Flight security analysis (was Re: Confiscation of Anti-War Video)

[Harmon Seaver]

On Fri, Nov 01, 2002 at 01:35:06PM -0800, Major Variola (ret) wrote:
> At 02:45 PM 11/1/02 -0600, Jim Choate wrote:
> >On Fri, 1 Nov 2002, Major Variola (ret) wrote:
> >
> >> At 30K feet, you have about half a minute before you pass out
> >
> >Which isn't the problem it's the -40F that kills you. You freeze
> >your ass off well before you ever die from lack of oxygen. The vast
> >majority of folks can hold their breath long enough for a jet to go
> >from 30k to 10k in a emergency dive. Less than 60s.
> 
> Wow, Choate biophysics now.
> 
> Do the thermal conductivity/inertia calcs.  -40F *air* can't drop your
> coretemp in 30 seconds.  Do the math.  Or go up to the Dakotas
> this winter and step outside for half a minute.  It hurts but
> doesn't kill that quickly.


   We lived for a long, long time in far northern MN in a cabin with no
electricity or running water. When I had to pee in the middle of the night, I'd
just run outside and pee in the yard. Summer or Winter, it made no difference,
and I never found it a problem standing out there buck naked and barefoot at 30
below. Can't imagine that 40 below would be much different. And since my wife
objected to yellow snow right by the house, I had to walk at bit away, not clear
to the outhouse, but a piece. 
   OTOH, I did once when we lived up about halfway between Jasper and Prince
George, BC fall thru the ice in the Fraser River up to my waist (fully clothed
tho) and my legs lost all feeling almost immediately. Of course, that river up
there was pretty close to being straight off a glacier and was too cold to swim
in even in July or August. I likewise went thru the ice to my waist in N. MN
once and it wasn't bad at all. 



-- 
Harmon Seaver	
CyberShamanix
http://www.cybershamanix.com

"War is just a racket ... something that is not what it seems to the
majority of people. Only a small group knows what its about. It is
conducted for the benefit of the very few at the expense of the
masses."  --- Major General Smedley Butler, 1933

"Our overriding purpose, from the beginning through to the present
day, has been world domination - that is, to build and maintain the
capacity to coerce everybody else on the planet: nonviolently, if
possible, and violently, if necessary. But the purpose of US foreign
policy of domination is not just to make the rest of the world jump
through hoops; the purpose is to faciliate our exploitation of
resources."
- Ramsey Clark, former US Attorney General
http://www.thesunmagazine.org/bully.html