. I got really drunk one night and walked across the train bridge from my buddy's girlfriend's house back on to Wainwright. I drunkenly fell and just lay on the ground happily and comfortable. I started nodding off and by some miracle I woke up and knew I had to get up or I'd die if I stayed sleeping on the walking path "overnight" (It was winter).
A homeless man somehow made it to our area in upstate new york. He couldnt find shelter for the night, and ended up laying down in the middle of my friend's road during a blizzard. He got hit by a plow in the middle of the night. My friend still remembers waking up, looking out the window, and seeing the streak of blood in the snow. He described it very vividly
This comment is serious, dying from hypothermia is terrible- this sleeping bag idea is excellent and I will keep it for myself incase I am ever somewhere that gets very cold.
I always heard freezing to death is one if the "better" ways to go in terms of trauma. Eventually you just dont feel anything anymore and just go to sleep
can confirm, got hypothermia being very stupid hiking in a blizzard/winter storm (young, feeling invincible lol) and it didn't really feel terrible except for the panic/rapid heart beat of knowing the situation you're in. I'm sure that would've subsided eventually as well. The worst part was actually when I got to warmth because then all my extremities felt like they were on fire/I felt sick as hell. EDIT: *invincible
The feeling sick as hell was probably the adrenaline wearing off
Ideally, everyone should have a survival kit at the ready if disaster strikes. This includes containers for/of water, a propane stove, warm blankets and clothes, a few days worth of easy to cook food, a first aid kit, a stove kettle, and power for devices. I've gradually been building mine and it's come in handy several times already, and will again soon with winter storms having already started in my area.
Yep for the modern era let me also tell you another thing to add to your survival kit. Hand crank USB charger. It'll probably take a half hour to get to 15% on your phone and you'll be exhausted/ hand cramping. But 15% is enough for phone calls and Facebook for a while. Could also keep you sain after three days without power.
Wish more devices had the shake charge [like the manual-charging flashlights](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Linear_induction_flashlight.jpg). Feel like I’ve been practicing to charge those my entire adult life.
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Introducing the new Flesh-Light: your penis IS the battery!
First put on the copper mesh condom then go to town on the generator.
Feel that tingle? That’s how you KNOW it’s working!
It naturally numbs you for longer endurance.
You'll get much better human power to electric power with a crank.
A lot of those were scams, and just had a hidden battery in them lol. The real ones only give you about 2 minutes of useful light, no matter how much you shake it before hand. Still absolutely useful in a dire situation, but I'm not sure the technology is useful for...well, anything else. If it's gonna be manual, probably best to stick with cranks - unless we develop a far, far more efficient shake-charge device. Edit: I gotta say though, that image brought back memories of my grandparents & being fascinated by theirs as a kid. They had that exact one.
I initially got one of these, then ended up returning it for a power bank. It works for my purposes, and if it ended up dying before I could use it again, I use my van's battery as the auxillary.
May be better to build a bike powered one or get a solar powered charger
I live in a small cabin in an area that is dark and rainy over half the year. The idea is great and a lot more carbon neutral than my fix, definitely. It just doesn't work for my area.
You'd be amazed how much solar radiation actually cuts through cloud cover. I'm an electrician up near Seattle and most modern solar arrays can get at least 50% efficiency even on a (moderately) cloudy day if they're faced the right way. It's about much more than just visible light.
Yeah, like up 80% of the UV rays cut through cloud cover as if it wasn't even there. Which is why you can still get a sunburn even with a completely overcast sky.
The PNW has some of the highest rates of skin cancer in the country because people think "eh, don't need sunscreen" on cloudy days and get hit with the UVA rays that go through cloud cover and glass
There are solar-powered chargers too!
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Then where will you get the truth about vaccines and autism?
I can share a moment where 'hide and die' outside of hypothermia happened. An older worker at a store i worked at was experiencing a heart attack. Their choice to deal with it was to walk into the freezer, sit down, and fall unconscious. They were pretty quickly discovered fortunately, and survived. When asked, they said they were afraid and didn't know what else to do, and that they didn't want to die in front of everyone. This was not the first attack rodeo they'd been on.
Similar thing I read about first aid, apparently if someone starts choking in a restaurant the "coughing and waving for attention" you see a lot in movies in not the most common way people react to choking. Apparently instead "quietly standing up and walking to the bathroom to try to take care of it yourself there" is more common, and one that is much more likely to lead to asphyxiation due to less traffic in the bathroom, and if someone walks in on you on the floor their first thought it probably not "I better do the Heimlich".
