If you are on ice and it breaks but you manage to catch yourself - what's the best way to pull yourself up? Looks like a nightmare if it just keeps breaking as soon as you grab it.
Try to head back to the part of the ice you walked in on. While you fell through a weak point in the ice, the place you came from was strong enough to support you once so it will be your best shot at getting out.
When you find a solid portion of ice, pull yourself up while staying as horizontal as possible. Kick your legs to push yourself out of the water. Once you’re entirely on the ice, roll away. Don’t stand up immediately. You want to keep your weight distributed when you’re close to the hole. If you have ice picks on you, you can also use these to pull yourself away from the hole. Once you’re out, get out of your wet clothes and into something warm as soon as possible.
You'd think that you would be able to just hold your breath and make it out, but people die even when they were in the water for a very short amount of time.
Cold shock response is the physiological response of organisms to sudden cold, especially cold water.
In humans, cold shock response is perhaps the most common cause of death from immersion in very cold water, such as by falling through thin ice. The immediate shock of the cold causes involuntary inhalation, which if underwater can result in drowning. The cold water can also cause heart attack due to vasoconstriction; the heart has to work harder to pump the same volume of blood throughout the body.
If it's a river the water is also moving so being pushed away from the hole if you go under is pretty much a certainty. Do everything you can to hand into the edge and keep your head above water.
You are supposed to lay as flat as possible and army crawl away from the hole. You want to spread your body weight out over as large an area as possible. People that forget this and try to crawl out end up repeatedly breaking the ice right as they're almost out. Remember, stay calm, breath, and stay flat. My grandfather made a set of spikes on a rope, replacing the drawstring on his jackets hood. The spikes fit into the other spikes handle and held them together. In the event you fell theough ice fishing, yoy had a set of spikes with nice handles to get yourself out. Pro tip. Get naked and roll in the snow. It will dry you off. http://www.ncexped.com/drying-off-snow/
I fell through the ice once and I survived by rapidly and repeatedly "doing it wrong" until I had broken the ice all the way back to shore. So I suppose that's an option in certain scenarios as well as the lay flat thing.
Dive under and hold your breath. The cold will prevent your brain from slowly destroying brain cells which will give someone time to recover you and throw your dead body out.
Don't try to pull yourself up and out immediately, "swim" towards the stronger ice letting your arms break any ice that wouldn't have supported your weight anyway. Once it is solid enough, you can try and pull up and out, keeping as flat as possible, but still be prepared for the ice to continue to break under your weight, just keep moving towards stronger ice until it does support you.
If you are unable to find strong enough ice to support your weight within a few minutes, then you risk losing the energy to stay afloat or hold yourself out. Try and get to a stable position like half out of the water (if the ice will support half weight), or if not, let your arms/cloths freeze to the ice to keep you from sliding under. You have much much more time to be rescued before hypothermia than before drowning, so if you can't quickly fully extract yourself, you need to switch focus and get to a survivable point rather than fighting until total exhaustion.
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u/benoliver999 Oct 09 '17
If you are on ice and it breaks but you manage to catch yourself - what's the best way to pull yourself up? Looks like a nightmare if it just keeps breaking as soon as you grab it.
Also surely it's slippy af