Every year, more than 700 people freeze to death while skiing, fishing, hiking, or even while sitting at home. And we've been involved in cases where people have basically died of hypothermia in their living room in Chicago. To show what cold air can do to the human body, Good Morning America's science editor, Michael Guillen, went to the Naval Health Research Center in San Diego. Warm-blooded creatures are designed to fight the cold. In a Utah experiment, for example, scientists discovered adults can survive buried deep in snow for several hours.
Kids are even heartier.
There have been cases in which children have been submerged in freezing water, which causes their small bodies to go in to a kind of hibernation. In these cases, the children had no pulse for up to an hour, and yet, they were revived. Just 10 minutes into his cold chamber visit, Guillen was starting to shiver. It wasn't a useless reaction. Instead, it's the body's way of quickly flexing the muscles to produce heat.