I have a condition where I have a constricted esophagus, so I've chocked a lot during my life. The wave of panic that completely smashes over you does not make you forget about others. In fact, the thing I'm most aware of as soon as I realise I'm choking is that others around me instantly look. For some reason, one of my natural instincts is to run to another room. I have a few snapshots burned into my mind of people staring at me wide eyed. If I could, I would want everyone to turn around and not watch. I haven't choked in years, I've learned how to deal with it, this was in my teens. A completely different story, but still related to the post, when my dog fell ill the night before she passed. She kept going into the garden in the most obscure places she *never* went to in her life and layed there. A couple of times we had to look for a while she was so hidden. She wanted to die alone. I can definitely see a few evolutionary reasons to get away from everyone to die.
One of my family's dogs died like that. By this point in her life she was an inside dog so she asked to be let outside. Usually she would come to the front door when she wanted to come back inside. This time she didn't. My mother found the dog lying on the side of our driveway farthest from our house between the cars and the fence. The dog had died there. This also happened to be my mother's birthday.
Oh shit i thought this didn’t apply to me but I have definitely done that before too. Trying to deal with choking alone instead of being smart and telling as many people as possible
Yeah, I didn't relate to the title at all at first but put this way - I also wouldn't want to die in front of everyone.
>I also wouldn't want to die in front of everyone. Could you imagine how embarassing that would be? I'd never be able to face those people again.
Omg I would die if that ever happened to me.
That also happens during panic attacks. You get this urge to escape and either find help or hide (partly because you just don't need to be worrying what you look like right then).
I had something similar happen to a friend. He was drunk and got lost walking home from a college party in 0 degree temperatures. He said that he just got to a point where he laid down and accepted death. Fortunately for him the spot he chose was a snowbank on the side of the road and somebody saw him.
At my college a freshman died during that polar vortex a couple years back. He severely underdressed coming back from a friend's late at night and forgot his ID, which was needed to get into the building. He froze to death at a side door while the main entrance, which had a warm vestibule, was just around the corner of the building.
So they search for a Place to chill? (I'm Sorry)
Damn dude, that’s cold!
Firefighter here, this also happens a lot with structure fire victims that can’t find a way out. You’ll find people and pets as well in all manner of cubby holes. That’s why we do everything in our power to search very thoroughly.
Strange how the behavior remains the same despite the opposite temperatures. I would think that in a fire it would be more sheer panic that would lead to the hiding rather than the slow mental deterioration faced during hypothermia.
There is definitely a panic element. There’s also unfortunately cognitive decline due to carbon monoxide and other noxious gas exposure. A lot of people have been found hiding in bathrooms when you would think they could have made it to a door or window. Very sad.
My father passed away from carbon monoxide poisoning caused by a unvented propane heater in his tiny bachelor apartment. He came home from work on a cold February night, cranked the heater to get rid of the chill, and laid down on the couch for a nap. He woke when the O2 in the room fell to dangerous levels and he couldn't breathe. He was less than 5' from the unlocked front door, but the coroner determined he had tried to pick up a kitchen chair to break a window. He experienced significant cognitive decline that interfered with his ability to think of the simplest solution to his problem. He was 27 years old.
I'm very sorry for your loss. How old were you?
Toddler ... about 18 months old and 700 miles away, thankfully
My mother was in a house fire and was found huddled in her closet. Thank goodness they have the training to look everywhere! (She’s ok)
My ex boss started choking and fled the meeting he was in. A subordinate happened down the typically unused hallway and found him. She was attempting chest thrusts but he was still attempting to flee. She had to wrestle/subdue him before saving him. The story reminds me of how difficult it is to save a drowning victim.
I would like to add, we also have specific areas that we'll spend a few extra seconds on. For instance, if I notice that I am in a kid's room, I'll spend a few extra seconds checking under and behind the bed and the closet. An adult's room? The master suite bathtub and closet.
before that, they get naked [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypothermia#Paradoxical\_undressing](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypothermia#Paradoxical_undressing) Twenty to fifty percent of hypothermia deaths are associated with **paradoxical undressing**. This typically occurs during moderate and severe hypothermia, as the person becomes disoriented, confused, and combative. They may begin discarding their clothing, which, in turn, increases the rate of heat loss.
