23.12.201727.05.2017

How to keep a frozen person warm in the wild

Unlike local hypothermia, when only the limbs or open areas of the body are freezing, general severe hypothermia often leads to irreversible consequences in the body. This is especially dangerous when it gets into cold water, which is why it is so important to know and apply skills in time warming a frozen person.

Light injury from cold

If the victim has not been exposed to the cold for a long time, a kind of "thermobox" created from scrap materials is suitable for him. It can be a tent, a hole dug in a snowdrift, or even a loose cocoon from. The main thing is that there is enough space in it to light a dry fuel tablet or candle, which will give enough heat to warm the human body.

The best result will be a shelter of two or even three sleeping bags zipped together. They are folded into a kind of bag and hung on several stakes made up of a pyramid. We used sleeping bags, purchased, which, when unbuttoned, became one canvas.

If it is not possible to hang this "thermobox", you can support sleeping bags with your hands and backs, warming people under them. Several candles are lit inside the bag, often no more than 3, which will quickly raise the temperature to + 20 ° C. The heat will warm the frozen ones and dry the sleeping bags themselves. After warming up, the victim is equipped with a warm bed from the sleeping bags.

Severe cold injury

In case of severe cold injury, warming a frozen person runs in a different scenario. It should be remembered here that when diagnosing “ general hypothermia»Effectiveness depends on the speed of care. It literally counts for minutes, so every moment must be used rationally.

First, a person who has been pulled out of snow or water must be removed from wet clothes and replaced with dry ones. In extreme cases - from your own shoulder.

Second, find out the degree of its freezing. If he shakes from the cold, it is rather good, since the body's defenses try to warm the body and the tremors in the muscles lead to the release of additional heat. After changing clothes, such a victim must be forced to move until the moment of equipping a "thermobox" or a warm shelter.

If the victim is no longer trembling, the situation is very serious. He cannot be forced to move and such a person is forbidden to massage, rub and give him alcohol. Despite the generally accepted practices, such actions will lead to the fact that cooled blood from the periphery of the body rushes to the internal organs, which will lead to their defeat. The special medical term “death during rescue” has been assigned to this effect, therefore, the main thing for such a victim is quick isolation from the effects of cold.

The maximum effect is obtained by heating frozen in a container with warm water (up to + 40 ° С). You can also overlay it with warm sheets and towels soaked in hot water. But this requires several heated containers of 2.5-3 liters each and fabrics with a total area of \u200b\u200bup to 3 m 2.

In addition, it is necessary to maintain a positive temperature in the room, and place the victim on a heat-insulating mat. Having undressed, cover it with a cloth soaked in hot water. If there are no towels or sheets, use scarves, sweaters, etc. Most importantly, cover your head, neck, chest, stomach, and groin.

The fabric must be changed as soon as it has cooled down, because cold only increases hypothermia. When he begins to warm up, you can gently rub and massage his limbs. In this case, raise your legs so that the blood flow goes to the internal organs and the head.

Remember! A frozen person should not be seated near a fire or heating appliances. This could lead to his death. With severe hypothermia of the body, heating only certain parts of it is deadly!

Heating should be gradual and uniform. So, near a fire, a person is seated between the fire and a heat-reflecting screen, in a kind of heat pillow that heats from all sides. It is convenient to construct the screen from free isothermal life blanket... The main thing is that the person is not hot. By gradually warming up and rubbing his body, you bring him out of a dangerous state.

Remember! Don't wait until a warm shelter is ready or a fire is lit. Provide help immediately and continuously.

Effective ways to heat victims

Already during the preparation of firewood and construction of the shelter, prepare a place that is reliably protected from wind and precipitation. Populate the ground with a thick layer of twigs, pine needles, grass, or some other heat insulator. Remove clothing from the victim, wipe dry his body and sit on your knees so that his back is pressed against the chest of the person providing assistance. The fewer layers of clothing there are between them, the better the rewarming will be.

In relation to this, I recall the method of warming up the people who are freezing in the northern peoples, when the victim is tightly pressed to her by a naked woman. As the first conquerors of the North wrote, at first it shocked them, but then they themselves became convinced of the effectiveness of this practice.

The method leads to the best result when the victim is placed between two people, but care must be taken so that his breathing is not difficult. It is advisable to wrap them all on all sides with sleeping bags, clothes or blankets. Cover them to protect against precipitation. isothermal life blanket or a film.

