Swedish man survives 2 months without food under snow

I did not know you could survive this long without food.
"Besides eating snow, the man probably survived by going into a dormant-like state, physician Stefan Branth told Vasterbottens-Kuriren"

Swedish man survives two months in snowbound car
http://www.thestar.com/news/world/article/1133825--swedish-man-survives-two-months-in-snowbound-car

 

Wait until we get more data.
The probability of surviving 2 months in the snow is near zero.
It may have been a diesel van with a heater, lots of spare fuel and stocked with cans of food. In that case boredom the main problem.

 

Well, the news article is pretty specific. It says he was found in a sleeping bag in the back seat, and had been in the car since December 18th with no food. It also says he was emaciated, and too weak to speak more than a few words.

I guess there's a difference between zero chance and near-zero chance.

 

Here is the same event from another newspaper:
http://www.smh.com.au/world/igloo-effect-saved-mans-life-20120220-1tjhj.html

Some more detail, slightly different age and... a different car!

 

That's the same car in both articles.

from post #4


from post #1


Age difference is only one year, it could be caused by one knowing only the year of birth or the full date and so knowing if he had his birthday this year yet (if so, it must have been in the freezing car . . . . )

Here is a third article, look cosy, but a bit cold . . . . .



Cheers
Angel

 

Here an article with video, it seems to be he survived through a "igloo effect" in the car or a kind of "hibernation effect" he got in most of the time . . . . . . . . . . my guess is most of the latter and maybe a bit of the first...

Cheers,
Angel

 

All articles I've read in the newspapers are fairly consistent. The Police have terminated the investigation because there is no reason to suspect any crime. It's sad to realize that some people can disappear and not be missed by anyone for two months. From what I understand he was reasonably healty at the onset, so why didn't he break out from the car?
Erik

 

It's a sad story, maybe he wanted to "check out" . . .

Hope the new year continues a bit happier for him . . . .

Cheers,
Angel

 

There was a couple of US Marines (literally man & wife sense of couple) that this happened to a little over a decade ago here in the USA. They and their infant child got lost while driving in white out conditions. They stayed in the car until they figured no one would find them, so they set out trying to find help. They ended up pretty badly frostbitten but alive.
The article says minus 30 degrees, he would've died pretty quickly after leaving the car if he wasn't prepared for that kind of cold.

 

I don't think he was trying to check out...
The amount of will power it takes to do survive like that is something that I think very few people can relate to. If he went out there without having that will power already, he wouldn't have made it.

 

I wonder if he was somewhat overweight at the start of his ordeal, it would have helped him survive. It would have been a bad thing to find him months after he passed away. THere was a guy in Russia that was buried in an avalanche in his car for two weeks, he had a case of beer to keep him alive. He eventually dug his way out by "urinating" a tunnel into the snow out of the car. A benefit of only have beer to keep you alive I guess.

I remember reading about a government worker in England that had died at his desk and no one noticed it for several weeks. He was just sitting there in his chair and looked "normal" to everyone that walked by his office. It was probably the smell that tipped his co-workers off. Looks like no one at home or at his place of employment that missed him.

 

The weather in that area has not been particularly cold this winter, except for that -30 deg C extreme at the end of Januari. -10 deg C has been a more typical temperature. The tradition from the newspapers is to not dig into personal tragedies, so I guess that we will never know the reasons behind it all. I wish more luck for him this year.
Erik

 

I wish more people did understand that you can survive like this, in particular hikers and climbers. If you break a leg, you really can just sit down for a month until it heals. It is usually the smart thing to do. Quit eating immediately until you are mobile again and then resume eating while you make your egress and don't bother trying to crawl, just wait until you can at least hobble. wiki has a so-so article on starvation response with some metabolic numbers, but it doesn't consider cold response. I can tell you from experience that metabolism can drop to a respiration rate of four per minute after a few days. Brain usually requires about 10g glucose per day. This can apparently go way down after extensive fasting. Surprising, boredom doesn't really happen. Its more like being sedated. I bet he has almost no recollection of the passing of time.
I suspect fasting is actually better than many types of malnutrition in extreme circumstances, at least if you had been eating a balanced diet prior to the fast.