Brian Curnel said:
More mass means more calories and water, a heavier body is subjected to more impact force, a larger body has more surface temperature,, so with that regard things such as where a person is or what the temperature is has little bearing imo. Mental attitude is a very important factor but not one to consider in this poll because our subjects have equally matched attitudes.
in the desert SW of the US it can get up to 115* F daytime and near freezing nighttime, so here you have both temperature ranges with lack of watersources so on...
Brian, you are generalising too much.
Age, sex and race are factors in this as well. Body mass is one thing, but also what it is made up of is a factor as fat is a significant insulator, muscle will insulate, but it also provides a benefit from shivering. The larger the muscle that shivers the more heat that it generates.
If i took a thin guy 6 feet tall, exposed him naked to a cold dry enviroment and did not allow him to be active in any way he would die faster than a guy of the same height and race with more mass (muscle or / and fat) if they were subject to the same conditions.
If I did the same thing in a cold wet enviroment he would die faster because water is more efficient at transmitting heat through wind convection than bare skin.
The enviroment can have a large effect. Dry cold has no more effect than wet cold untill the wind comes into play
Tall thin guys are worse off than shorter stockier men.
The bare arm loses more heat than a bare leg due to muscle mass or the larger amounts of insulative fat in the leg.
Levels of fitness can be factors though they are not really of massive significance as far as the regulation of the bodies temeprature.
Cold also has a large effect on the bodies metabolic rate, we burn more calories. Depending on levels of activity and the conditions that you are moving over you will generate a lot more heat in a significantly shorter time as deep snow is harder to walk on than tarmack, but a big guy could easily find it more difficult than a smaller lighter guy.
So thin people are more likely to be subject to cold injuries to thier extremities especially when they are cold, wet and it's windy. This is probably due to vasoconstriction.
However all this is totally academic as to actually prove any of this it would have to be done under laboratory conditions.
People will be wearing different clothing and have different levels of knowledge and it is very unlikely that they would ever be subject to identical conditions.
As I said before, the question is subjective.