It may seem that the requirements are too extensive and somewhat redundant, but this is not the case. Just keep in mind that a victim of the cold will not be able to warm up on their own, no matter how many warm clothes you put on him. A frozen person has impaired thermoregulation and production of its own heat.

I will cite some materials that were not previously mentioned in print. Apparently this was due to the false "modesty" of the publishers. In one of the books on World War II, the facts of experiments carried out in German concentration camps were given. Trying to find effective method resuscitation of victims of hypothermia, the so-called "doctors" froze and thawed prisoners of war, constantly changing conditions. Despite the large number of drugs and other drugs tested, two prostitutes showed the best results. With the warmth of naked bodies and a kind of "professionalism" they revived frozen men much faster, even those who could not be reanimated in other ways.

Again, I cannot but recall the centuries-old experience of the northern peoples who came to the same conclusion without carrying out inhuman experiments. History did it for them.

For obvious reasons, this method will seem unacceptable to some, but when a person's life is at stake, both imaginary shame and stupid prejudices are forgotten. Anyway, just take note of it - suddenly, when it comes in handy.

How to help a person who is already warmed up?

When the victim has come to his senses and warmed up, give him hot sweet coffee or tea. Feed him if he doesn't have nausea and vomiting. Then put it in a warm place and ensure complete rest during the day. I'm not afraid to repeat myself, but in the first hours it is advisable to lay a healthy person next to him. He will not only warm him, but also control the condition of the victim.

First aid for hypothermia.

It is necessary:

Get the person out of the snow or water as quickly as possible;
Protect from adverse weather conditions;
Remove wet clothes from him, wiping his body dry;
Place in a container with warm water. Initially, the temperature should not exceed 25 ° C, with a gradual increase to 40 ° C. In the absence of a container, cover the victim with a cloth soaked in warm water;
Give a hot sweet drink;
If necessary, carry out revitalization activities;
In the field and in emergency conditions, warm the victim with your body.

Prohibited:

Warm (intensely) only individual parts of the body, and not the entire victim;
Give alcohol to a frozen person.

25/02/2015

Normal internal temperature of the human body, i.e. the temperature of the deep tissues of the chest and abdominal cavity is 36–38 ° C. Hypothermia is classified in medicine as a decrease in this temperature below 35 ° C. In this case, a person feels tired, becomes drowsy; motility deteriorates and reactions slow down

Cold limit

Even mild cold has an effect on the body: nerve impulses are weakened, sensitivity decreases and motor skills are impaired (remember how difficult it is to fasten buttons in the cold!). Motor skills begin to deteriorate already at -12 ° C, tactile sensitivity - at -8 ° C. But every cloud has a silver lining - low temperature reduces the sensitivity of the nerves that conduct pain signals. The maximum cold that a person can withstand depends on the time and degree of exposure, as well as on "aggravating" circumstances, so it is difficult to clearly define a specific figure. A naked person begins to freeze if the ambient temperature begins to drop below + 25 ° C, but due to the anti-cold physiological reactions of the body, an adult well-fed person, even in light clothes, can maintain a sufficient internal temperature at 0 and + 5 ° C in calm weather. However, when the extremities are cooled below -0.5 ° C, body tissues begin to freeze, and at -50 ° C, uncovered skin freezes in a minute.

Physiological reactions of the body to cold

The human body reacts to cold by reducing heat transfer and increasing heat production. To retain heat, it is necessary to reduce blood flow to the skin, since the amount of heat transfer is determined by the amount of blood flowing to the surface. That is why bare skin first turns white in the cold. However, it is possible to cut off the blood flow without harmful consequences only for limited timesince tissues are deprived of oxygen and nutrients. If you put your hands in ice water, the skin will first turn white, then it will become painful as a result of the accumulation of toxic metabolites. And after 5-10 minutes the skin will turn red and the pain will subside - the vessels will expand again. The vasoconstriction alternates with dilation - such fluctuations do not allow the skin to suffer from severe frost and provide, albeit an unstable, but sufficient supply of oxygen. This phenomenon explains the redness of the nose and hands in the cold.

Why are they shivering from the cold?

