There is no need for all the hyperbole and Zed Shaw-like drama on HN, articles can be interestingly written without all that baggage. That someone such as yourself, who knows a lot about this, and someone like me who doesn't can both enjoy the article is a testament to the style.
[1]http://thelastpsychiatrist.com/2008/11/where_does_a_tree_get...
I've done the sea survival training for offshore racecrew and it's the same: you're in your suit, wearing a lifejacket and harness, and attached to a jackstay. There are radio tags you can get now, about the size of a matchbox, you wear one and if it goes out of range of the basestation a MOB alarm goes off. Clever, but at night, in rough seas, making 10 kts, you're still in a LOT of trouble.
Don't ever do this. The cold blood in their arms and legs will rush to their heart and kill them. You are supposed to leave them out in room temperature and wrap their core in blankets until the blood near their heart is able to reheat their limbs.
Once you get cold and wet out there, you aren't going to get warm and dry again until the race is over and you're back on land, which might be days and hundreds of miles away. So we train for that. Similarly in our first aid, the "rules" on moving casualties are different. 'Cos you can't leave them on-deck...
This problem shouldn't even be a problem, you shouldn't leave them alone when they are recovering! Well, IMHO.
I was in a canoe race on a cold spring day in cold water. At the beginning of the race I ended up jumping into the river in waste deep water. My jeans stayed wet the whole race. My legs were cold wet and immobile for over an hour while my upper body was 'working out' paddling the canoe.
All was good until the race ended. I got out of the canoe to walk the 1/2 mile back home. As soon as I started walking I felt the cold blood from my legs rush up to my torso & started seriously shivering. Continuing to walk made it worse. Made it home anyway & collapsed under a hot shower. I felt at the time that if I'd have tried to walk much further I'd have had a real bad day.
Unlikely. there will be very little of that cold blood to mix. Very little. Adding heat will cause your core temperature rise. What is more likely to happen is that the sudden vasodilation drops your blood pressure, and your heart, possibly still in it's stunned cold state, can't compensate with stroke rate or variability. Then you risk cerebral hypoperfusion in the face of increasing metabolic demand (warm cells run faster, burn more glucose, need more oxygen to burn that glucose)
Tests carried out by the Swedish Sea Rescue Society along with data from over one hundred years of recorded incidents, showed that the safest way to sustain a person suffering a cold shock or near hypothermia is to simply uncloth them (if soaked in water), blanket them lightly, and let their body heat itself up to normal temperature, utilizing the time in parallel to make sure heart rate and blood pressure stabilizes in calm tempo.
Another problem arises when you are rescued as he points out, but the stories I have heard are about the survivors being put in showers to raise their body temperature back up and collapsing and drowning in a puddle of water in the shower.
The whole thing, on the other hand, seems fairly moot. It's like telling someone that when you get shot, it's not the bullet that kills you, it's the bleeding.