The Question Nobody Could Answer

For the medical team at the Fosston hospital, and for the physicians and researchers who would later study Jean Hilliard’s case in the medical literature, the survival raised a question that had no comfortable answer.

How was this possible?

The physiological logic of extreme cold exposure is, at its most basic level, simple: cold slows chemical reactions, and life is chemical reactions.

When the body is sufficiently cold, the chemical reactions that maintain cell function slow to a point where they cannot sustain viability.