The main source of heat is muscle activity, since muscle contraction is low efficiency and heat is generated as a by-product. Tremors are involuntary muscle contractions. It begins in the muscles of the trunk and arms, but gradually spreads to the muscles of the jaws, causing chattering of teeth and shaking the entire body. The tremor helps to increase the heat production by 5 times, however, due to the shaking, convective heat transfer also increases, and thus the usefulness of the tremor is reduced. Heat production can also be increased by using physical exercise... However, both voluntary and involuntary heat production is limited by the reserves of "fuel" in the human body. Thus, muscle glycogen stores are sufficient for a maximum of several hours. It turns out that, ultimately, heat production depends on access to food. Hunger and hypothermia are often inseparable. the body can only generate the amount of heat required for heating when there is sufficient nourishment. Therefore, in winter everyone gets better, because subcutaneous fat serves as an excellent insulation and a fat person will last longer in the cold.

Dehydration in the cold

Cold increases urine production. The amount of urine produced by the body is directly related to the volume of all fluids circulating in the body. Any increase in this volume is captured by the baroreceptors and stimulates the production of urine. When the blood vessels are constricted by cold exposure, the capacity circulatory system decreases and blood pressure increases. In addition, the kidneys' ability to produce concentrated urine is reduced at extremely low temperatures. Therefore, those who are forced to work in the cold for a long time may be at risk of dehydration.

Frostbite

When the skin is cooled to a temperature of about 0 ° C, tissue freezing can lead to frostbite. In very severe frost, the vessels remain constantly constricted, as a result, the bloodless areas are cooled to ambient temperature. Most often, limbs and protruding open areas are affected: nose, ears, cheeks, fingers. If only the top layer of the skin freezes, the integuments become white, waxy and lose sensitivity. After rewarming, the frostbitten areas turn bright red and peel off. With deep frostbite, the skin becomes gray, the tissues swell, and after a day or two, blisters and a hard black crust may form. At best, new skin will grow under the crust, but this process will be extremely painful. If muscles, bones, and tendons are affected, it almost inevitably leads to tissue death and can result in amputation. It is not recommended to rub the frostbitten areas, because ice crystals form in cells and intercellular fluid, which can damage tissues when touched and rubbed.

Hypothermia stages

Moderate hypothermia occurs when the internal temperature drops below 35 ° C. It is characterized by severe tremors, deterioration in fine motor skills and coordination, and a decrease in mental capacity. Victims of hypothermia become lethargic, lethargic, immersed in themselves, indistinctly and inappropriately answering questions. Thought processes slow down and inadequate decisions are made from the cold.

The maximum cold that a person is able to withstand depends on the time and degree of exposure, as well as on "aggravating" circumstances, so it is difficult to clearly define a specific figure

As soon as the internal temperature drops below 32 ° C, the trembling stops, since the body's energy is already depleted. The muscles no longer generate heat and the temperature begins to drop rapidly. Consciousness is lost at about 30 ° C.

With deep hypothermia, the heart rate slows down, the pulse becomes threadlike, breathing becomes elusive, superficial and chaotic. Its frequency is reduced to 1–2 breaths / min. The skin turns pale and freezes, the limbs do not bend, the pupils dilate and do not react to light. Life processes slow down, as in deep suspended animation, and a person looks like dead, although he may still be alive. There are known cases of returning to life even from such states.

If the temperature falls below 28 ° C, cardiac arrhythmias can occur, and irregular cramps in the heart muscle (ventricular fibrillation) interfere with normal blood pumping, which can be fatal. If the internal temperature drops to 20 ° C, the heart will stop.

Wind chill index

Everyone knows that the wind increases the feeling of cold. The wind blows off the surface layer of warm air, replacing it with cold air, thereby increasing heat transfer. In case of calm and frost at -29 ° C, a person dressed in accordance with the weather is not in danger of freezing. However, as soon as the wind rises to at least 4–5 m / s, the temperature will seem to drop to -44 ° C, at which the skin will freeze in 1–2 minutes. If the wind increases to 6-7 m / s, the equivalent temperature will be -66 ° C. This is already really dangerous, because in such a frost, tissues freeze for 30 seconds. Taking into account the wind-cold index, even at zero temperatures, a person can freeze limbs.

