When an Icelandic fisherman fell into the close-to-freezing sea, three miles from the shore, he swam for six hours to safety. https://t.co/vr70DqEqUw
— BBC Future (@BBC_Future) February 27, 2020
There are many ways to die from very cold weather. Inadequate clothing can be a killer. Wet clothing can suck your body heat out, and when it dries, the evaporation also sucks heat out. Shock can disorient you and cause you to make mistakes. At high altitudes, the inability to exercise causes a lack of heat generation. And it's easy to get dehydrated, too. The BBC explains all those ways to die of cold and more, and then tells us about Guðlaugur Friðþórsson, who managed to survive everything nature threw at him when his fishing boat capsized off the coast of Heimaey, an island south of Iceland. He swam for six hours to get to shore.
It was here, in the early hours of March 12 1984, that 23-year-old Guðlaugur Friðþórsson stumbled towards salvation. His bare feet were bleeding from deep cuts caused by the volcanic rock hidden beneath the snow, his clothes soaked in seawater and frozen to his body. He should have already died several times over, but something deep inside Friðþórsson propelled him forwards.
The night was clear and cold. The air temperature was -2C (28F) but with strong winds it would have felt much colder. Despite the freezing temperatures, he paused at a bathtub filled with water left out for sheep for a brief respite. Punching through the centimetre-thick ice he began to gulp down water from the trough.
Friðþórsson's survival was a unique case, even at the time, as the four other fishermen on the boat didn't make it. Your mileage may vary. Read his story, and the dangers of hypothermia at BBC Future. -via Damn Interesting