A middle-aged man from southern Sweden was found barely alive after being stuck in his snowed-in car for two months.
The man was found in his car on Friday after a group of snowmobilers thought they had discovered a car wreck. It was when the group began digging through the snow to have a better look at the car that they spotted the un-named survivor.
“Absolutely incredible that he is alive, in part considering that he hasn’t had any food, but also bearing in mind that it was really cold for a while there after Christmas,” a member of the emergency services told the daily Västerbottens-Kuriren newspaper.
It’s not clear as to how the man managed to get stuck in his car, which was parked on a forest track near the city of Umea, and it’s also unclear as to why no one spotted him sooner.
The man, who was in a terrible condition when he found, was barely able to utter a sentence to his rescuers, according to the Swedish news site theLocal.se. He went missing around December 19 and would have spent Christmas in his car surrounded by a wall of snow and ice.
Physician Stefan Branth told the Västerbottens-Kuriren that the man may have survived by going into a ‘dormant-like state’: “A bit like a bear that hibernates. Humans can do that,” he said.
“He probably had a body temperature of around 31 degrees (Celsius) which the body adjusted to. Due to the low temperature, not much energy was used up.”
It might seem a bit unbelievable that a human survived on only snow and ice for two whole months, but the police on the scene had this to say to any sceptics out there, “We would not make something like this up. The rescue services were on site too and saw the same as us”.
