MMMMM :-? Here's a bit of a story for you all...A number of years ago; but still post the aerosol right guard era, but on another note I do remember those days-your not that old DD. Least we forget the Binoca flame, a flame of a different spice...but once again I digress, with pyrotechnic JOY [smiley=dankk2.gif].

But back to the story at hand.

At the time I was a canoe guide, what ever the heck that means (adolescent boys, low pay, chestnut barges (the other cadillac) and taco TVP :P). One of the things that was a typical pre-trip gig was to run through an exercise to access swimming skills of the campers and demonstrate a canoe over canoe rescue. The first group that was blessed to have me as their "guide" :D came to me in early June, actually a typically cool windy June day.

The swim went peachy as I found my sinkers ;) The canoe was swamped, after a lot of coaching to properly achieve that necessary simultaneous lean, as was the rescue technique-these boys were impressive and shy, and the later is important in the chain of events that would continue to precipitate.

They elected contrary to direction to bring their change of clothes to the bath house for the post dunking warm up. With in 5 minutes I had one camper go from a typical "well functioning" 13 year old to :o ...a vomited out COLD grey blue unresponsive sack of flesh. Hypothermia is real, and IMO something that will impact most if not all of the fancy notions expounded in this thread for getting warm.

I understand the bush skills are very important, but only if one can make it through the DITCH. Simply said, good boy scouts dont ditch.

If one does ditch in cold water I sure would not want to find out the "system" (complex or otherwise) that I had developed is something that I could get my cold, numb, poor functioning body and compromised mental status to do. Is it an easy walk in the park always successful thing you can do...if not  :'( they wont be yours....

BTW the camper ended up being fine, his family, friends, and I got lucky; and he elected to do the trip to boot. After I got him warmed back up enough for him to come to, talk, and walk (some 30 minutes later) we took a stroll to the nurse's cabin his temp did not register on a thermometer (the lowest reading available on the glass was 86F) :o I still blame this on a "bad" thermometer ;) It was hours before his temp was normalized, even with the hot drinks and sleeping bag covers...

So you think you can always flick your BIC :-/   , I hope you know so!