Cryo Sleep

[nuke11]

With patients coming out of covid commas and these are shorter duration, 30 to 60 days, and then having to relearn how to walk, how would the players be after 150 yrs?

They are not going to bounce out of the tube and be ready to get moving.

[knightofrubus]

I mean there is the Tube Shock rules though those dont have a mechanical impact. I like to think a cryo-tube includes stuff like advanced growth promoters for tissue and electro stimulation to help maintain the body a bit better. Though not sure how true to the setting that is.

[mmartin798]

The description of the freezing process is detailed almost identically in both 3e and 4e.

Personnel has their body temperatures lowered while having a cocktail of gases and drugs introduced into their blood to help inhibit ice crystal formation in the blood. Once they are cooled, the environment is carefully monitored and targeted microwave bursts are used to prevent ice crystal formation.

Once the wake-up signal is received, their blood is filtered of the gases and drugs while electrodes start to shock the body, simulating the muscles, nerves, and heart. The shocks start the heart and the process continues.

Should a problem be detected, the person is immediately refrozen to await medical personnel to assist in the waking process.

Since muscular atrophy should not happen while frozen, the only problems would be neurological. The shocks applied while waking seems to be the way this problem has been addressed. It is also not unreasonable to assume that periodic shock would be applied, much like a TENS unit, to help exercise muscles. I assume there is some initial lethargy and mild stiffness after waking that a little stretching, moving, and exercise will quickly diminish and they are fine within a couple of hours. Given the time to prep their vehicles and figure out what they are doing, I assume there is no further detimental effect, unless a result of tube shock.

[StainlessSteelCynic]

Interesting thoughts about human hibernation on the following blog. May be useful for people wanting to go into more detail when putting people into cryo-sleep and it's worth remembering that an insect species from New Zealand, the Weta, has alpine variants that can survive being frozen due to a property of their haemolymph (as mentioned in the article abstract from the Journal of Insect Physiology in the second link and the abstract from the Journal of Thermal Biology in the third link)

https://inhumanexperiment.blogspot.com/2010/03/curious-case-of-human-hibernation.html

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0022191011000709

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/030645659290019C