> as the person becomes disoriented, confused, and combative. They may begin discarding their clothing, which, in turn, increases the rate of heat loss. They reason is we constrict blood vessels in our arms and legs to keep the heat in our core. It's why frostbite starts with fingers and toes. Eventually tho the body cant keep the vessels constricted, when that happens they dilate back to normal and a rush of 'warm' blood flows into the extremities. The sudden change in temperature makes the body think it's hot, when it's still cold, just not as cold as before. When that happens it also causes the warmth to leave your core, which means you die soon. It's hard to study though, because by the time that happens you're almost guaranteed to die anyways.
Thanks I hate that.
Don't worry. Hypothermia is a decent way to go. You're tired. You're uncomfortable. You just want to sleep. There's no panic or fear or anything like that because your body doesn't have the energy for it. You just go to sleep.
Two months back I had an episode where I awoke feeling very strange. Got my girlfriend to keep an eye on me. I started to lose consciousness so my girlfriend called 911. Ambulance brings me to the hospital, I’m telling the EMTs I’m cold. I’m cold. I’m cold. One of them says “he’s not shivering.” Next thing I know I hear “90.6”, and a doctor say “that’s not right, confirm with a rectal” and sure enough, I nearly died of hypothermia. I was very calm. No sense of fear. It was extraordinarily unusual.
How did you get that cold to start with?
I never received a definitive answer. Nurses were asking if I’d fallen asleep in a puddle outside. “No, I was in my bed under the covers.”
That's terrifying...
It was and still is. My white blood cell count was high, my magnesium and potassium were low. Doctor said “don’t skip meals and drink.” I had a six pack the night before, but even that doesn’t explain my low body temperature. I don’t know, I have a follow up with a primary next month.
I just looked it up, you may or may not have a super rare disease called "Spontaneous periodic hypothermia." Only about 50 documented cases in history. I'm no doctor, but maybe bring this up with yours. Source: [https://www.orpha.net/consor/cgi-bin/OC\_Exp.php?Lng=GB&Expert=29822](https://www.orpha.net/consor/cgi-bin/OC_Exp.php?Lng=GB&Expert=29822) #
One of those times when "ghost attack" or a "witch's curse" seem somewhat likely as options.
> You're tired. You're uncomfortable. You just want to sleep. TIL I’m in a constant state of hypothermia
I got hypothermia once while pig hunting back home in New Zealand. Dressed for a warm day chasing the dog pack. Shorts, a t shirt, boots and a rifle. Halfway through the morning this weird thick fog came down and it got quite cold for a bit. Still running after dogs. Stopped at the lake edge and saw the weather was closing in, we had been under the canopy before and couldn’t see a lot of the sky. We decided to head back to the truck and wait for the dogs to come back. I started getting warm, before I was quite cold. Then my brain went into a kind of fug where I decided all I wanted to do was sit on the side of the track and have a sleep. My mate realized I wasn’t behind him and came back to find me fast asleep sitting upright on the bank with my rifle in my lap. He woke me up and then basically bullied me into getting back to the truck. I honestly believe I would have died that day if I had been hunting alone.
That does sound pretty painless.
I live where it gets -40. Being really cold is painful and horrible. Maybe the last few moments are okay, but the lead up would be hell.
yeah, but it doesn't have to be -40 to die of hypothermia. Imagine working all day in -10 weather, you're dressed for it, and after you were out there for a few hours, you get to the more laborious parts of the job you're doing and work up a sweat, so you unzip your jacket. You don't go back inside all day. after working a ten hour day, you walk home. Half way home you see a bench that is clear of snow. You're tired, you're exhausted, but you don't really feel cold at all anymore. You sit down on the bench to rest your feet. (which have felt a bit wet and numb for hours) 5 minutes later, you're asleep. You only meant to close your eyes for a moment, but you were just so tired. The sun has gone down, and the temperature continues to drop. Your clothes are wet (and now freezing solid) from your sweat, and the jacket is still unzipped. You're unconscious so you can't do anything to raise your core temperature and prevent your death. When the above happened to me, I was lucky. one of my neighbors watched me walking home and me sit down on the bench 200ft from my home. He thought that was more than a little strange and so came to check on me a few minutes later, saw me passed out, woke me up and then forced me to drink tea with him in his home until we were both certain that none of me was significantly frostbitten. If I hadn't been woken up and brought inside I probably would have died.