Water and cold

The thermal conductivity of water is 25 times higher than that of air, so a body immersed in water gives off heat much faster. Prolonged exposure to water with temperatures below +20 ° C will result in significant heat loss and may cause death from hypothermia. At + 15 ° C, a naked person will last a maximum of several hours, at + 5 ° C - this period will be reduced to half an hour. When immersed in water of zero temperature, hypothermia will occur in 5-15 minutes, and death - in the interval from 0.5 to 1.5 hours. Rumbling or attempts to swim will only accelerate heat transfer and bring death closer. The heat loss in cold water increases from movement - a thin layer of water heated by the body dissipates and convective heat transfer increases. In addition, blood flow increases in the limbs, which give off heat most actively. Warm clothes, gloves and shoes, even in water, serve as additional thermal insulation.

At 15 ° C, a naked person will hold out for a maximum of several hours, at 5 ° C - this period will be reduced to half an hour

Cold water can kill in several ways. Death can occur instantly, as the cold can cause irregularities in the heart rhythm, and a reflex attempt to inhale underwater can be fatal. In addition, the rapidity of breathing provoked by the cold flushes carbon dioxide from the blood and reduces its acidity, as a result, muscle cramps develop and this interferes with coordinated swimming movements.

War and cold

“Trench foot” is a localized cold injury that develops as a result of prolonged exposure to cold and dampness. To do this, it is enough to stand for 12 hours in water even at a temperature of + 10 ° C, because wet feet freeze much faster than dry ones. The blood vessels constrict and the tissue deprived of blood flow begins to die off. The affected foot is cold to the touch, pale mottled and appears to be numb. After warming, the skin becomes crimson-red, the foot swells and hurts a lot, "as if an electric discharge was passed." Blisters, ulcers and even gangrene can develop. In severe cases, the foot dies off and has to be amputated.

But in case of severe injuries, severe cold can provide a service: blood loss is significantly reduced, the rate of metabolic reactions decreases, and tissue oxygen demand decreases. All of this, combined with cold anesthesia, can help a severely wounded person survive until medical attention arrives.

A person can withstand a fairly severe cold if he is full, dressed and healthy. In peacetime, only extreme situations can cause death from cold, but during war, death from hypothermia in winter becomes no less real than death from bullets. History is replete with examples when frost radically changed the outcome of military campaigns. As a result of hypothermia, not only soldiers die, but also refugees who are left without food and shelter, and especially often the cold takes the lives of old people and children

Tatiana Krivomaz, Ph.D. biol. sciences

Slider photo: ice crystal; scanning electron microscopy

"Pharmacist Practitioner" # 01 ′ 2015

Despite all the preventive safety measures, in the practice of accidents, cases of general hypothermia of one or more victims are not uncommon. Unlike local cold lesions, when only the limbs or only the face are frozen, general hypothermia, if you do not provide assistance in time, can lead to quick and irreversible consequences. Hypothermia in water is especially dangerous.

In mild cases of general freezing, the victims can be advised to create a "thermobox" from scrap materials. For example, inside a snow shelter, a fabric tent, as a last resort, simply on the "street" roll up a tent-bag made of plastic wrap and light a candle or a tablet of dry fuel there. An even greater effect is given by "thermoboxes" made of 2-3 sleeping bags sewn or fastened together. They are also rolled up in a bag and hung on an improvised frame or 3-4 pegs made up of a pyramid.

In extreme cases, sleeping bags can support people who have climbed under them with their backs and hands. 1-3 candles are lit inside the "thermobox", and the temperature very soon rises to + 20 ° C and more. At the same time, the sleeping bags themselves are dried from the heat of the candles. After the victims have warmed up, they can equip a normal bed.

The situation is more complicated in cases of severe cold injuries. Saving frozen people, one must remember that the effectiveness of helping a patient with a diagnosis of general hypothermia is directly proportional to the speed of its provision. Here the count goes for the minutes. Each wasted moment can cost the victim his life.

The first thing to do is to remove wet clothes from a person who has been pulled out of a hole or snow, giving dry clothes, even if from his own shoulder, and find out the degree of his freezing. If he's shivering from the cold, then it's not so bad. Shivering is the body's defensive reaction, during which extra heat is released. Such a victim must be changed and forced to move in order to keep warm, until a warm bivouac is equipped.

A victim who is no longer trembling should not be forced to move! Likewise, it is impossible to rub, massage and give alcohol. This will only lead to the fact that cold blood "from the periphery" rushes to the internal organs, enhancing the damaging effect. There is even a special term to denote this effect - "death at salvation." Helping a person in such a state should be as quickly as possible isolating him from the effects of cold.

