Spending time in a sauna can be relaxing after a long day.
But what would happen if you couldn’t get out?
What if you went to open the door and it was locked, trapping you in the intense heat indefinitely?
If you weren’t already sweating, you sure would be then.
You’re about to find out why being locked in a sauna is the worst way to die.
The typical sauna reaches temperatures as high as 185° F.
This is nearing the point at which water boils, in fact, the high humidity in the air of a
sauna is caused by the rapid evaporation of water.
So it should come as no surprise that at this temperature your body slowly begins to cook.
This wouldn’t be a problem as long as you leave the intense environment before any damage
is done, but when locked in a sauna against your will, you don’t really have that option.
Oftentimes spending time in a sauna is cited as having benefits for cardiac health and
detoxification.
However, once you realize you are stuck in the hot room with no way out, your heart rate
skyrockets from panic.
The high temperatures in a sauna already increase heart rate, so at this point the heart will
be beating as if you had just completed an intense workout.
The heart is working overtime to pump blood throughout your body, yet it cannot keep up
this pace forever.
If you can’t calm yourself down, your heart will continually pump blood at an increased
rate.
Although your heart probably won’t explode, your blood pressure and pulse will be elevated
to unsustainable levels.
Eventually your heart, like all muscles in your body, will get tired.
It will slow down until it stops, or may just give up all at once, either way, the result
is the same.
You go into cardiac arrest and die from a heart attack.
As you fall to the floor your vision blurs and the last thing you’ll see is your outstretched
hand reaching for the locked door of your sauna crypt.
As you’ll come to find out, having your heart nearly explode, or stop beating completely,
is one of the more merciful deaths that can occur from being locked in a sauna.
What is to come is so much worse.
A slower and more painful death can happen from dehydration.
When stepping into a sauna you are prepared to sweat.
Many people use the sauna to sweat out toxins, or the alcohol from a rager the night before.
But what happens when your body doesn’t stop sweating?
The short answer is: things start to get really uncomfortable.
As your body tries to cool itself off blood vessels and skin cells expand to release heat.
Water is excreted from the body to act as a cooling agent, however, your mouth will
quickly dry out as all available water is being ejected to cool the skin.
Your internal organs will also stop getting the fluid they need, quickly causing you to
suffer from dehydration.
With not enough water circulating around the body, cells begin to die, tissue begins to
crack, and the result is a massive amount of strain on vital organs.
Increased body temperature with a lack of water circulating around your internal systems
can lead to the rupturing of veins and arteries.
Your body begins to hemorrhage internally.
This means that blood begins seeping out of the circulatory system and into other parts
of the body.
In particular this can occur in the stomach, causing massive amounts of abdominal pain
as the sauna slowly dehydrates you to death.
On top of internal hemorrhaging your skin will eventually dry out as your sweat quickly
evaporates.
This causes the epidermis tissue to crack and bleed.
You are losing blood both inside and outside of your body, and once the blood is exposed
to the high temperatures in the sauna, any of the water left in the blood vessels will
evaporate leaving rust color flakes crusted on your withered body.
Again, this is not a pleasant way to go, but it could be so much worse.
You might be wondering what could be worse than having all of the water evaporate from
your body and ending up a dried out husk of yourself?
You’re about to find out.
In a sauna your temperature increases.
Although you sweat to try and regulate your body temperature, eventually the hot, humid,
environment of the sauna will win out.
Your skin can increase in temperature to around 104° F within just a few minutes.
As you’re stuck in the sauna for longer and longer, the temperature of your skin goes
up and up.
If you don’t die from a heart attack or internal bleeding, you will have the rare
opportunity of being cooked alive.
Think of the sauna as a slow cooker oven.
If you’ve had slow cooked barbeque get ready to be a little grossed out.
If you haven’t had slow cooked barbeque, get ready to be grossed out anyways.
Your muscles and skin are the same as any other mammal such as cows and pigs.
This means your body will react the same way to being slow cooked as those animals.
