MemeMachineGo!

Did you know that hanging unconscious suspended in a climbing harness can kill you? Cavers know.

In the past few years, a new type of accident has appeared in the caving world: death due to hypothermic exhaustion by hypothermia. Such cases have also cured on rope when the “frog” method of rope ascent was used. 15 cases have been noted and each time the reason for death was the same phenomenon of hypothermic exhaustion. A 1983 study of these deaths has led the Medical Commission to consider the possibility of a new factor: suspension in a sitharness. In 1984, the first indoor experiments took place. The first two volunteers fainted and experienced serious difficulties - one after only 6 minutes of hanging. These tests were thought to be to dangerous, and were stopped immediately. They did, however, led to the assumption that even a healthy caver could die very quickly if left hanging “total inert” (without muscular movements) in a sitharness. Total inertia evidently occurs each time a caver is unconscious, after a cranial traumatism, for example.