The most effective heating of a frozen person in a bathroom with a water temperature of no more than + 40 ° C or by wrapping them with towels and sheets soaked in hot water. But for this, the group must have 3-4 cooking containers with a volume of 2.5-3 liters each and pieces of fabric with a total area of \u200b\u200b2-3 sq.m. In addition, a hot taiga fire should be burning on the street, and a positive temperature should be maintained in a completely built shelter. The victim must be undressed, laid on a heat-insulating mat and overlaid with pieces of cloth soaked in hot water, in extreme cases with scarves, sweaters, etc., covering the head, neck, chest, stomach, groin.

The fabric should be changed to hot as it cools. The cooled tissue no longer warms a person, but, on the contrary, increases hypothermia! At the same time, you can gently massage, rub the victim's limbs. It is better to raise your legs to direct blood flow to the body and head. When providing assistance, you need to act very well and quickly. A frozen person should not be seated close to a fire or heating devices... This only speeds up his death!

With strong general hypothermia, heating of certain parts of the body is deadly! Heating should be uniform and gradual. For example, near a fire, the victim should be seated in a heat pillow between the fire and a heat-reflecting screen, but so that he is not very hot, and, gently rubbing and warming with the heat of his own bodies, gradually withdraw from the dangerous state. It is unacceptable to wait for the end of the erection of a warm shelter or making a fire. Help should not be provided when everything is ready, but immediately and continuously!

Already during construction and fuel preparation, it is necessary to cover the ground with a thick layer of heat insulator in a place protected from precipitation and wind, remove all clothing from the victim, wipe dry and sit on his knees so that his back is in close contact with the chest of the person providing assistance. The fewer layers of clothing separate the bodies, the larger the contact area, the more effective rewarming will be.

It is even better to place the victim between the bodies of two healthy people, but so as not to obstruct his breathing. The victim and people (or a person) providing first aid should be carefully wrapped from all sides with blankets, sleeping bags, clothes, protected from adverse climatic influences with the help of plastic wrap, fabric.

It must be remembered that a frozen person on his own, without the receipt of heat from the outside, cannot keep warm, no matter how many warm clothes he is wearing! The next tip (I apologize in advance to the puritanical reader) will not be entirely decent. Why, probably, it was repeatedly cut out by editors from the manuscript of the book.

When, during the Second World War, the death of sailors and pilots in the waters of the polar seas became widespread, the command of the German naval forces instructed military doctors to find the most effective way to resuscitate people who suffered from hypothermia. "Medics" did not go north to the area of \u200b\u200bhostilities, they dispersed to concentration camps and began to freeze and unfreeze prisoners of war, recording the frequency of successful and fatal outcomes.

A lot of medication and other methods of revitalization have been tried. So: the best were ... street prostitutes. Two of them, with their naked bodies and professional actions, revived a frozen man much faster than any other means! They brought back to life those who could not be reanimated in any other way.

I cannot insist on the use of this method of warming as mandatory, but I consider myself obliged to talk about it, if only because it is the most effective and available in emergency conditions. And then ... And then the women decide.

After the victim has warmed up and came to his senses, he must be given hot sweet tea or coffee, if there is no nausea and vomiting, feed him. Then provide complete rest in a warm, horizontal position for at least a day. In the first few hours, it is advisable to lay a healthy person next to the victim, who can control his condition and warm him up.

First aid for hypothermia.

Raise the victims out of the water as quickly as possible, pull them out of the snow, and protect them from adverse climatic influences.

Take off wet clothes, wipe dry.

Place in warm water (with an initial temperature of 22-25 ° C and a final temperature of 37-40 ° C.

Give a hot drink.

In the absence of a container with warm water, cover with hot sheets.

If necessary, carry out revitalization measures.

In the field, warm the victim with your bodies.

Intensively warm individual parts of the victim's body.

Give alcohol inside.

What the gold diggers of one of the mines in Kolyma found that day was least of all like a nugget. But there was more excitement and controversy that the find caused than if they really stumbled upon a gold mine. From a transparent block of ice raised from a depth of eleven meters, frozen into it, like into glass, a strange creature looked at the seekers. Small, about 10 centimeters long, it felt like living.

But the most incredible thing happened when the ice melted. This creature - it turned out to be an amphibian, a Siberian salamander - moved, opened its beady eyes even wider and tried to dart somewhere to hide from the people surrounding it.

