In one of the most remarkable - and odd - survival stories of recent times, a Swedish driver claims to have endured two months snowbound in his car as temperatures plunged as low as -30C.
The astonishing story emerging from mid-winter Sweden has doctors and scientists at odds over how the man survived such an extended deep freeze eating nothing but snow.
Video Credits: From Euro News
With the survivor today "awake and able to communicate", according to the hospital treating him, doctors, rescuers and the world’s media are anxious to know how he ended up in such a frosty predicament.
He is believed to be Peter Skyllberg, 44, who was found by two snowmobile riders near the town of Umea, just outside the Arctic circle, on Friday.
The rescuers dug through about a metre of snow to find Skyllberg on the back seat in a sleeping bag, emaciated and very weak, according to Ebbe Nyberg, a local police officer.
"They were amazed at what they found: a man in his mid-40s huddled inside in a sleeping bag, starving and barely able to move or speak," Nyberg, working in Vaesterbotten county, was quoted as saying.
Skyllberg told police he had been in the car since December 19 without food, surviving only by eating snow and staying inside his warm clothes and sleeping bag.
Dr Ulf Segerberg, the chief medical officer at Noorland's University Hospital, said he had never seen a case like it.
The astonishing story emerging from mid-winter Sweden has doctors and scientists at odds over how the man survived such an extended deep freeze eating nothing but snow.
Video Credits: From Euro News
With the survivor today "awake and able to communicate", according to the hospital treating him, doctors, rescuers and the world’s media are anxious to know how he ended up in such a frosty predicament.
He is believed to be Peter Skyllberg, 44, who was found by two snowmobile riders near the town of Umea, just outside the Arctic circle, on Friday.
The rescuers dug through about a metre of snow to find Skyllberg on the back seat in a sleeping bag, emaciated and very weak, according to Ebbe Nyberg, a local police officer.
"They were amazed at what they found: a man in his mid-40s huddled inside in a sleeping bag, starving and barely able to move or speak," Nyberg, working in Vaesterbotten county, was quoted as saying.
Skyllberg told police he had been in the car since December 19 without food, surviving only by eating snow and staying inside his warm clothes and sleeping bag.
Dr Ulf Segerberg, the chief medical officer at Noorland's University Hospital, said he had never seen a case like it.
The man had probably been kept alive, he said, by the natural warming properties of his snowed-covered car, which would have acted as "the equivalent of an igloo".
"This man obviously had good clothes; he's had a sleeping bag and he's been in a car that's been snowed over," said Dr Segerberg.
"This man obviously had good clothes; he's had a sleeping bag and he's been in a car that's been snowed over," said Dr Segerberg.
There have been cases of people caught out in the mountains and if they can dig themselves down in the snow they are able to survive and be found. But there must be something special in this case"Igloos usually have a temperature of a couple of degrees below 0C and if you have good clothes you would survive in those temperatures and be able to preserve your body temperature.
"Obviously he has managed to preserve his body temperature or he wouldn't have made it because us humans can't really stand being cooled down like reptiles, for instance, which can change the body temperature."
Two months was at the "upper limit" of what a person would be able to survive without food, added Dr Segerberg.
But another doctor, Stefan Branth, said a low body temperature might have been just what saved Skyllberg, putting him into hibernation mode, "a bit like a bear".
"Humans can do that. He probably had a body temperature of around 31C which the body adjusted to. Due to the low temperature not much energy was used up," UK newspaper The Guardian reported Dr Branth saying.
That's a claim based on less-than-solid science.
Despite accounts of people surviving in extremely low temperatures - like icy lakes, or beneath avalanches - humans are not considered capable of hibernation, an extended period of "suspended animation", which requires a much slower heart rate, metabolism and breathing that allows animals to survive on reserves of body fat.
Two months was at the "upper limit" of what a person would be able to survive without food, added Dr Segerberg.
But another doctor, Stefan Branth, said a low body temperature might have been just what saved Skyllberg, putting him into hibernation mode, "a bit like a bear".
"Humans can do that. He probably had a body temperature of around 31C which the body adjusted to. Due to the low temperature not much energy was used up," UK newspaper The Guardian reported Dr Branth saying.
That's a claim based on less-than-solid science.
Despite accounts of people surviving in extremely low temperatures - like icy lakes, or beneath avalanches - humans are not considered capable of hibernation, an extended period of "suspended animation", which requires a much slower heart rate, metabolism and breathing that allows animals to survive on reserves of body fat.
However, science blog Inhuman Experiment last year recounted reports dating to the 1850s of Indian yogis surviving many days buried in airtight conditions only to be "exhumed" in good health. It also reprints a century-old British Medical Journal report of Russian peasants sleeping half the year to survive famine.
Dr Segerberg said that, even in a part of the world where sub-zero temperatures and heavy snow are the norm, the Skyllberg case was unusual.
"There have been cases of people caught out in the mountains and if they can dig themselves down in the snow they are able to survive and be found. But there must be something special in this case," he said.
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