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I've heard of cases and also personally met someone who survived with a full recovery after they were taken to the hospital after being found unconscious in the snow for (presumably) more than 45 minutes, and claimed their temperature dropped below 0 degrees (Celsius) after they recovered in the hospital, though obviously I can't go into their medical records and verify that temperature. What mechanism allows someone to survive being so cold for so long, particularly if there is a lack of oxygen to the brain, and if someone can survive it for that long, why not indefinitely like for cryogenics?

I'm no medical expert by any means, so it's possible it's a combination of things of course, but for references the first being that a doctor telling me first hand that it's possible, but rare for someone's pulse to stop in frigid temperatures and still recover after more than 10 minutes with a lack of oxygen referencing something about the decomposition of tissue slowing down, and then also news articles like these that I don't have any particular reason to doubt given the consistency of such a story across different venues, which also suggest something about frigid temperatures allowing people to survive injuries, oxygen deficiency, or tissue damage for a longer than normal time.

I'm not completely sure about the lack of oxygen part of the question because it kind of seems like they evaded that part of the question, but they definitely said frigid temperatures delay the decomposition of tissues in someone's body and suggested someone could survive longer due to that, and I don't know why tissue decomposition would be a problem unless someone had already lacked oxygen for a long time to make them susceptible to it.

https://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=1876&dat=19810109&id=CkosAAAAIBAJ&sjid=uc0EAAAAIBAJ&pg=6891,1583308&hl=en

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jean_Hilliard

http://www.nytimes.com/1981/01/03/us/dakota-teen-ager-recovers-after-being-frozen-stiff.html

http://abcnews.go.com/Health/hypothermia-save-boy-trapped-ice-30-minutes-heartbeat/story?id=9506900

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3406926/Man-presumed-dead-frozen-solid-road-recovers-living-medical-miracle.html

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anna_B%C3%A5genholm

I remember the old saying "better cold and dead than warm and dead," I guess this makes sense for when you find someone unconscious.

DaneJoe
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    Can you please provide a reference for the claim that people can survive with full recovery after their body temperature went below freezing point? The record of the coldest body temperature recorded for a surviving human is held by Anna Bågenholm with a body temperature of 13.7ºC. I am voting to close as opinion-based (unless you can provide a trustful reference for your claim). – Remi.b Aug 04 '17 at 00:35
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    "heard of cases" - citation needed. I suspect, as @Remi.b suggests, that these are cases of people dropping to hypothermic temperatures, not dropping literally below freezing. – Bryan Krause Aug 04 '17 at 00:54
  • It's possible it's a combination of things of course, the first being that a doctor telling me first hand that it's possible for someone to drop unconscious due to frigid temperatures and still recover, and then also news articles like these https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jean_Hilliard http://abcnews.go.com/Health/hypothermia-save-boy-trapped-ice-30-minutes-heartbeat/story?id=9506900 http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3406926/Man-presumed-dead-frozen-solid-road-recovers-living-medical-miracle.html – DaneJoe Aug 04 '17 at 01:00
  • @DaneJoe Two of the articles you link actually report body temperatures at 13.7ºC (which seems to be the world record) and 32.22ºC. Some of the newspaper articles use the misleading expression "frozen solid" but do not actually report a body temperature (that I could find at least). I very much doubt any of them actually had a body temperature below 0ºC – Remi.b Aug 04 '17 at 01:25
  • @Remi.b Fair enough. Still, something about these reports suggests there's a possible correlation between frigid temperatures and surviving critical conditions that would otherwise be deemed impossible in warmer temperatures. In terms of chemistry you could say that frigid temperatures can also slow down the negative chemical processes that occur that would normally lead up to death or ensure death after unconsciousness, though could it also be random mutations? – DaneJoe Aug 04 '17 at 01:26
  • For your curiosity... freezing tolerance ask for very specific adaptations. You can have a look at 1. How tolerant are ants to cold?, 2. How do insects survive the winter?, 3. wiki > Freezing tolerance in plants and 4. wiki > Insect winter ecology – Remi.b Aug 04 '17 at 01:27
  • @Remi.b Thanks but I'm not interested in etymology at the moment. – DaneJoe Aug 04 '17 at 01:28
  • @DaneJoe I think your answer is kind of obvious then and not worth a question here: Cryogenics is about freezing people actually to (and below) 0C. All of the sources you have show people not frozen nearly to that extent. At those milder temperatures you have no ice crystal formation and no real freezing and a much less extreme recovery. It has nothing to do with cryogenics. You might as well ask "Why does food cook in my oven at 150 degrees C but it doesn't cook outside at 35C" – Bryan Krause Aug 04 '17 at 01:58
  • @BryanKrause I think scientists who get paid a salary to research it would disagree that it's a waste of time. This is about the specific mechanisms that allow people to survive frigid temperatures which could also easily be any pattern that might show itself as a precursor to such technology, especially the points about that frigid temperatures seem to allow people to survive longer with lower oxygen and reduce tissue decomposition. If the temperature is cold enough, then no bacteria is active either, which means no decomposition whatsoever. – DaneJoe Aug 04 '17 at 03:27
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    The issue is that your question (People can survive for little time at freezing temperature. Why not indefinitely?) is based on a false prior that humans can survive at freezing temperature. The question is therefore opinion-based and must be closed as such. Asking What are the known mechanisms to tolerate below zero body temperature? would be an acceptable question (although arguably too broad but I am not sure). – Remi.b Aug 04 '17 at 04:13
  • You might be interested in protective hypothermia. – canadianer Aug 04 '17 at 04:34
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    @DaneJoe The problem is that you made your question based on a premise that people survive frozen but can't survive cryogenics...except they do not survive frozen. They survive slightly colder than normal. – Bryan Krause Aug 04 '17 at 05:22
  • @Remi.b If it was opinion based I wouldn't be asking a question. I'm not an expert so I'm not going to rule out the possibility of someone surviving freezing given the evidence I presented, which is the opposite of opinion as it is the extrapolation of data to lower temperatures. These are temperatures much lower than "slightly" normal without doubt. – DaneJoe Aug 04 '17 at 12:09

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