Is it true that death by cold is painless...

I all most drowned in cold water the last few moments were painless; the first were full of panic and fear. When I almost drowned in a hot tub; I was comfortable until I was pulled out then I felt horrible and exhausted.

Both death by cold and death by overheating (not being burned) lead to a delirious state. As @talljasperman notes, those who are close to death either way are not experiencing pain.

So our best guess is that neither is painful, yet there is no one in a fully realized position to tell us exactly what the final moment is like.

Who can answer this question? Can’t wait.

I kinda agree with @josie who can really answer this question?

I once go trapped in a meat freezer over a three day weekend and died.

It sucked.

Well, death by hypothermia or heat stroke is probably preferable to being strung up and eviscerated, impaled on a wrought iron fence, mauled by a tiger or gored to death at the running of the bulls.
Unless the heat stroke was caused by being trapped in a porta-potty on a 100 degree day. Personally I’ll take hypothermia over porta potty suffocation any day.
I think freezing to death would not be as terrifying or painful as all of the above. lol

@Blondesjon And it affected your speech! :/

On hot days I can’t take it. The suffering is exhaustive I can imagine it would be similar until the moments before death. Have you ever watched a Monk starve themselves to death? That looks painful.

Unless lava rolls over your entire body from a volcano I think heat will hurt at least for a minute, and even then I think it will hurt for a second at least.

I had a third degree burn, hurt like hell for weeks.

Cold burns to ironically.

It’s very possible to describe the effects of freezing to death before losing consciousness since many people have survived before nearly freezing to death. I can verify a few of these feelings myself since I had been lost and stuck out in the frigid cold several times. For some reason I can’t post the link of the site I wanted to directly onto here, so wiki will have to do. Hypothermia.

That wiki article claims under the “severe” category that once temps. drop below 30c or 86 degrees the skin becomes blue and puffy.
86 degrees? lololol

I had a better link, but for some reason it doesn’t show up right on here.

I denno, but if that happens, it might be better for the person to not be rescued, since when you warm up again, it probably feels intensely painful, plus you’re apt to lose most of your digits.

If that is true, why does the cold hurt so much when you’re not dying?

In my twenties I had a case of moderate hypothermia. Much shivering followed by confusion, somewhat delirious, some aural and visual hallucinations but no pain that I remember after the initial discomfort from cold that caused it all.

Interesting. I wonder how long it takes until you enter that delirious state…but that will vary, of course.

I think everyone should have an overdose of Morphine on hand or maybe a Cyanide pill in their camping gear. You know, for these hypothermic potentialities. haha

@longgone With me it took about four hours of exposure..

I’ve heard of someone who nearly died of cold, or died and revived, who was annoyed to be revived, at first.