I've had mild hypothermia. I was out hiking on a mountain plateau in mid-Summer - lots of snow still lying around. My hiking companion broke the hikers' code and walked ahead to set up camp. He had much longer legs, was much stronger, and could carry his backpack effortlessly. I couldn't keep up. As the sun began to go down and the wind picked up, I began to feel very cold - shivering. I kept walking - no other option. The cold became intensely painful, like a second-degree burn - more intense in fingers and toes. I became unbelievably tired. Rests made no difference. Then I began to sweat despite the cold - my body had lost its capacity to control its temperature. Not knowing how mad it was, I took off my upper layers of clothing down to a thin singlet. At this point, I was confused and didn't know it, no longer fully aware of reality - I could perceive, but I could no longer see the implications of anything. After a time, my hands and feet became numb, and walking became difficult - an act of concentration because I could not feel my feet. I felt unbelievably tired and stumbled frequently. There were steep cliffs to the left of the track. I just walked in some kind of automatic state.
I stumbled into the camp. My companion recognized the symptoms of hypothermia immediately. He helped me get into the tent and sleeping bag and then climbed in with me to warm me up with his body.
It was luck.
I was disoriented enough that I could easily have missed the trail and fallen off the cliffs into a snow drift, or wandered off into the bush on the right, lost until I collapsed unconscious. Once unconscious, I would have frozen and been dead before morning.
Since then, I take more care than most to avoid feeling cold.
This post was edited by inky at October 22, 2018 9:43 PM MDT
I was making a joke but from what you said it sounds like you become so "out of it" that you may not suffer so much. That's what I've thought about suffocation or drowning. Not that you become delirious, but that it wouldn't be such a bad way to go. At least there's no blood or pain as we know it.
It was a traditional way for Japanese elders to die (according to Simone de Beauvoir in "La Viellesse"). When they felt they were too old to be helpful and had become a burden to their children, they asked their adult sons to carry them up high into the mountains in winter and leave them in the snow. If it's cold enough, you fall asleep in ten minutes, and then gradually freeze to death, unaware of the transition.
But one can die of hypothermia at only 4ºC; it just takes a lot longer. For me, the first phase of feeling the cold, shivering and starting to go numb was the most uncomfortable. It was a 20-kilometre hike and took hours before the numbness and mental confusion set in. It's not like "normal" pains - not like broken ribs or childbirth. It's slow, insidious and unrelenting. As a form of suffering, it's real enough, even when ignorant of the danger.
This post was edited by inky at October 17, 2018 7:18 PM MDT
On the contrary, that level of cold is a distinct form of pain. It feels like a second-degree burn - that is a direct burn to the nerves in the layer just below the skin - starting with fingers and toes and spreading till you're sweating just as much as with heat stroke. The extreme tiredness is also suffering. Being confused and disoriented doesn't mean being unable to feel pain.
I think you must just get numb thus have a sense of warming, then go to sleep. I hope. I can hardly think of how horrible some deaths must be, like falling off a cliff or into that big grinding machine they throw furniture and appliances into. Shivers!
I think it is painful when tissues freeze. I had frost bite two years ago when cleaning a big snow storm up off my property. My toes felt like they were in fire. They turned red and swollen I was really scared. The danger is not just frostbite but getting sleepy wben you are out too long.
inky 