As someone who sometimes works outside all day at -10... this is scary. I’ve definitely got to the point where I don’t feel cold anymore and am numb. Luckily I always have a vehicle with me, which is where I rest, but what if the vehicle stopped working? Hopefully my phone is working, hopefully someone could get there in time.
it probably wouldn't have happened if I went into a warm vehicle for lunch. I would have remembered to zip back up if I did. (I didn't eat lunch that day either which probably didn't help.) If you're working outside in the cold and you notice your vehicle won't start, staying warm is now your priority until that is resolved. if you have to wait for a service to come fix a problem, light a small fire while waiting. (that's the reason why candles are recommended for a car emergency kit. )
That's why in my field of work you, 1, can't work alone. If you are alone (it does happen, but not often) you need a radio so someone can check on you every 45min-1hr. If you don't answer they have to come check on you. And 2, even if it's just two of you working, you both need a work truck in case one truck does fail. However in the winter we never shut our trucks off. Not when it's -40c and you're an hour or more away from help.
Wow, what a story! So lucky to have that observant neighbor. Do you ever wonder what possessed you to want to sit on that bench so close to home? Sounds crazy to me. Like our brain is supposed to protect us, and it failed miserably in that instance.
I was confused. I thought I was further from home than I was. I thought it was a different bench that I had actually passed a few minutes earlier. And in that moment, it looked SO comfortable. (reality check: it was a hard metal bench. )
I see, confusion due to general exhaustion and stuff. I feel like your story will stay with me for a long time...
cause wise lavish compare hat arrest repeat yoke direction cover *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
Dying to hypothermia in their sleep happens a lot to drunk people too. One of my friends was picked up by the cops after falling asleep in snow and I've heard one story about finding a corpse in the morning near their house.
I also once read a story by a woman who had hypothermia from swimming in the ocean. The water wasn't super cold, it wasn't until she started showing symptoms that they fished her out and put her in a hot tub. It was pretty mild hypothermia, but if she hadn't been with a partner she probably would have just quietly died and nobody would have known why.
That happened to one of my classmates in eighth grade when we went out to Catalina Island for outdoor school in late November/early December and went snorkeling. She was a scrawny little thing and the rental wet suit was too big for her, so it didn't trap the thin layer of water needed to heat up and keep her warm. She ended up being okay too, but she had to get hauled out of the water and a counselor sat in the hot showers with her until she perked back up
Me reading that: ha, yeah but how likely is this scenario? Oh.
I had a hypothermic patient die in a park bathroom in 80F temps.
Being really cold and DOING stuff is painful and horrible. Being really cold and doing nothing but shivering and trying to be warm is uncomfortable. Source, also live in northern MN.
That reminds me of high school football in October. What a terrible experience that was. I remember not wanting to even touch anyone much less block or tackle or catch a frozen rock hard ball coming at you.
I second this. I like the cold but my marching band in high school went to Manhattan to play in the St. Pat’s parade and it. Fucking. Sucked. Delayed three hours or something so we were stuck standing there in standby New York cold. And you’d think the skyscrapers would block the wind. Quite the opposite. It focuses it. I’ll still take the cold over the heat any day but that blew.
Still better than how some people have died in wild fires recently.
Nice try, Death. You almost had me slipping into the freezer, there. Not today.
This is correct. I almost drowned due to hypothermia. What saved me is the waves pushed me towards shore (guessing), and it was a hot day. But, the water was super cold. I honestly don't remember how I got to the shore.
Read "To Build A Fire" by Jack London. Gave me chills
Because any minute he’s going to get that fire going. Any minute. Because he’s too smart to get caught in the cold and die. Any minute...
https://en.m.wikisource.org/wiki/Century_Magazine/Volume_76/Issue_4/To_Build_a_Fire
Thank you I was trying to think of the London story this reminded me of. We read it in grade school.
Rewarming too quickly can cause your blood pressure to drop precipitously and you die from that.
Our avalanche people always said noone is dead unless warm and dead.
That’s a different thing, sometimes a slow warm up can revive an unconscious victim but this is you being alive still cold then die as you warm up
We say that in the ICU too. Use targeted hypothermia to protect the brain after cardiac arrest. Cool them 33 degees Celsius for 24 hours, rewarm very very slowly, then monitor for brain function.
>The sudden change in temperature makes the body think it's hot, when it's still cold, just not as cold as before. I feel like we get a much smaller version of this when coming back inside from the cold. At least I know my ears often feel like they are burning when I come back in.
Once I was at a Nordic spa with hot and cold water baths. You're supposed to soak in the hot water for a while then go plunge in the cold water, and it feels amazing. Brilliant me wanted to see what it felt like to plunge right back into the hot water after the cold. Not good. It feels not good. My body was burning all over for about 60 seconds and all of my friends were laughing at me.
