F
Field Ethos
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By Will Dabbs, MD
What’s it really like to die? Well, nobody actually knows. There are those who claim to have died and then come back to life, but that’s not technically accurate. Some of the support structure might have failed only to be kickstarted later, but that vital essence is either there or it is not.
Even this deep into the Information Age, death remains maddeningly enigmatic. As a physician, it has fallen to me to pronounce quite a few people dead. I’ll grant you a little insight into the sausage factory that is modern medicine. We still don’t much know what that practically means.
Life is a curious inscrutable spark. Biology opines that life begats life. All living things must spawn from something previously alive. Mary Shelley’s vivid imagination notwithstanding, we can’t make it de novo. We can only identify when it is gone.
In a manner of speaking, death is simply the absence of life. The sundry machinations involved in declaring someone dead—auscultating for breath and cardiac sounds, assessing pupillary and corneal reflexes, stuff like that—are all designed to assess whether or not that vital ember has actually been extinguished. Like most things, that can be a curiously inexact science.
I was stationed in the Alaskan interior as a soldier. Mine was an arctic combat unit, so the winter was our primary training time. This close to the Arctic Circle it was dark even at midday. It was also just insanely cold.
That’s not hyperbole. The thermometer flirted with 50 degrees below zero. Under those conditions, the world just gets a little bit weird. There is typically no wind and no precipitation. It is as though nature just gives up and quits.
Uncle Sam has ample experience in such unforgiving spaces. Arctic tents will accommodate 10 troops arrayed like the spokes of a wagon wheel radiating out from a center pole. Each tent sports a Yukon stove that runs off of most any flammable liquid. This day we were using JP8 jet fuel, a greasy, diesel-like concoction that is actually a bit challenging to conflagrate. The stove fed from an inverted five-gallon jerry can that sat outside on a stand. Once nicely tooled up, a Yukon stove creates the most mesmerizing sound.
In sleep mode, you lower the canvas tent down to help retain as much heat as possible. One poor schmuck has to stay awake and act as fire guard. The year before I got there, one of these tents caught fire and killed 10 GIs. The fire guard job is important.
What any normal person really dreads is having to change out the jerry can. Five gallons of fuel lasts a while. However, once the stove runs dry, that canvas tent gets cold fast. The fire guard has to traipse outside, wrestle a fresh can in place, and then restart the stove. That sucked. Nobody wanted to be that guy.
We were all nestled snugly in our arctic sleeping bags, but there is just so much insulation you can get out of those rascals. I have indeed slept exposed in one of those things under such frigid conditions. It will keep you from dying, but you’ll never be comfortable.
Sleep deprivation is part and parcel for an Army officer in the field. I had been up for a couple of days already and finally crawled into my fart sack with maybe three hours to go until it was time to get up and do it all over again. Soon after I fell asleep, the stove ran out of gas. As it was close to time to get up anyway, the fire guard just woke everyone, myself included, and cleared everybody else out. Exhausted, I promptly fell asleep again.
Some while later I awoke to find myself alone and cold-soaked. In the absence of the stove, the ambient temperature had dropped to 50 below zero in no time. I was shivering uncontrollably and badly hypothermic. My boots, parka, and gear were outside my sleeping bag. Expeditiously donning that stuff didn’t make things much better.
It was maybe 75 meters to the TOC (Tactical Operations Center) where it was always warm. I gathered up my kit and my weapon and stumbled in that general direction. About halfway there, I started to feel REALLY good.
Before one dies of hypothermia, they develop the weirdest sense of euphoria. Folks who succumb to cold are often found naked having inexplicably removed their clothes. In my case I just wanted to sit down at the base of a tree and rest. I figured just a few minutes should be enough to leave me rejuvenated. After some fuzzy mental gymnastics I nonetheless inexplicably decided to crack on.
By the time I staggered into the TOC, I didn’t know or care who or where I was. My buddies recognized my sordid state and set me up in front of the stove with something hot to drink. Fifteen minutes later I was back in the land of the living. By definition, nobody knows what it is really like to die. I can tell you from experience, however, that in the cold arctic wastes death can be positively seductive.
The post Freezing to Death appeared first on Field Ethos.
Continue reading...
