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RedDeerGuy1's avatar

What hurts more , being burnt to death or freezing to death? Possibly NSFW.

Asked by RedDeerGuy1 (24959points) February 13th, 2017

Or is it the same? What’s your preference? I choose freezing because my organs can be harvested for donation.

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17 Answers

Berserker's avatar

Burning, probably. You might even go somewhat insane before you die. Freezing would take much longer, but after a certain point you probably wouldn’t even feel much of anything anymore, might even be kinda trippy.

zenvelo's avatar

People who go through hypothermia actually act very calm and a little odd, and get numb. They slowly fade out until they die. No pain.

Burns are horrificly painful.

gondwanalon's avatar

Jumping into a pool of molten lava would be a pretty quick death.

Jumping into a pool of liquid nitrogen would also be pretty quick.

I’ll go with the liquid nitrogen.

SQUEEKY2's avatar

Burning, hands down.

Coloma's avatar

Yep, burning or suffocation or both would be far worse. After the initial extreme shivering from the cold, muscle weakness, some delerium, the person slips into unconsciousness and then coma proceeding death. Not too bad compared to burning. Heart failure during sleep is the best way to go.

Sneki95's avatar

As stated by @Berserker, freezing makes one numb. Freezing to death is akin to falling asleep. The body slows down, you feel less and less. First you shiver and feel immense cold, but with time you grow more and more numb. Organs shut down one by one, until the brain and heart stop as well.
Freezing is gradual and non-violent type of death.
Being burned alive is painful, violent, and way quicker. The body is way more alert and sensitive to burn. The pain is much stronger. Unlike with freezing, the burning body does everything it can to keep alive, while freezing body slowly succumbs and adapts to cold until it slows down completely.
I’d rather die in snow than in fire.

Zaku's avatar

Burning. Freezing to death tends not to feel so bad because you go numb and pass out.

LostInParadise's avatar

Experiments on this have been complete failures. None of those questioned about what it was like was willing to give an answer.

kritiper's avatar

Frying. Freezing puts you to sleep.

ARE_you_kidding_me's avatar

I’d much rather freeze

Patty_Melt's avatar

I have been cold enough to require hospitalization. No extremeties were damaged, but my internal temp was low enough my organs could have begun shutting down.
I know first hand the drop in mental sharpness which occurs. Of course, what mental function I had remaining sought help, but details were so fuzzy, I had no idea how near I was to death.

ucme's avatar

Sounds like Billy asked this question…“I wanna play a game”

Dutchess_III's avatar

I have heard that freezing to death just puts you quietly to sleep, so that.

What happened to you @Patty_Melt?

Patty_Melt's avatar

It was my navy days. We were transporting visiting officers to a ship anchored offshore. It was a twenty minute trip each way, normally.
Water got choppy on the way out. When we pulled alongside the ship, our utility boat nearly mashed their ladder. The officers had a tough time making it aboard.
Reports were that expected weather turned inexpectedly much worse. We were instructed to get the visitors right back to shore.
Fog rolled in thick during the few minutes it took to get the visitors back onboard. We were facing fourteen foot swells in a fifty foot UB. It tipped us from starboard to port so hard the sides dropped to water level with each roll.
Nobody knew until later a snipe had set his toolbox next to the magnetic compass and messed it up. We were using Captain Jack Sparrow’s compass.
I suspected there was a problem when I saw the faint shadow of the ship through the fog on our port side. Firstly, anything you are leaving shouldbe aft, not port. Secondly, we had to be fairly close to it forme to get any visual at all in that pea soup, and we had already been thirty minutes traveling what was supposed to be a twenty minute run.
I tried to memtion this to the coxwain, but he told me to shut up, he knew what he was doing.
I had already spent half an hour having icy water crash into my face in huge waves. I had salt crust making me crispy everywhere. Officers were whining about drowning, and begged for life jackets. I told them to look under their seats, and put the damn things on.
Still, the coxswain wouldn’t let me talk.
Finally, after two hours of a Gilligan cruise, the coxswain called me to him.
His beard was decorated with ice droplets, as I am sure was my hair. He told me we were lost, and he didn’t know what to do. I could see it was killing him to say, and I lost my desire to rub it in. I told him I would go to the bow, and point, and if anybody asked, tell them I was watching for crabpots.
That’s what we did.
Less than half an hour later we were pulling alongside the Academy south seawall.
For the first time ever, I ignored my job. I hopped (real stumbly and stiff) from the boat, and instead of tying off, I made a bee-line for the visitors welcome center. I could hear the coxswain calling me, but he could kiss my ass. I really wobbled and staggered the last several steps. I couldn’t speak, nor could I stand anymore. I backed against a wall, and slid. Two old ladies hovered, and gave me a cup of hot cocoa. I was much too cold to tolerate drinking anything hot, bit the cup felt good to my hands.
The next thing I knew, I heard an ambulance. I handed the old lady her still full cup, and in came the gurney.
The next twenty four hours corpsmen fed me warm broth and took my temp like a turkey, with this long prong that would go right to the center of me.
The coxswain came to see me, (giggle) but they wouldn’t let him in unless I said ok. He was feeling real guilty, as well he should.
I had blankets PILED on me, but I shivered, and shivered, and shivered, and shivered, for hours it went on non stop.
Reaching normal internal temp was not good enough. I had to stay long enough for them to be sure it was holding on its own, and nothing was going to quit functioning.

Patty_Melt's avatar

I bet you thought I was going to say something easy like my car stalled in the mountains during a blizzard, huh?

Coloma's avatar

@Patty_Melt haha, what a story, I thought you just drank too much champagne and passed out in the snow somewhere on your way to get a burger. lol

Dutchess_III's avatar

@Patty_Melt, no I really couldn’t imagine a situation in this modern world where you could experience that. Water makes hella sense though. Coxswain was a dick, huh. Not gonna let a GIRL tell HIM what do do.

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