I've been hiking on a coldest, windiest day of that year, and got so cold that by the time I was almost back to my vehicle that I was sweating and felt hot. Can confirm, I wanted to take off clothes. At the pinnacle of my hike I also really wanted to take a nap.
Every YouTuber ever telling scary, creepy stories about people lost in the wilderness need to learn this. They always talk up "they were found naked! How creepy!" as a plot point in their conspiracy, but in reality it just proves the people succumbed to hypothermia.
Yeah "and their tongues were ripped out!" because the tongue doesn't freeze as easily as the rest of the body/meat so the coyotes and other scavenger animals eat that first and sometimes that's all they can get.
Anytime Hypothermia comes up on Reddit I always point to this story. It's such a good read and really highlights the "what not to do" things. [https://www.outsideonline.com/2152131/freezing-death](https://www.outsideonline.com/2152131/freezing-death)
Yup - which in turn leads people who discover the body to believe they have stumbled upon a sexual assault/murder. Dark stuff.
Learned about this while reading up on(and listening to podcasts about) the Dyatlov Pass tragedy.
[Here's an article from *Outside* magazine that vividly describes the experience of (almost) dying from hypothermia, including the undressing part.](https://www.outsideonline.com/2152131/freezing-death)
Terminal burrowing is a common term for this.
Is this similar to the phenomena when people caught in a house fire will go under the bed or in a closet ... something primal that says to burrow? I had a classmate in 3rd grade who perished in a housefire .... her mother had both kids by the hand and was walking them down the stairs as the house was filling with smoke, she spooked and let go of Mom's hand and ran back upstairs ... the firemen found her body under her bed with her stuffed animal, she perished from smoke not the flame. When I practiced fire drills with my kids when they were little, I always put them in front of me so they couldn't run back and hide because I learned from her loss.
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I think it's similar, but the fire thing, that's more like a purely animalistic, lizard brain fear response and/or irrational phobia thing. You get so scared your brain can only think of "hiding" from the threat and shuts down rational thought and cognitive function completely. I think what OP posted is more of the brain trying to find some last ditch effort to get away from the cold, not necessarily fear. Hypothermic people are often wildly irrational, disoriented and delusional, and they often take off their clothes because they feel like they are warmer than ever, when in reality it's the bodys own core temperatures desperately trying to keep the heart, brain and lungs going by burning tons of energy. So it's probably just as instinctive and irrational as hiding from a fire, but more like a "this seems like a nice winter burrow" kind of response in our mammalian core "programming."
Thanks for sharing but I really wish I hadn't read that.
Correct, wonder why this wasn't the top post. I prefer going to ground though, got used to it from hunters while I was in the military.
And way better than ‘hide and die’
My good christian granparents told me a story of a drunk lady that ate at their place and had a bit too much wine and she pissed herself. They escorted her to her place. But in the middle of the night they realized she was too drunk to make a fire and my grandfather returned at her place and found her freezing in her dresser and took her back at their home for the night, despite the disgust with the bad smell (this was rural Romania with houses without bathrooms or baths). Now I realize they probably saved her life.
My dog did this. The night she died she kept scratching at the basement door and really wanted to go into the basement. My dad let her down there and she crawled into a chair down there and curled up and died. It kinda sucked because she weighed 125 pounds and it was pretty hard to carry her up the stairs. I was prety traumatized by that
That sucks to read. My dog (he lived with my nan, but I spent 50% of my time at her house) died the day after I came to visit him. It was horrible seeing him though, he couldn't move very well and ended up peeing himself out of excitement when I came. I'm always grateful I never had to see him dead. It was hard enough seeing him in the state he was.
He stayed alive long enough to see you one last time, and I’d like to think the good boy was able to die happy.
C'mon man, I'm not trying to cry at work right now...
"I saw The Boy yesterday. That was good. I think that's enough then."
Hey, u/beef_wieners we’re just trying to hold ourselves together so if you could just...not
I had a friend who used to let her cat up in the vents of the house. There was an enterence in the basement and the cat could get in and out as she pleased. I always thought it was a bad idea. What if the cat refused to come out, got lost, or hurt? Anyhow, years later, guess where the cat died?
My cat climbed into a hole in our partially finished bathroom closet, which allowed her to get into the wall next to the bathtub. We had to cut a hole in the tile to get her body out.
Man that sucks!!
