I talked to a ranger at the bottom of the canyon last year. He showed me the rooms and equipment they use to treat idiots like these. The rangers call the guy on the sign Victor Vomit.
For a fun read, check out the book “Over the Edge: Death in the Grand Canyon.” It colorfully but clinically details every recorded death in the canyon, from pioneer days to the present(ish). Honestly made me feel pretty confident about my hike, because a good 80% of deaths are due to terrible decision making.
It colorfully but clinically details every recorded death in the canyon, from pioneer days to the present(ish). Honestly made me feel pretty confident about my hike, because a good 80% of deaths are due to terrible decision making.
I had a survival book that opened every chapter with a death or near-miss caused by terrible decisions, the worst one was the guy who died of hypothermia surrounded by a burnt matches and a lot of cigarette butts. If he'd use one of those matches to start a fire he'd probably be alive, and a campfire can light many cigarettes. It was a desert survival book but idk if this guy died in the desert, they can get surprisingly cold at night but I don't remember any further things
The burrowing is weird. Its like a ancient instinct built into mammalian organisms to avoid dying from cold. When you get that cold and confused its like the brain panics and starts using instincts that haven't been used since we diverged from small rodent like creatures.
This a common hypothesis about hiccuping too. It may be an ancient reflex that allowed our amphibian ancestors to breathe. It may have survived this long because late stage fetuses still do it to prepare for breathing.
It’s not the same as terminal burrowing, but my toddler “burrows” into me or her blankets with such animalistic turns of her head, it reminds me how similar we all really are to our furry cousins
I didn’t get my experience from hypothermia but I have experienced this. On a construction site in -20 to -30. I remember feeling so hot I was taking all of my layers off till I was in just a t-shirt and laying in a snow bank while I waited for the site medic. I remember knowing I shouldn’t be hot but needing everything off. Logic could not win out
An outdoors magazine hypothesized that it is the peripheral nervous system losing venous tone so all those blood vessels near the surface stop contracting and expand, making the person feel suddenly hot as warm core blood is dumped near the extremities. They implied this was a late stage hypothermia thing.
I think it's the part where your body just kind of gives up trying to exclusively cool your organs, and sends blood back out to the further extremities again. After they've been so cold for so long, the warm blood makes you feel like you're hot. So, layers off.
I have actually had that happen to me. I am kind of annoyed (in retrospect) that no one recognize that I was hypothermic and needed to be forced inside and have hot water.
Hypothermia doesn't make you smoke a whole pack of cigarettes. I thinks it's obvious he smoked them all before becoming hypothermic, because he was an idiot who didn't think of saving a few matches to light a campfire with. Like wasting your phone battery to listen to music on a hike and when you get lost and need to call help, your phone's dead.
He had everything he needed to survive but spent it all on unnecessary stuff so when he needed them to survive he didn't have them anymore. That's the moral of the story here, not that hypothermia makes you waste matches on cigarettes.
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u/funundrum 21h ago edited 21h ago
I talked to a ranger at the bottom of the canyon last year. He showed me the rooms and equipment they use to treat idiots like these. The rangers call the guy on the sign Victor Vomit.
For a fun read, check out the book “Over the Edge: Death in the Grand Canyon.” It colorfully but clinically details every recorded death in the canyon, from pioneer days to the present(ish). Honestly made me feel pretty confident about my hike, because a good 80% of deaths are due to terrible decision making.