The amazing find was reported to the Zoological Museum of the Academy of Sciences of the Ukrainian SSR. Soon a visitor from the permafrost, alive and in good health, was in Kiev. Typically, the salamander has a lifespan of 10-15 years. If it turned out that this specimen is older, it would mean one thing: he really spent a certain number of years in this block of ice, deep underground. The well-developed radiocarbon method made it possible to answer this question. The salamander brought from the Kolyma was about 100 years old. This means that at least 85-90 years ago this creature turned out to be frozen in a block of ice and time seemed to have stopped for it.

Frozen newt

Another case of the same series. Says a tunneling miner who worked in Kolyma: “I worked with my partner in the drift at a depth of 22 meters. One day my partner discovered a newt, hard as a bone, in a frozen rock. As I see it now, it is dark green, the tail is short, thickened, four legs. We gave the newt to the foreman, who raised it to the surface, heated the water to summer temperature and let the newt into it. We go up for lunch - and we can't believe our eyes: our newt has thawed and is floating in a basin! "

With all the skepticism of official science towards reports of this kind, these facts can still have an explanation within the framework of the ideas that it has. When the body cools down to certain limits, its vital functions cease, but later they can be restored. So be it. But how can other facts and other messages be explained?

Other examples of coming alive

One of these messages was recorded in 1829 in Liverpool. Stonemasons worked large chunks of granite to make the steps. In a large piece cut off from such a block, a flaw was found - the hole led into a small cavity. Having expanded it, they saw a small turtle, which appeared there, no one knows how and no one knows from what time. But the most amazing thing is that she was still alive. The turtle continued to live for several hours: enough to confuse the scientists who had examined it and the very depression in which it resided.

The location and date of another find is equally accurate - April 22, 1881, Wide West Mine, Nevada, USA. One of the miners, passing through the tunnel, knocked out a stone sticking out of the wall with a pick. Falling, the stone hit him painfully on the leg, and the miner, in annoyance, hit him again with a pick. The stone cracked, and there was a void in it, filled with some kind of white worms, which, however, showed no signs of life. True, after more than an hour they came to life. The managers of the mines sent the strange find to the Central Bureau of Mines, as it turned out, only to get an answer from there that this could not have happened.

Approximately the same answer was received by the developers of diamond copies from scientists at the Academy of Sciences in San Francisco, when they presented them with their equally strange find. During blasting operations in the limestone layer ... a frog was discovered. She was literally cemented in a block of limestone that preserved her imprint. When the splinter was raised to the surface and the frog was freed from the stone captivity, for some time it showed signs of life, although it remained completely blind.

Can you give other cases of the same kind? In 1892, a beetle, believed to be petrified, was found to be a pink-gray beetle in a broken piece of iron ore in an Arizona mine. The find was handed over to a geologist in a nearby town, who placed it in an open box for storing samples and forgot about it for a while. When, a week later, the scientist looked into the box, he saw that the beetle was moving. His surprise was even greater when, having examined the strange beetle under a magnifying glass, he found a baby beetle emerging from his body. An act was drawn up about the phenomenon, which was signed by the witnesses present. The small beetle lived for several months, after which the entire find, including a piece of ore with the beetle's imprint, was taken over by the Smithsonian Institution, a scientific institution with a worldwide reputation.

I am not aware of any attempts to date such finds. The only case when such dating was carried out relates to the Hindorus crustacean. It turned out that he lay in the permafrost in suspended animation for as long as 20,000 years.

Frozen mammals

Until recently, many were convinced that this could only happen with cold-blooded, but not mammals, and certainly not with humans. However, it becomes more and more difficult to maintain this confidence every year.

To confirm the principled possibility of returning to life after the "deadly freezing", American researchers conducted an experiment with dogs. Twelve dogs were frozen and brought back to life after two hours. After 30 minutes of fasting, they could walk, then drink water, and after a few hours they could eat.

The frozen people come to life

From time to time, such experiments, against the will of people, are put on them by chance.

... Late at night, the Leningrad chauffeur Vasily Sh. Was returning home. On one of the deserted streets, he suddenly felt sick, he fell into the snow and lost consciousness. It was 30-degree frost. When I picked him up in the morning “ ambulance”, The pulse could no longer be felt. The chin, hands and feet were covered with frost and ice. Ice was in my mouth. Doctors stated “deadly freezing”.

