HUMANS are a hardy bunch, able to survive searing heat and days without food or water.
But everyone has their limits, and there are some extremes through which we simply cannot live to tell the tale.
We’ve summed up some of your body’s absolute limits below.
Heat
We’re actually pretty good at surviving hot climates, meaning pinning down an exact temperature at which we die is tricky.
It depends a lot on the humidity of the air, what we’re wearing at the time, how long we’re exposed to direct sunlight, and more.
However, there does seem to be a consensus on the temperature at which our bodies begin to break down.
Most humans will suffer hyperthermia after 10 minutes in extremely humid, 60C heat.
Breathing becomes difficult, and your organs begin to shut down as you break apart at the cellular level.
The hottest temperature ever recorded on Earth is 55C in Death Valley, Nevada, USA.
Cold
Extreme colds can bring hypothermia and dizziness.
Eventually, your organs fail as your body goes into a hyper-cooled meltdown.
Humans usually die when our body temperature drops to 21C. Our bodies’ average is around 37C.
Exactly what the outside temperature needs to be to kill us varies greatly.
People acclimatised to the cold, such as those living in the Arctic Circle, can take a lot more than someone who grew up in scorching Saudi Arabia.
What clothing you wear also makes a difference, as does the onset of a mysterious latent form of hibernation that saves some people from freezing to death.
At around -40C, it’s estimated most people would die within ten minutes of exposure.
Lack of sleep
An extreme lack of sleep quickly sends you into ill-health and causes terrifying hallucinations.
However, you’d be amazed how many days you can go without dying.
Stories of sleepless runs are hard to prove, but the current record widely regarded to be real was set by 17-year-old Randy Gardner in 1965.
He managed to go 11 days without sleeping as part of a science fair project that was recorded by Stanford scientists.
It’s said that before he finally passed out he was essentially a vegetable with its eyes open.
Randy suffered no long term health consequences, though we don’t suggest you try it yourself.
Based on experiments on rats, scientists believe humans could go about 14 days without sleep before perishing – though we’ve no way of knowing for sure.
Hold breath
We need to breath to take in oxygen, and don’t last long without it.
The average human can last about a minute without oxygen before they begin to permanently damage their brain.
You would enter a deep coma about a minute later, and likely die on the three-minute mark.
Strangely, you can hold your breath for twice as long underwater. Swimming activates our “diver’s reflex”, which slows our heart rate and metabolism.
Again, we really don’t suggest trying this one at home…
Acceleration
In order to make spacecraft safe, Nasa and military experts have done plenty of research into how fast our body can accelerate before we die.
Acceleration from side to side, known as lateral acceleration, can rip our organs apart at 14Gs – that’s 14 times the speed of gravity.
Up and down we’re not quite as hardy, passing out at four to eight Gs.
Forward and backwards acceleration is where we excel, likely because they allow the head and heart to accelerate at the same time.
According to scientists, we can reach about 50Gs before our bodies are torn apart by the forces.
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In other news, humans could be wiped out in a dinosaur-style “mass extinction”, according to recent research.
If our planet doesn’t last, our species could live on Mars under a “miracle gel” shield that protects us from deadly radiation.
Want to live forever? You just have to make it to 2050.
What’s the most impressive survival story you’ve ever heard? Let us know in the comments!
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News Photo Death by extreme heat, cold and sleeplessness – We reveal the human body’s limits of survival
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