Hot air burns to the skin can occur between 20 and 60 minutes after being locked in a
sauna, especially if the temperature is in the high 100’s.
However, there have been cases where burns began at around 10 minutes.
Regardless of when the burning begins, your body is being cooked alive.
A few things will happen at this point.
The heat will slowly peel away the skin from your muscles.
Whole sections of skin can slough off and end up laying next to you on the damp floor.
One of the reasons this happens is because cells, ligaments, and bonds between molecules
such as proteins begin to break apart or denature at high temperatures.
As the skin begins to fall off, muscle tissue and fat becomes exposed to the open air.
At this point there is somewhat of a feedback loop occurring.
This new exposed layer may contain remnants of water, which evaporates causing you to
cook even quicker.
The tissues become softer as they’re cooked, and even muscle can begin sliding off the
bones.
There is no chance that you will actually catch on fire due to the high humidity in
the air—unless you spontaneously combust.
And although there have been accounts of spontaneous human combustion before, they all had a scientific
explanation such as chemicals on the clothing, or an external source of ignition like a match
or electric spark.
Since you won’t be wearing much clothing in the sauna, and the water vapor in the air
reduces the chances of lighting anything on fire, you probably don’t have to worry about
this.
However, if somehow you do catch on fire the exposed fat layer burns incredibly well and
the oils from your fat and muscles will feed the fire long after you are dead.
If you are alive at this point, and your body temperature is still increasing, your internal
organs have now begun to simmer.
Everything begins to fail as you wish you had just stayed in the safety of your air
conditioned home in the first place.
You wonder who thought this death trap was a good idea, and you wish you could lock them
in a sauna.
To be clear, saunas are not a new invention.
In fact, there are accounts of saunas throughout history and around the world.
There is even evidence that sauna-like rooms existed in the lands of the ancient Maya 3,000
years ago.
Finland has also had saunas for thousands of years, which brings us to something crazy
that you probably didn’t know.
There was, up until relatively recently, a World Sauna Championship.
That’s right, there were competitions where people sat in a sauna, and whoever lasted
the longest—and could walk out on their own—was declared the Sauna Champion of the
world.
The championships were held in Heinola, Finland from 1999 until 2010.
After learning about the effects staying in a sauna for long periods of time can have
on your body from this video, you can probably figure out what happens next.
In 2010 tragedy struck when one of the competitors died.
He was sitting in a sauna that had its temperature jacked up to 230° F. The sauna athlete lasted
a few minutes in this intense heat before his body gave up.
The competition actually started at this insane temperature, and every 30 seconds water was
poured on the stove to increase the humidity.
It was concluded that at the 2010 competition the cause of death was most likely cardiac
failure.
Needless to say, Finland banned the competition from ever happening again.
It is not clear why there even needed to be a sauna sitting competition in the first place,
but humans are pretty stupid.
Now let’s get back to what happens to your body if you are locked in a sauna.
We know there are a number of ways you could die.
However, one thing is certain, the longer you last in the sauna, the more painful things
get.
And even if you die from cardiac arrest or dehydration, your body still continues to
cook for as long as you’re inside the high temperature room.
For example, take the story of a man who got locked in a faulty sauna in Florida.
He told his family he was going to the sauna in their apartment complex, and when he did
not return after a few hours, they went to check on him.
The man had died a long time before being discovered, but his body kept cooking even
after he had passed away.
When he was found his body had been charred, and chunks of skin had fallen off his bones.
There were also accounts of the horrible smell of burnt hair and flesh coming from the sauna.
Dying in a sauna will never be a pleasant experience no matter what ultimately kills
you, but some scenarios are definitely worse than others.
If you ever do decide to step foot in a sauna again, perhaps check to make sure the door
opens and closes properly before settling in, because death by sauna is a terrible way
to go.
Now check out “Skinned Alive - Worst Ways to Die.”
Or watch “Skinned Alive - Worst Ways to Die.”