Wednesday, January 10, 2024

If you are trapped in a Blizzard

If you are in a car hopefully you have enough gas or diesel to run your engine every so often in order to stay warm with your heater. Also, remember snow is water so you will need to melt some snow if you don't have regular water in a container to drink. Hopefully, you have some food in your vehicle because you might be stuck there in that blizzard for hours or even days. Hopefully you brought along warm clothes or a sleeping bag or some other way to keep you warm while waiting for help to arrive (if it ever arrives where you are).

If you are just hiking and find yourself in a blizzard whiteout which means you don't know where you are exactly, one way to survive this is if you have a sleeping bag and ground cloth at the very least and hopefully a candle to stay warm you can built yourself a snow cave if there is enough snow that is deep enough to do that. In a snow cave you can raise the temperature to about 50 degrees with your candle and stay warm in your sleeping bag if you have a ground cloth to protect you from melting the snow with your body. It would help if you have some insulation like a foam pad to put your ground cloth on (tarp) which will prevent you from melting the snow with your body warmth. However, it's important to have some fresh air to breathe too so you might want to leave a small hole where you went into your snow cave and a small hole out the roof for a little ventilation too. But, in an all out blizzard the holes likely.

Also, you candle and sleeping bag and ground cloth and warm clothes and wool hat will save your life until the white out ends and you can break camp and leave to where you want to go to to survive.

In a sense you are building yourself and underground igloo to survive the whiteout snow storm. The Candle both for lighting and for warming your body through your hands are some of the most important things you need to understand. 

However, if you have a GPS controller you might be able to navigate even in a white out to a safe location so you don't freeze to death. So, carrying one and batteries in your vehicle or backpack might save your life one day as long as the batteries are fresh and you understand how to use this device.

another idea if you are trapped in your car and have an aluminum or other can or pot that is metal is that you can melt snow with your candle as long as you aren't trying to melt too much at the same time. A candle will put out enough heat to melt enough water from snow for you to drink to be okay.

Also, remember even if you don't have food you likely can survive about 4 days if you are warm enough without food with your sleeping bag, candle and water however you can get it (even if you put a little snow in your mouth to melt it there a little at a time.

Also, don't eat or drink yellow or brown or black snow because it likely is contaminated. Also, if I eat snow usually I like to go down below the surface where often it is frozen to get what I would call "Virgin snow" that hasn't been man handled in any way. However, in an emergency you have to do whatever it takes to survive whatever situation you find yourself in.

The reason I say about 4 days is often you might start beginning to hallucinate a little from hypothermia at the latest by 4 days without food. So, eating snow will help keep you alive until help comes.

Note: The reason you cannot raise the temperature above about 50 degrees air temperature in a Snow cave is that it will start to melt and get you wet and cold. So, about 50 degrees air temperature in a snow cave is all that's practical if you want to stay dry and warm at all.

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