Nevertheless, everything was done to bring the victim back to life.

“First, Sh. Was placed in a warm bath,” Professor LF Volkov told the correspondent, “then they introduced heart and tonic drugs, and then put him on the bed under the frame on which the electric lamps were fixed. Thanks to vigorous warming, the patient began to feel better. Now he is already walking, the mood is excellent ”.

Frozen boy

This case is far from the only one. Presumably, only a small part of such incidents ends up in print pages. And an even smaller proportion of them attracts someone's attention, remains in the memory.

In the winter of 1987, a boy froze to death in the Mongolian steppe. He lay 12 hours in the snow in 34-degree frost. His body turned into an ice statue. There was not the slightest sign of life - no breath, no pulse.

Apparently, Mongolian doctors had experience of dealing with similar situations. After some time, a pulse appeared, not even a pulse - a barely noticeable beat, two beats per minute. Many hours passed before breathing appeared and the rescuers heard the boy's faint moan. A day later, he wiggled a finger, then a hand. The heart began to work evenly and more often, returning to normal. And after another 24 hours, the boy opened his eyes. Consciousness fully returned to him. The medical procedures and observations continued for another week, after which the boy was discharged and sent home with the conclusion: "There are no pathological changes."

How can you revive after freezing?

Obviously, in a state of suspended animation somewhere deep in the frozen cells, under a layer of stiff muscles, a faint spark of life glimmers. The challenge is to keep this spark from going out. In being able to bring a person back to life, not only a few hours or days later, but years or even centuries later.

In theory, a person, plunging into suspended animation, can program his awakening for the twenty-fourth, twenty-eighth or thirtieth century. He may wish to wake up in a thousand years or in two thousand. If today he is terminally ill, he can stipulate conditions so that he will be thawed when a cure for his illness is found.

The James Bedford Experiment

This was done, for example, by the American James Bedford, a 73-year-old professor of psychology. His body, from which blood was pumped out, replacing it with a special liquid, was placed in a freezer, where chilled liquid nitrogen circulates continuously. The professor’s decision to go frozen into the future caused an understandable resonance. Some journalists joked: "Well, Bedford will be surprised when he remains dead!" Nevertheless, several hundred more people in the USA and Japan followed him “through the refrigerator into eternity”. In special cryonics centers, enclosed in transparent capsules that flow around liquid nitrogen, cooled to -360 ° equally alien to both life and death, they float along the waves of time into the future.

Professor Paul Segal has devised a method to allow a “client” whose clock is numbered to imprison himself in the freezer before clinical death... There, the professor says, "he will stay until science can overcome his illness and provide him with a new life."

Several dozen French people also decided to follow suit. Each of them constantly carries with him a blue card with the following text printed: "I, the undersigned, wish that in the event of my death my body would be immediately frozen and kept at the lowest possible temperature."

The main thing, however, is not that immersion in suspended animation will allow a person to overcome huge distances in time and live in different centuries or even millennia. Many will wish to travel to the future, driven by more than purely tourist interest and curiosity. As they embark on this journey in freezers, they will hope to get into a world that will come closer to solving the problem of immortality, and maybe even solve it.

I must say that very few people can afford such a trip. Today in France the right to be frozen costs 128,000 francs. Not surprisingly, the first 40 French people who decided to buy a chance at immortality are millionaires.

Wake up in a hundred years?

Just as the ancients did not imagine the afterlife other than the repetition and continuation of their daily existence, so today many in the West do not imagine that the future society would not be a copy of the current capitalist world. The ancients placed next to the deceased everything that they thought they might need in the afterlife. Likewise, those who nowadays decide to venture through the freezer into the future are trying to get a decent bank account. It turns out that in order to wake up as a millionaire in 300 years, it is enough to put 1000 dollars in the bank today. Three percent per annum in a hundred years will turn this amount into 19,000, in two hundred - 370,000, and by the time of the expected awakening, each such inhabitant of the refrigerator will, according to calculations, already have $ 7,000,000.

It seems, however, that by that time the millions, prepared for the future life, will be just as useless in practice as today those stone axes and spears that the ancients carefully placed in their burials. Of course, money that has lost its meaning can be abandoned. But what to do with the equally atavistic spiritual baggage that will inevitably accompany a person trying to enter the future through the door of the refrigerator compartment?