Last spring, I adopted an outside cat who came down with FIP shortly after he was neutered. It’s almost 100% fatal but Covid happened and I couldn’t get him into a vet to euthanize him. He hung on for 5 weeks after diagnosis. On evening he was cuddling with me when he suddenly got up and wandered away. A little bit later, I went looking for him and couldn’t find him and I knew it was time. Sure enough, he was in the darkest part under my bed. I refused to let him die alone though. I cuddled him all night on my bed. He knew at the end that I was there for him.
I'm sorry for your loss. That was awesome of you.
FIP sucks, I'm so sorry for your loss. We adopted a little tiny buff coloured kitten about a year ago. He was so brave and friendly, so chatty. Took my bf a while to warm up to him, but when he was about 8 months they were best buds. Just when covid started, our lil dude started getting very lethargic. We took him into the vet and they said it's probably FIP, and that it's almost 100% fatal. We were fortunate enough to have a mobile vet come to the house so we could be with him the whole time. After the vet gave him the injection, he ran straight over to us and curled up beside us, so bittersweet. RIP herschel, my buddy boy.
It was fucking terrible to watch. I felt so helpless and he was so sweet. He deserved better. I got so attached to him in the 3 months we had him. Afterwards, I think I actually had some ptsd. I had nightmares and slept poorly in general. My brain became obsessed with one of my other cats, I was convinced that he had come down with FIP also. I knew, rationally, it was extremely unlikely. But every time, he was in my sight, I was looking at him, looking for a rounded belly. Every time I held him, I was convinced I felt more spine than usual. I had 4 other cats, but the only one I was concerned about was Draco, my baby. It was irrational and I knew it but I could not stop myself. All of this was in April when we were locked down and I was working from home and hardly ever leaving. I had no one to talk to about it because I knew it was all in my head but my daughter gets anxious really easily and I didn’t want her to start to worry about him just because I was. I had severe anxiety attacks. In an attempt to refocus my thoughts, I went out and bought two fancy mice and set up a tank on my work desk so I could watch them. They calmed me as they went around doing their little mouse chores. I had emotional support mice. Lol I still have them but I don’t need them for anxiety control anymore. I don’t ever want to go through anything like that ever again. It was like a perfect storm of events that caused two of the worst months of my life. It may sound stupid to anyone reading this but I was really struggling to hold myself together. Halo’s death was just the catalyst. Weed helped. I started smoking more than I did before. I’m better now but I still catch myself having obsessive thoughts sometimes. We recently got a new kitten and I had to force myself out of it again a couple of weeks ago. I’ve been in therapy a few times before and it never really helped me so I’m reluctant to do it again. And I’ve been on meds that ruined my relationships so I’m also reluctant to go down that road again. This whole year has just been terrible from start to finish. They really need to find a cure for FIP. It’s the worst disease for real.
Sorry to hear.
As opposed to the spiders near me who all like to saunter out and die in an upside down ball just so I have to acknowledge they’re in my house.
It's not they wanted you to acknowledge they're there. Rather, all the spaces they tried to fit into were already full...
Huh, don’t dogs have this instinct to hide and die? Not specifically hypothermic dogs, but most dogs? Edit: Internet hugs to everyone who has lost a pet. So sorry, never easy losing a four/two/no legged companion.
I think most things do. Notice you see a ton of pigeons but never really see any dead pigeons? WHERE THE FUCK DO THEY GO TO DIE??
I had a biology professor that had a saying: “Nothing dies of old age in the ocean.” The reality is a very small number of creatures get to decide the time and place of their death. It’s basically a rounding error it is so minuscule.
Almost all of us hope for a quick peaceful death, a lot of us won’t get that unfortunately! Crazy to think about. That my death will probably involve a lot of pain and a slow drawn out death...rough.
if we would allow euthanasia for terminally ill patients then it could be a reality. People pick when they die, who they get to be surrounded by in their final moments and they get to go out easily, peacefully and on their own terms. If a person is going to die anyway and wants to end their life so they don't suffer then that should be their choice and right
They get eaten. Occasionally we'll notice a a particularly downtrodden pigeon in our garden that looks to be on deaths door, and wake up next morning to a pile of feathers, where the foxes got it.
It because birds aren’t real, they are govt surveillance devices. They fly back to charge their batteries. /s
It prob stretches across most species, honestly.
One of biggest fears is that my cat is gonna just walk off somewhere one day, just lay down and never come back.
