¶ Human Tolerance Limits (3)
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Index Entry
"people suffocate within two minutes. When the fire is over and many of the human dead are found inside unscorched, their death having been caused by suffocation, we discover that the otherwise loving fathers, lost personal consciousness and stampeded over their own children crushing them to death–the children for whom the conscious fathers would gladly have given their lives a hundred times over.
“This frustratingly insecure or panicked animal survival drive is not a primary human behavior; it is an only secondary and subordinate “fail-safe” behavior that occurs only when the very broad limits of physical tolerance are exceeded. When it is available, humans consume about two dry pounds of food daily as well as five pounds of water and seven pounds of oxygen, which their blood extracts from the 50 pounds of atmosphere that humans inhale daily. Humans can go 30 days without food; seven days without water; but only two minutes without air. With 30 days tolerance humans have plenty of time to decide how to cope with vital food problems; with only a week’s waterless tolerance they have to think and act with expedition; with only one-and-a-half minute’s oxygenless tolerance they rarely have time to think and cope successfully. Because the”
