Death Planet Roundup: Tips for surviving the Bitterly Cold
GENERAL SAFETY AND HEALTH
Keep 5-10 gallons of clean drinking water in jugs in the basement At All Times. The basement is cold af, but the earth’s underground heat keeps it above 34 degrees Fahrenheit pretty much all the time. If you’re trapped in your house without running water, this can last a several days if used sparingly. If you don’t have a basement, keep it near the center of your house in a closet or something so it doesn’t freeze.
For the same reason: Keep about a week’s worth of canned food in your basement SPECIFICALLY for power-outages and days when you can’t leave due to dangerous conditions.
If you’re outside for whatever reason, make SURE you keep tabs on your extremities and exposed skin. Toes, Fingers, Ears, Cheeks, Nose. With bone-biting cold temperatures, you’ll also want to either cover piercings with earmuffs/hood/scarf, or you’ll be risking the metal conducting cold right into your flesh and freezing the fluid in your cells that touch the metal until ice crystals form, burst your cells and that’s called frostbite. Avoid any part of you feeling numb if you can.
Wear Wool socks. Wool keeps its warming powers even when soaked with water, while cotton will not. Cotton is great when you want your feet to be cool and airy. Winter is NOT the time for that. Sweaty is better than numb.
Here’s how to rescue someone who’s fallen through the ice.
If you’ve fallen through ice and no one’s around - DO NOT PANIC! Here is a good video about how to self-rescue - keeping calm and focused on saving yourself is key. You have less than 2 minutes before hypothermia sets in and you’ll be too weak to move. Don’t spend those precious seconds on panicking.
If someone’s been out long enough that they got super cold, or somehow got wet and then started feeling kinda warm and confused/woozy, DANGER ZONE!! That’s the onset of hypothermia, and is deadly. First, call 911. Then, start to warm this person up slowly. Get them to a warm room, remove any wet clothes, dry them off, wrap them in blankets, and try to feed them sugary food until the ambulance arrives. SLOWLY warming them is 100% important. Trying to speed things up can cause cold blood to move to their heart without being warmed up, and shock the organ into cardiac arrest.
Don't put the person into a hot bath.
Don't massage their limbs.
Don't give them alcohol to drink.
If you’re the one starting to feel warm and confused, get to a warm area ASAP and try to tell anyone around you about what you’re feeling, so they can help. This will be difficult due to the confusion, but communicating that you’re becoming incoherent may be easier and will elicit the same worry. Elderly people and small children are the most vulnerable to hypothermia, but being wet - either from sweat or getting water on you - punches you straight into the danger zone.
FROZEN PIPES/HOME IMPROVEMENT
This Post does a pretty good job explaining dealing with a frozen pipe
Never attempt to thaw a pipe using an open flame. No candles, no propane torches, no creme brulee torches...it’s house fire fodder. Also, applying that strong of heat to your metal pipes is asking for a broken pipe
If you find a lot of cold is leaking into your house via windows (very common for older houses to have single-pane windows that let in cold like a motherfucker. If it’s got a bare metal track, it’s probably single-pane) PLASTIC WINDOW WRAPS are a god-send. Basically it turns your single-pane into a rough double-pane by trapping some dead air between the cold glass and your house, and GREATLY reduces the amount of cold getting in. [link] <-- Make sure to measure the windows you want to apply it to, so you know it’ll fit.
CHECK your smoke and carbon monoxide detectors. With the house closed up and the furnace and/or fireplaces going, it’s essential to have working smoke and CO detectors.
If it’s cold enough to make the pipes freeze, you better double and triple check that you’ve got some extra blankets tucked away in your car because you do NOT want to have your car battery die and be stranded in sub-zero temperatures with no blanket. Keep some of those “Break and Shake for Heat!” packets and extra gloves in your glove compartment or back-of-your-seat pocket
Also, batteries are sapped by the cold - this includes phone and car batteries. Keep your batteries warm to prolong their life. Cold-Killed car batteries may take extra time to get a charge.
If you do end up trapped in your car (maybe your battery died, maybe you slid off an icy road into a ditch...) Here’s a good guide on what to do. Mostly just make sure your car is visible, call for help, and stay in your car keeping warm.
If your power goes out and your FRIDGE is dead, just throw everything in a tote and set it outside. =P It’s below-freezing out there anyway, your food will stay very cold. Try to put it in a safe place or lock-able container, because scavenger animals would be happy to take it off your hands...
Water - one gallon of water per person per day for at least three days, for drinking and sanitation
Food - at least a three-day supply of non-perishable food for every member of the household. Cans of soup are efficient
Battery-powered or hand crank radio and a NOAA Weather Radio with tone alert. Alternatively, a manual-crank phone charger
Moist towelettes, garbage bags and plastic ties for personal sanitation
Wrench or pliers to turn off utilities
Non-Electric can opener for food
A WRITTEN bit of paper with your emergency contacts (friends, family) tucked into your wallet in case your phone is dead and you need to use someone else’s
Bag of sand in your car’s trunk for traction if you get stuck
Remember: You live in Space-Australia. A death planet. Don’t let it defeat you! We are strong! Will will conquer!