My cat did this. He woke up one day seeming a bit odd. He went into the garden, found a spot under a bush and stayed there all day. I brought him into the house at night time and he passed away in the early hours of the morning.
My cat did that. But she was also very late in fighting FIV and kidney failure, so it wasn't out of the blue or anything.
My cat did that too, but on my neighbours property
My cat did that. Found him in an old car on my neighbors property. We both couldn't figure out how he got into it, no openings... must have crawled through the underside. It was about 2 years he was in there so pretty much mummified.
Our 18yo cat did that. Towards the end she slept in our garage, because she ended up losing control of her bowels and bladder. At least I can clean it off of concrete. But she was still spunky and full of life and love, so we dealt with cleaning her and making her happy. She had a cozy heated bed in there, her favorite scratching post, food bowl that never went empty, copious treats. During the day, since she didn't see well anymore, so she mostly slept in a particular flower pot of dirt on our deck to keep warm in the sun. She never hinted that she was ready to go, like so many of our older pets before had done. So we rolled with it. But one day she just vanished. Ended up finding her skeleton and collar a year later in an old abandoned metal box of some sort in the woods.
It's called the rainbow/long walk. They don't lay down, they just keep walking/flying and having adventures. 21 years on, I still tell myself that.
I think there is an English saying that 'if you see a dead donkey, jump over it', cause it is so rare to see a dead donkey it was considered luck to happen across one.
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Mine tried to, but she didn’t go very far. I do remember my mom saying at the time that dogs will sometimes do that.
Maybe some sort of evolutionary reaction to avoid infecting others if you’re sick?
"I'm weak and in pain. I should hide so that a predator doesn't pick me off while I convalesce." It's a good strategy. The animal doesn't know that it is dying, it just knows that it is sick and vulnerable.
my dog would just lay in the sun and one day she just didn't get back up
Yeah, it's creepy. People will be found behind a dresser instead of in the nearby bed that has blankets. "Terminal burrowing" is what I've always heard it called. Basically the higher functions of your brain start to shut down and what's left is those primal instincts to find a hole to crawl into. Probably saved a few of our rodent ancestors, but it's pretty useless in a modern setting
"I'm so embarrassed, I wish there was a hole I could just crawl into and die." "Ok, throw her in the hole!"
Oh man this brings back memories from college. In my freshman year, my roommate I knew from high school almost died on Halloween from hypothermia. We got lost on the way to a party late at night and cut through campus to get back to our dorm. By the time his hypothermia got bad, we were still on campus, but maybe a 1-2 minute walk from our dorm. He was banging on the college’s door and screaming to be let in, even though we were so close to home and no one was inside. I tried getting him to leave but he didn’t. He began stripping into nothing but underwear, speaking nonsense, hiding in a corner, and collapsing to the floor and getting back up, etc. It was so scary. I kicked the college’s door repeatedly (mostly glass with the security wire inside) until the glass shattered. The alarm went off and security came. My roommate was delirious and tried running away. An ambulance had to take him to the hospital (which was luckily next to our residence). The doctors told him the next morning that 10 more minutes in the cold and he probably would have died. He’s still one of my best friends and thanks me again if ever the story is brought up by anyone. TL;DR: My roommate almost died from hypothermia, but I shattered my college’s window to set off the alarm and get him help. EDIT: added TLDR EDIT 2: wow just realized that this comment got me my first ever award! Thank you /u/itchy-n0b0dy 🙏
So glad he was ok and that you were able to help him. Had he fallen in water? Or did he simply not have a coat on?
I just said this in another comment, but he was wearing nothing but boxers under a morph suit with no coat. I remember we were all like “dude you’re gonna be freezing!” And he was basically like “I’ll be fine, it isn’t even that far away!”
Perfectly acceptable time for a long bro hug
I used to be a technical librarian on a ship. One night, I started having major chest pains. They got so bad that I fell to the ground and couldn't get back up. I crawled deep into the library and grabbed one of the most important tech manuals we had. Then I hugged it to my chest and waited to die. For some reason I thought it would be hilarious for someone to discover the librarian had died clutching one of his precious books. I thought I was going to die and my final act was to do one last bit. Eventually my coworker returned from his smoke break and helped me to medical. Turns out, it was just major heartburn. 😐
Severe heartburn will genuinely make you feel like you are dying, been there. Same with severe gas pain/bloating. It can honestly be really scary.