The society of the future seems to us a society of unprecedented rates of evolution - not only scientific, technical and social, but, most importantly, moral. And the more intense this process is, the more subsequent generations will differ from those who lived before them. Let us imagine what would happen if immortality was achieved during this accelerated evolution. Generations will cease to replace each other, they will be layered one upon another, until people of their time are buried under the layers of those born long before them.

Does it follow from this that the immortality of the individual and the evolution of mankind are mutually exclusive?

In the Soviet Union, in the course of one of the sociological studies, a group of 1224 people were asked to answer, in particular, the following question: would they agree to personal immortality if they knew that as a result, progress on Earth would stop?

Over 90 percent of those surveyed rejected immortality at such a price.

We must think that in the future this point of view will be shared by an increasing number of people. They will find the strength to renounce personal immortality in order for all of humanity to approach the heights of intellectual and moral evolution, for this is precisely the meaning of the continuous progress of humanity. V.M. Bekhterev wrote in his work “The Immortality of the Human Person p. point of view of science ”that the goal of the evolution of society is the creation of“ the highest in the moral sense of the human being ”.

However, the number of years is perhaps not the only and not the main measure of a person's life expectancy. On one of the tropical islands, Charlie Chaplin was once present during an interesting conversation. The American tried to find out from the old Aboriginal man how old he was. - When was the earthquake? the old man asked. "Twelve years ago," the American replied. - Well, by that time I already had three married children.

I lived up to two thousand dollars - and explained that this is the amount that he managed to spend in his life.

The counting is carried out here not in abstract astronomical units, showing how many times the Earth has gone around the Sun, but in the events of a particular human life. This view is unusual for European thinking, but common among other cultures.

In the future, as human civilizations draw closer together, this view may turn out to be clear to the majority. Then, when asked about age, a person will name the perfect, achieved by him, and not the measure of his biological being. Perhaps this is the true age of a person - his spiritual age. Then, in response to such a question, a person will be able to say: -I have cured a thousand patients. -I have grown fifty crops. -I raised three children.

What is immortality?

In the immeasurably distant future, having approached the heights of his evolution, man will perhaps acquire the moral right to exist forever. Then immortality will not be a reward for the tricks of the human mind, but the biological crown of its entire moral evolution.

But if so, if a person can use immortality only at the highest stages of his development, why then all the past searches, discoveries and discoveries? Why are the efforts of modern science and even science of the foreseeable future? Doesn't it follow from the above that all this is meaningless?

It would seem that such a conclusion suggests itself, lies on the surface. However, like much on the surface, it is false. As you know, the uprising of Spartacus did not eliminate slavery. The jump from the belfry of the "smerd Nikita" on homemade wings did not lead to the creation of an aircraft. The voyage of the Vikings across the Atlantic was not the discovery of America for many centuries before Columbus.

Why, then, today, when we talk about the history of the revolutionary struggle of the masses for freedom, about the history of aeronautics or the history of geographical discoveries, do we recall these events? Events that seemed to have no continuation and did not lead to anything.

The fact is that each of them, even without ending with a specific result, was a step in the development of the spiritual and moral qualities of a person. Therefore, the blood of Spartacus was not shed in vain, discoveries that were ahead of their time, rejected and forgotten were not in vain. High feats of mind and heart were not in vain, even if no one knew about them and they did not change the world. These were all steps in the development of mankind.

The same steps are, in fact, the search for immortality, the possible achievement of it, and even the rejection of immortality in the name of life and the improvement of all mankind.

If a person comes to physical immortality as a result of his evolution, this immortality may not arouse his interest and will not seem to him as valuable as it seemed yesterday and as it still seems today. Because the norms, assessments and criteria of a perfect person will differ in many respects from our present ideas.

It can be assumed that the ancients really knew some means of prolonging life, and even for a very significant period. It can be assumed that the search for modern science will ultimately open the way to extending life for decades, perhaps centuries. But no less legitimate is another, perhaps the main, thought - the thought that none of this is needed, that there is no need to seek immortality, because a person is initially endowed with it. And not in some allegorical sense or figurative meaning, but literally.

Apparently, a person is something more than his outward appearance, perceived by our senses. One can judge and guess about this by a number of facts. Among them, these facts, reports on the return of a person to life after clinical death. The memories of those who have experienced this experience, the circumstances that accompanied this, allow us to see the whole situation of human existence, and the person himself, in a rather unexpected, unusual aspect for us.