Weather

[headquarters]

Originally Posted by Mohoender

What temperatures are you talking about? What you describe seems to be about -50°C. Anyway, if that is the case, dehydratation would be the least of your problems. If temperatures are closer to -10°C or -20°C that would be less of a problem except of course if you have no snow around. However, if you have snow finding water won't be that hard. Melting it might be a bigger problem but you might simply forget about that if you really are thirsty. As a result, I would expect you to die more quicly from some kind of diseases than from dehydratation.

Well it all depends really . If moving along without time to biouvac ,melting the snow that is everywhere is the problem not finding it - you would think that dehydration is only a problem in really hot enviroments - but in the cold it is a factor too.

Wet and cold is the worst combo imho - but cold-cold -like -5 to -15 is hard too.

In the winter you are only warm as long as you keep moving unless you have a heat source .If its 10 below and you are marching along with kit and all ,the sweat builds up .Once you stop you get cold rapidly.Also even if in the tent or biouvac the cold makes you burn energy to kep warm even if you are at rest .

So I guess imho its about roughly 50-100% more taxing doing winter manouvers than doing a spring manouver .But all factors come in to play of course and are too numerous to discuss in this reply.

[jester]

Abnother thing is in cold you NEED cream! I still have scars on my hands from cold weather training when a Boot. And even though wearing gloves most of the time my fingers split at the edges of the nail and the splits were down to about 2 or 3mm which made it painful if not impossible to use the affected fingers, to grab anything or touch them with those split fingers was a stinging burning pain that would give me pause!

As for water in cold climates.

I mentioned what happened to us in my first session of "arctic weather training"

And our Gunny, a nice guy but an IDIOT 1st Class and his fill in wasn't any better, although the third one was shit hot but he only lasted a year then the dickhead who followed him well I still pray his daughters end up in a snuff film.

But we ended up having to "melt ice" for water. But the idiot didn't pass out the heat tabs and such to do it with. So we really had no means to melt anything with. I came upon the bright idea of taking MRE plastic sleeves and filling them with ice and putting them in the sun when we did day operations. In my platoon the plastic casings were gold, each man had to have half a dozen to get a decent amount of water, the dark plastic would absorbe the sun better and if filled with snow, half of it would melt be the time we returned at the end of the day. A good portion would be greedily sucked down with enough to fill a canteen.

And we would also carry canteens in the open lashed to our packs or duece gear durring the day for regular training to help the sun melt the frocen contents as well as an MRE wrapper, half filled with snow on the outside of our gear or in a field jacket or Goretex pocket giving you about a liter of water.

So, those are a couple methods of melting snow into potable water without a fire or while on the move.

And for the record, we lasted for a solid week on minimal water eating snow, and no more than a liter of water a day doing such training, and I am talking hauling a sled, or walking up a mountain in skis ala herring bone or side stepping. I must admit, that was when I was in the best shape of my life ever! And alot of it was a result of that training.

[pmulcahy11b]

Originally Posted by jester

Abnother thing is in cold you NEED cream! I still have scars on my hands from cold weather training when a Boot. And even though wearing gloves most of the time my fingers split at the edges of the nail and the splits were down to about 2 or 3mm which made it painful if not impossible to use the affected fingers, to grab anything or touch them with those split fingers was a stinging burning pain that would give me pause!

That's a good thing about being on an assignment where you're working with female troops -- you learn all the creams, the best wet wipes to clean yourself off, and all sorts of ways to take care of yourself in ways a guy wouldn't really think of -- and they know which ones are unscented, hypoallergenic, etc.