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50 free Hypothermia trivia questions with answers — science & nature quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
Hypothermia trivia sounds grim until you look at the details, which are some of the strangest in medicine: victims who tear off their clothes because they feel hot, people who crawl under beds in their final minutes, a Swedish doctor revived from 13.7 °C after 80 minutes under ice, and a Canadian toddler whose heart restarted after two hours. This quiz covers the science of how the body loses heat, the three stages of hypothermia and what each looks like, and the myths (no, you do not lose most of your heat through your head). It also ranges outward: cold shock and why most cold-water deaths are not really hypothermia at all, the Titanic's −2 °C sea, frostbite and trench foot from Napoleon's retreat to the Western Front, wind chill, space blankets, and the animals that beat the cold, from wood frogs that freeze solid to Arctic ground squirrels running below zero. A final set covers medicine's deliberate use of cold to protect the brain after cardiac arrest and in newborns. Easy questions suit anyone with a first-aid badge; the expert tier is for medics, mountaineers and cold-water swimmers. Every answer was checked against Wikipedia's medical and history articles, and the supporting sentence is attached to each question.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Hypothermia is medically defined as a core body temperature below what?
35 °C (95 °F)
Normal core temperature sits around 36.5 to 37.5 °C; the word comes from Greek roots meaning 'under' and 'heat'.
Q 02Which symptom is present in mild hypothermia but typically stops once hypothermia becomes moderate?
Shivering
Its disappearance is a warning sign, not a recovery: the body is running out of the energy needed to generate heat.
Q 03What is the opposite of hypothermia called?
Hyperthermia
Both words share the Greek thérmē, meaning heat; hyper means over and hypo means under.
Q 04Roughly what share of hypothermia deaths involve 'paradoxical undressing'?
20 to 50%
One theory is that exhausted blood-vessel muscles relax, flooding the extremities with warm blood and making the victim feel hot.
Q 05'Terminal burrowing', or hide-and-die syndrome, has late-stage hypothermia victims doing what?
Crawling into small enclosed spaces
German researchers likened it to the burrowing behaviour of hibernating mammals; victims are found under beds or behind wardrobes.
Q 06A two-year-old from which country survived accidental hypothermia at 12.7 °C, one of the lowest temperatures ever?
Poland
Cold water slows the metabolism so much that children revived from near-freezing water can recover even after an hour without a pulse.
Q 07Alcohol raises hypothermia risk partly by causing what effect in the skin's blood vessels?
Dilation
Widened vessels dump heat to the environment while making the drinker feel warm; between a third and three-quarters of cases involve alcohol.
Q 08The Coast Guard's '50/50/50 rule' says survival odds in 50 °F water for 50 minutes rise 50 percent if wearing what?
A life jacket
The heat escape lessening position, hugging the knees to the chest, also stretches survival time in cold water.
Q 09Most people who entered the water when the Titanic sank died within roughly what span?
Fifteen to thirty minutes
The sea was about −2 °C; second officer Lightoller compared the shock to a thousand knives.
Q 10Plunged into freezing seas, about one in five victims dies almost immediately from what?
Cold shock
Uncontrolled gasping draws in water and blood pressure spikes; true loss of core temperature takes far longer.
Q 11What percentage of body heat is lost through the skin, as opposed to the lungs?
90%
Heat is made mainly in the muscles and liver; a trained endurance athlete can generate over 1,200 watts.
Q 12The classic ECG sign of hypothermia is named after which letter?
The Osborn J wave
It can mimic a heart attack, but clot-busting drugs would only worsen the bleeding tendency cold causes.
Q 13How does heat loss through an adult's uncovered head compare with other uncovered body parts?
No greater
Infants are the exception because their heads are so large relative to their bodies.
Q 21Which Antarctic explorer recorded his team's temperatures 'below 94.2°, which spells death at home'?
Ernest Shackleton
Those were probably oral readings, corresponding to mild hypothermia; one of Scott's men, Atkinson, became confused by cold.
Q 22Anna Bågenholm survived a 1999 accident with a body temperature of 13.7 °C after being under ice for how long?
Eighty minutes
She found an air pocket and stayed conscious for 40 minutes before her heart stopped; a Tromsø team of over 100 staff worked nine hours to revive her.
Q 23Anna Bågenholm was skiing near Narvik in which country when she fell through the ice?
Norway
Q 14Which fabric is singled out as inferior for preventing hypothermia because it insulates poorly when wet?
Cotton
Hikers call it 'death cloth'; synthetics wick sweat away and wool keeps insulating when damp.
Q 15Which of these does the UK National Health Service specifically warn against for a hypothermic person?
A hot bath
Hot baths, limb massage, heating pads and alcohol can all trigger a blood-pressure crash and cardiac arrest.
Q 16'Not dead until warm and dead' means resuscitating hypothermia victims until at least what temperature?
32 °C (90 °F)
Survival with normal brain function has followed more than six hours of CPR.
Q 17Which blood test result is treated as a sign that resuscitating a hypothermic patient is futile?
Potassium above 12 mmol/L
An avalanche burial over 35 minutes with a mouth packed with snow is another accepted reason to stop.
Q 18In deep hypothermic circulatory arrest, surgeons cool the brain to as low as what temperature?
10 °C
The technique is used for aneurysms and other repairs that cannot tolerate blood flow.
Q 19Which ancient general lost nearly half his men to cold during the Second Punic War?
Hannibal
The crossing of the Alps in 218 BC is the earliest of the many military campaigns cold has helped decide.
Q 20Which microscopic animals survive freezing by replacing most of their internal water with trehalose?
Tardigrades
Also called water bears, they avoid the ice crystals that shred cell membranes.
The Swedish doctor was doing her residency at Narvik Hospital and later returned to work as a radiologist at the Tromsø hospital that saved her.
Q 24Erika Nordby, Canada's 'Miracle Baby', was revived in 2001 after how long without a heartbeat?
Two hours
The 13-month-old had wandered out of an Edmonton house nearly naked at −24 °C; her heart restarted under a warming blanket.
Q 25Japanese hiker Mitsutaka Uchikoshi survived how many days without food or water in 2006?
24
Doctors suggested he had slipped into a hibernation-like state, a phenomenon that has since been researched for medical use.
Q 26In 'targeted temperature management' for cardiac-arrest survivors, the target is often set between what?
32 and 34 °C
Newer research suggests the benefit may simply come from preventing fever, and cooling children after arrest does not appear to help.
Q 27Cooling caps are used during chemotherapy to prevent which side effect?
Hair loss
The same cooling principle protects newborn brains after birth asphyxia.
Q 28Frostbite was first formally described in 1813 by Dominique Jean Larrey, a physician in whose army?
Napoleon's
He observed the injuries during the retreat from Russia, the first documented mass cold-injury event.
Q 29Researchers found the oldest evidence of frostbite in humans, about 5,000 years old, in what?
An Andean mummy
The most commonly affected age group today is 30 to 50 year olds.
Q 30The surgical adage 'Frozen in January, amputate in July' means doing what with frostbitten tissue?
Waiting months before removing it
Dead tissue often self-amputates after about two months, so surgeons delay unless gangrene or sepsis sets in.