has such a plot in the movie " Everest": "After a climber was trapped on the top of Mount Everest and was so cold all night, he began to tear his coat and outer clothing." Normally speaking, then Why take off your clothes when it's cold? In addition, there are similar anomalous plots in movies such as "Span1span Desperate Elevation " and "Escape Room", which seem strange, and many people think that the script design is wrong. But in fact, this is scientifically based.
This phenomenon is called " abnormal undressing phenomenon (Paradoxical undressing)". That is, many people will take off their clothes before freezing to death, which is completely contrary to our instinctive reaction to protect ourselves from the cold. It usually occurs in people who are in the very low body temperature stage (below 35°C), which is an unconscious behavior of the human body.
recorded examples of abnormal undressing phenomenon!
A well-known example is the Ural Mountain disaster in 1959 (the Gatlov incident). When the 9 climbers who were killed at that time were discovered, they were all wearing thin clothes or even no clothes at all to keep warm Leave clothing in the tent. Rumors arose, and the cause of death has not been fully explained yet.
There are also several bizarre deaths in Jiaming Lake, 3300 meters above sea level in Taiwan Province of my country. When the dead were found, the bodies were all in or near the lake, in an environment of minus 10°C. Take off his clothes.
Is there any real witness record? It really does.
In the winter of 1847, a member of the Donner Party of the United States crossed the Sierra Nevada into California .Unfortunately, they were trapped on the mountain by an unusually strong blizzard and got their only axe. Therefore, the group was unable to cut wood and burn fire. When starving and there was no fire, they spliced the blankets together, set up a simple tent to prevent snow accumulation, and huddled together to keep warm.
Then something strange happened. On the first cold night when the wind was roaring and there was no fire, Patrick Dolan in the group suddenly became excited. He muttered vaguely, then took off his tattered clothes. From the tent ran into the snow still falling. Because everyone was hungry and cold, they didn't have the first time to chase, they just shouted for Patrick to come back. A few hours later, when Patrick returned to wander around the tent, the team members pulled him back. But when he was dragged back, Patrick was naked, and then died soon after. The surviving members of the group witnessed and recorded this weird scene.
Take off your clothes and drill holes!
From 1978 to 1994, in 69 investigations of deaths caused by hypothermia in Europe, the dead were divided into indoor and outdoor. Outdoors, 25% of the deceased were either partially or completely naked when they were found, with a ‘smile (smile)’ expression on their faces. According to the trace examination, most of the dead first took off their lower body clothes, their pants and shoes, and then their shirts and jackets. They continued walking as they took off their clothes, their clothes scattered behind their bodies.
And some indoor cases showed strange behavior. In 14 cases, people tried to get into a narrow space just before freezing to death. It seemed that the person was looking for shelter so that they could get a little heat, but when the dead were found were naked (almost).
The corresponding example is a bizarre "homicide": an old man in the UK died naked under the bed with abrasions on his knees and arms, which looked like man-made; but the final appraisal showed that the old man died of freezing. Why do they squeeze themselves into the narrowest space they can find,The reason is still uncertain.
Why is there abnormal undressing?
We all know that humans are warm-blooded (constant temperature) animals. Regardless of the external temperature, the normal body temperature of the human body needs to be maintained at about 36.8 degrees Celsius. If the body temperature is lower than this temperature, the body will produce a series of physiological reactions. If the body temperature is lower than 35°C, it is medically called " hypothermia ". Hypothermia is divided into 3 stages: trembling, chills (32–35°C); unconsciousness (28–32°C); coma, slow or stopped heartbeat (20-28°C).
Regarding the abnormal undressing of people who were frozen to death, scientists gave two explanations:
One explanation is peripheral vasoconstriction . The human body is threatened by extreme cold, and the blood vessels in the limbs will contract to maintain blood flow to the main organs of the body (heart and brain), that is, losing the car to protect the handsome. This is also the reason why people can easily leave irreversible injuries to their limbs during frostbite. For example, some mountaineers who have climbed Mount Everest have amputations in their fingers and toes.
When the human body functions against the extreme cold and is exhausted, the muscles that maintain the contraction of peripheral blood vessels also become fatigued. The blood vessels will relax and re-expand, and blood will flow back to the limbs and into the skin capillaries. At this time, the person was confused, the blood flowing back made the limbs feel hot or even hot, and he involuntarily took off his clothes. I took off my clothes and felt much more comfortable, and his face unconsciously showed a "smile (smiling, does anyone think of the little match girl?)"...Finally, she lost her temperature and died.
Another explanation is that extreme cold caused hypothalamus thermoregulation center failure .The hypothalamus area is the body's temperature regulation center. When the cold causes the hypothalamus to be disordered, it will send out wrong signals. Make you feel hot when it is not hot, then take off your clothes.
In addition, there is a horrible guess: the brain knows that it is about to die, so it issues instructions to take off the clothes to end this painful process as soon as possible, so that the brain can be a moment before death Feel the warmth.
There is also the strange behavior of drilling holes in addition to the abnormal undressing of people who were frozen to death mentioned above, which is called the "ultimate cave dwelling" behavior by German scholars. This may be a protective measure for brainstem stimulation, because the extremely low temperature triggers the human body's "hibernation" instinct, unconsciously burrowing into small spaces to help reduce heat loss.
The last thing I want to say is that whether it is abnormal undressing or drilling a hole, it is something that happens when a large area of the body loses temperature, and it is an occasional phenomenon, not a common phenomenon.
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