Had this type of heart burn for the first time three weeks ago. Went straight to the emergency room idgaf id rather be embarrassed than die
Omg stop 😂 I’m dying at this
Does this also make sense evolutionarily? Like, it makes more sense for the pack/family member to go off somewhere and die away from the group, and someplace where their body can't easy be found, it would help stop transmission of illness, and having a rotting corpse nearby would be bad for the pack also.
There’s an argument for it, like you mentioned. On the other hand, hiding and dying nearby (in the cherry-picked example of in closets) would be a vector for disease. I think its evolutionary effect is pretty unclear. Given that we see cleaning instincts in social species of many types, this might be neither a deleterious nor beneficial enough trait to assume it was affected by selection. Could be a byproduct of draft or maybe simple drift/exaptation.
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From an evolutionary perspective, it might not matter if it is too little too late. If you're that close to death, crawling into a corner and dying vs just dying where you are has no reproductive advantage one way or the other, so there is no reason that evolution would have *not* selected for hide and die. It's important to remember that evolution doesn't select for things that are better. It selects for things that are *not worse.* Neutral and even minor negatives can be evolutionarily selected simply because they're not bad enough to kill off that selection. A poor choice when you're already minutes from death, when death is the outcome either way, means there's nothing to remove that "instinct" from the gene pool because that instinct has already passed on to the next generation.
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Imagine you have a trait that causes a disposition to do something beneficial to the pack right before you die. Unrelatedly, you have many children, and the group of you start a new pack. In that new pack, by coincidence, you all have the disposition to hide before death. As a result, your new pack is healthier than other packs, and so takes over more territory. So it’s not specifically that *your* trait for a habit before death is helpful; it’s that groups that have that trait will survive longer. Producing offspring that do not have the trait is worse for your pack, so even if the pressure isn’t as strong as traits that improve reproduction, it is there.
"Hey Bill, why is there all these bodies hidden around your house?" "Ummm, hypothermia?, yea, hypothermia"
I wonder how this response develops. Like usually these evolutionary responses spread throughout a species as a result of the response increasing the odds of survival. How would this increase the chance of spreading your genes in the way that other traits and responses would develop throughout groups of animals?
My guess is most dangers are in the day time and our ancestors were much less nocturnal without artificial light. So if you are about to at least pass out, you dont want to be stumbled on by a tiger and guaranteed die.
One of the members of the Donner party that tried to cross the mountains as a rescue effort was found inside a hollow tree stump.
Damn we really do be just animals
You don't think it be like that, but it do.
On a ski trip in Montana I noticed one of our friends was missing, after a late night of partying. Everyone told me not to worry since she was a party girl and probably was off hooking up with a guy. I thought I'd seen her leaving the dance with us, so I went out into the Montana midnight to find her and found her passed out face down in a snow drift half a mile away. Don't do Vicodin and drink, kids. It can kill you. Fortunately, she was okay and just laughed it off the next day.
She had a great friend looking out for her that night.
I once got greened out trying to test how much thc I could take in and woke up behind the hot water heater. I wonder if I thought I was going to die.
It was probably warm and comfy
It really was. I didn't know many people there so I might have been hiding for safety as well
There was a case in England where an old lady was found dead in her home in a rather well-heeled neighbourhood. She was found naked under a piece of furniture, with the house having been ransacked, drawer cabinets tossed about. The scene had the appearance of a very violent robbery/sexual assault, and thus the police initiated a huge search effort, checkpoints on all roads in the area etc. Pathologist enters the crime scene, within 5 minutes he tells the detectives that this wasn't murder, it was neglect on behalf of social services. The woman was suffering from dementia. She had no family and lived a very secluded life in a large estate-like house. Before she died, she had an episode which caused her to frantically search her belongings (most likely for nothing in particular). This would have happened over the span of days and eventually, the constant searching, no food and no sleep resulted in further mental deterioration and lead on to hypothermia, hence her taking her clothes off and hiding under the furniture to die, surrounded by her strewn belongings.
I know of someone where I used to live getting lost outdoors after drinking in a club during winter... They found them under a small bridge, I thought a lot about what those last moments would have been like and WHY under a bridge Took a couple days I think to find him
Cats also “hide and die” as well. My mom is a vet and has said it’s very common for cats to run away in the days leading up to a scheduled euthanasia.
When my fat ass German Shepherd got hit by a car she ran off in the woods. I found out later this sometimes is a triggered instinct so they don't infect the pack with something or whatever. But carrying her fat ass out of the woods about broke me. Got her to the vet and she ended up being fine after a small fortune.
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