That's why mum's go to Iceland.

"Dead" for 23 days? I hadn't heard of that guy.

I'd like to know if his stomach was empty, or if he had lost any weight in that time. Any decomposition or was it too cold?

"Then, once the underlying problem had been fixed, they could be reanimated." Yeah, I saw that episode of Star Trek Next Generation. It wasn't a good one.

I did see a documentary from the year 1987, and N.A.S.A. launches the last of America's deep space probes. In a freak mishap Ranger 3 and its pilot Captain William 'Buck' Rogers are blown out of their trajectory into an orbit which freezes his life support systems, and returns Buck Rogers to Earth five-hundred years later.

He seemed just fine, although develop a propensity for karate chopping aliens in the back.

Very pleasant

So not only will one have the discomfort of freezing to death, but they'll also choke you.

Huh...

I must be permanently on the verge of dying, then. My core body temperature has always been 35.5 or thereabouts. And I've always needed a nice warm rock to lie on before I can really get going in a morning...

cool

This is totally awesome! lets test it on mice first though.

Suspended animation?

In every one of the suspended animation examples listed in the article the subject had a reduced (core?) body temperature. But all of them appeared to be substantially hotter than their surroundings when found. So how can the article say that they had "literally frozen to death"?

Also, it could be questioned whether the subjects really did suffer no ill effects. I believe that surgeons in the old Soviet Union used to perform heart surgery having stopped the patient's heart. Rather than using the high-techery then available in the west, the surgeons cooled the patients down to 5%C by placing ice over their bodies. Western physicians who studied the outcomes of the 'successful' procedures (those where the patient survived) as well as the blood passed through the patients once during surgery & retained, concluded that the brain suffered damage when blood flow was restricted, even at very low temperatures. And all of the examples listed in your article were warmer than 5%C when found.

Stuff

16 degrees is hotter than the surroundings... but if you leave a huge piece of hot meat outside it will take a long time to reach ambient temperature.

"literally frozen to death"

Are you trying to get into Colemanballs?

Yay! Anecdotal Evidence

Because everyone knows that anecdotal evidence is always true and should be used in scientific research.

Literally frozen ?

"her body temperature plunged to just 16°C* before she was rescued, warmed - and came miraculously back to life, despite having literally frozen to death"

Hate to be a pedant (ok, I'm lying, I love it actually) but 16° C is not "frozen". Frozen is 0.

So she wasn't. Not literally or for that matter at all.

IIRC

The maximum density for water is 4c. It would seem the outline for a viable process would be a temperature ramp down with gradual shift to an inert gas (while keeping a little CO2 in the incoming stream to stimulate respiration).

Could you chill them fast enough to avoid serious conditions getting worse during the chill? Who knows.

Skull cooling has certainly been looked at as a way to reduce brain swelling during head injuries and strokes.

Mine would have PMP with Niven & Pournelle's "Wait it out" loaded.

No way

There's no way I'd want to be put to sleep only to wake up in the 23rd century where humans are no longer conceived naturally and buttfucking is the social norm.

It's all bullshit.

I know I have poked every member of my family into the deep freezer - one after another and they all came out very cold, very stiff and very dead.

The cuts of meat however were fine.

Braaaaaaaaains!

Oop, that only happens when they come back from dead, not cold ... right?

<-- Beat 'em or burn 'em, they go up pretty easy.

Cryogenics and reanimation

Fascinating idea, hope it comes to fruition in the next few decades... I think I remember an article the Reg published a while back about a reanimated dog; the dog was killed, blood removed and replaced with saline, then a day later given its blood back and revived, with "only" something like 30% brain damage. Maybe these processes, and several others that have not been invented yet, need to be combined for successful cryogenic storage of human beings?

Fishy appendages

I've been reanimating* fish-fingers for years!

* well re-heating is close enough.

Low body temperature...

I once scared the bejesus out of a St John's Ambulance man after he read my body temperature (in ear) as 31.5C - apparently I should have been dead, or at least unconscious, rather than just complaining I didn't feel well and barely being able to walk.

Annoyingly I'd recovered by the Monday (this was at a rugby game on a Saturday afternoon) and could go back to work.

flatliners

was there not a movie made about this subject: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flatliners ?

frozen suspended animation

Anyone who wonders how this can happen should have attended some lectures I went to. Every time a certain prof entered the stage I myself switched immediately to suspended animation (though cannot say whether it qualified as frozen). Usually, I was even able to reanimate all myself afterwards.