Comment by dublin | Hacker News Reader

Comment by dublin | Hacker News Reader

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I call B.S.! Neither I, as a child, or my many ancestors that obviously did survive, could have done so here in Texas (or most of the South), if this were true. Near 100% RH and temperatures in the 100s are not common, but neither are they that uncommon within a few hundred miles of the Gulf Coast.

Maybe more modern people are becoming wimps from the air conditioning. (My wife and I both attended some schools that were not air conditioned, and it's not like we're ancient - In my case, it was due to incompetent months-long repairs by the Austin schools; In her case, it was just a South Florida school that didn't yet have AC.)

I expect there's a substantial geographic and occupational distribution of heat tolerance, but this research consists of people in a single area, so it doesn't catch that. That said, heatstroke risk is deadly serious, but fairly easily avoided with a few minor precautions. (Maybe a few more than Bear Bryant used with his famous Junction Boys workouts - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Junction_Boys)

I guarantee you that the average farmer, rancher, or oilfield or construction workers can withstand more than these results would indicate - if that were not true, we'd lose many more to heatstroke than we do...

This article very clearly says that they tested wet-bulb conditions that are dangerous for "prolonged exposure," and they specifically reference heat stroke.

Their lab can't test what would kill people. They can only test conditions that risk heat stroke.

So you seem to agree with the results of the experiment, but you appear to have missed it in your eagerness to call people (not sure who, exactly) "wimps".

> call people

Well, to be fair, the poster wrote the expression "«wimps from the air conditioning»", which I would judge as quite understandable in its apparently intended scope and aim.

Unfortunately, the expression, pushing the idea of "buffers anytime", hides the opposite reality of the impact that undesirable conditions have on performance.

Now I'm curious, 'Near 100% RH and temperatures in the 100s' should as the article says, be theoretically lethal; what are the precautions by which you avoid heatstroke, without air conditioning? (The one I thought of, if you have no air conditioning but you do have a fridge, was putting a bag of ice cubes on your head, but for some reason, people who live in hot countries, don't seem to do that.)

Agreed. I can't parse the details of this article too well since I'm not a very smart person, but anecdotally I grew up with high heat and high humidity virtually every day, and I also had (gave) a strong aversion to drinking plain water (I'm better about it now, but my teeth suffered greatly for a long, long time due to sodas and juices until modern dentistry got me fixed up). If I understand this link, I should have died. So should most everyone else who lived in the same region.

Now OK I am not a "climate denier" but I feel the need to remind Northern hemisphere people that it's Summer. That's all I'll say on that topic for now.

> I feel the need to remind Northern hemisphere people that it's Summer

You are paradoxically right to remind us, because some of us are puzzled about this climate we seem to be thrown in in usual places. I have never in the past summers had to go at 1500m altitude (4000..5000ft) to say "ok, now the conditions are comfortable enough", but for exceptional days.

Oh, I do remember that evening many years ago in which I came to doing absurdities to get "at least a ludicrous idea of a tiny increase of fresh air" in the unbearable weather. It was summer, all right. It lasted dozens of hours, not months; it was August, not May.

I did ten years in restaurants. On the hottest most humid days of the year I was running around next to a oven for 12 hours. Then I'd bike home to my apartment with no AC.

I'm just learning now that I died.

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