What’s it really like to die? Well, nobody actually knows. There are those who claim to have died and then come back to life, but that’s not technically accurate. Some of the support structure might have failed only to be kickstarted later, but that vital essence is either there or it is not.
Even this deep into the Information Age, death remains maddeningly enigmatic. As a physician, it has fallen to me to pronounce quite a few people dead. I’ll grant you a little insight into the sausage factory that is modern medicine. We still don’t much know what that practically means.
Life is a curious inscrutable spark. Biology opines that life begats life. All living things must spawn from something previously alive. Mary Shelley’s vivid imagination notwithstanding, we can’t make it de novo. We can only identify when it is gone.
In a manner of speaking, death is simply the absence of life. The sundry machinations involved in declaring someone dead—auscultating for breath and cardiac sounds, assessing pupillary and corneal reflexes, stuff like that—are all designed to assess whether or not that vital ember has actually been extinguished. Like most things, that can be a curiously inexact science.
Baby, It’s Cold Outside …
I was stationed in the Alaskan interior as a soldier. Mine was an arctic combat unit, so the winter was our primary training time. This close to the Arctic Circle it was dark even at midday. It was also just insanely cold.
That’s not hyperbole. The thermometer flirted with 50 degrees below zero. Under those conditions, the world just gets a little bit weird. There is typically no wind and no precipitation. It is as though nature just gives up and quits.
Digs
Uncle Sam has ample experience in such unforgiving spaces. Arctic tents will accommodate 10 troops arrayed like the spokes of a wagon wheel radiating out from a center pole. Each tent sports a Yukon stove that runs off of most any flammable liquid. This day we were using JP8 jet fuel, a greasy, diesel-like concoction that is actually a bit challenging to conflagrate. The stove fed from an inverted five-gallon jerry can that sat outside on a stand. Once nicely tooled up, a Yukon stove creates the most mesmerizing sound.
In sleep mode, you lower the canvas tent down to help retain as much heat as possible. One poor schmuck has to stay awake and act as fire guard. The year before I got there, one of these tents caught fire and killed 10 GIs. The fire guard job is important.
What any normal person really dreads is having to change out the jerry can. Five gallons of fuel lasts a while. However, once the stove runs dry, that canvas tent gets cold fast. The fire guard has to traipse outside, wrestle a fresh can in place, and then restart the stove. That sucked. Nobody wanted to be that guy.
Life Goes Pear-Shaped
We were all nestled snugly in our arctic sleeping bags, but there is just so much insulation you can get out of those rascals. I have indeed slept exposed in one of those things under such frigid conditions. It will keep you from dying, but you’ll never be comfortable.
Sleep deprivation is part and parcel for an Army officer in the field. I had been up for a couple of days already and finally crawled into my fart sack with maybe three hours to go until it was time to get up and do it all over again. Soon after I fell asleep, the stove ran out of gas. As it was close to time to get up anyway, the fire guard just woke everyone, myself included, and cleared everybody else out. Exhausted, I promptly fell asleep again.
Some while later I awoke to find myself alone and cold-soaked. In the absence of the stove, the ambient temperature had dropped to 50 below zero in no time. I was shivering uncontrollably and badly hypothermic. My boots, parka, and gear were outside my sleeping bag. Expeditiously donning that stuff didn’t make things much better.
Dying is Not So Bad
It was maybe 75 meters to the TOC (Tactical Operations Center) where it was always warm. I gathered up my kit and my weapon and stumbled in that general direction. About halfway there, I started to feel REALLY good.
Before one dies of hypothermia, they develop the weirdest sense of euphoria. Folks who succumb to cold are often found naked having inexplicably removed their clothes. In my case I just wanted to sit down at the base of a tree and rest. I figured just a few minutes should be enough to leave me rejuvenated. After some fuzzy mental gymnastics I nonetheless inexplicably decided to crack on.
By the time I staggered into the TOC, I didn’t know or care who or where I was. My buddies recognized my sordid state and set me up in front of the stove with something hot to drink. Fifteen minutes later I was back in the land of the living. By definition, nobody knows what it is really like to die. I can tell you from experience, however, that in the cold arctic wastes death can be positively seductive.
The post Freezing to Death appeared first on Field Ethos.
Continue reading...