Myth: Taking Off Your Clothes and Snuggling With Hypothermia Victim
- Survival Situation: Hypothermia, Frostbite
This has been glorified by Hollywood and misses a lot of important context that is heavily needed. Yes, body heat between two people naked together can be helpful to both of you. As long as you are also sharing covering to go along with that to give more layers. However, it is important to remember that this method is only helpful at all when you do it BEFORE a person begins to reach hypothermic or frostbite conditions. You’ll also want to make sure there are layers covering you both. If a person has already reached hypothermic or frostbite conditions, they actually need to be getting close to a fire and drinking warm liquids.
If you take your clothes off to snuggle with them, not only will this not work well but your body heat might actually go down along with theirs. Therefore, you might now reach these same conditions as you put your life in jeopardy for one of the biggest survival myths. It has become such a huge problem that science developed a term for it called “paradoxical undressing.” This term came to be back in 1979 as scientists checked into 33 cases of hypothermia from November to January Swedish Police reports. They found the undressing took place as a last-minute thing between two victims, making its reasoning paradoxical as it wouldn’t have helped.