How long can you survive in Antarctica?

The lowest air temperature ever measured at the surface of the Earth was -89.2 °C at Vostok Station, and the interior routinely sits below -60 °C in winter. At those temperatures exposed skin freezes in a couple of minutes, and wind multiplies the effect: a 20 m/s wind at -40 °C removes heat as fast as still air far colder. Unprotected, the sequence is frostbite in minutes, then hypothermia over tens of minutes as core temperature falls through 35 °C and then 32 °C. With modern clothing, shelter and resupply the continent is simply a place where people live and work — research stations have been continuously occupied since the 1950s. The real constraints there are logistical: winter flights are difficult to impossible, so a medical emergency can be months from a hospital.

What happens, in order

What changes the figure

• Wind matters more than temperature for heat loss
• Dry cold is survivable in layers that would be useless if they got wet
• Stations, vehicles and depots turn the answer from minutes into decades

Physiology, not instruction. Every figure here is a population range under particular conditions, and individual variation is large — temperature, exertion, fitness and health move all of them substantially. Nothing on this page is medical advice.

Places

• How long could you survive in deep space? About fifteen seconds of consciousness, and roughly ninety seconds before the damage becomes irreversible.
• Could you survive on Mars? Unprotected, under two minutes. In a pressurised habitat, indefinitely — the limits become supply and radiation.
• How long can you survive in the death zone on Everest? Hours to a couple of days. Above about 8,000 metres the body deteriorates no matter what you do.
• How long can you survive adrift in the open ocean? In warm water with a raft, three to five days without drinking water — but immersion in cold water is measured in hours.
• How long could you survive on the Moon? About fifteen seconds of consciousness without a suit. With one, the record stay is 75 hours.
• How long could you survive in the Mariana Trench? Unprotected, no measurable time at all — the pressure is over a thousand times atmospheric. In a submersible, as long as the life support lasts.
• How long can you survive in the Sahara Desert? Around a day without water in summer daytime heat, and several days if you can stay in shade and move only at night.
• How long could you survive on Venus? Seconds. The surface is 465 °C at ninety-two times Earth's atmospheric pressure — the hardest place in the solar system to land on.
• Could you survive on Jupiter? There is no surface to survive on — you would fall inward until pressure and heat ended it, within minutes.
• How close to the Sun could you survive? Nothing solid survives contact — but a shielded spacecraft has flown within about 6 million kilometres of the surface.
• How long could you survive on a desert island? Fresh water decides it. With a spring or reliable rain, years; without, about three days.
• How long can you survive on the International Space Station? Indefinitely while it is resupplied — it has been continuously crewed since November 2000.
• How long can you survive in the Arctic? Hours unprotected in winter — but roughly four million people live above the Arctic Circle permanently.
• How long can you survive in a cave? With water and warmth, months — people have done it deliberately. Without light or a way out, hypothermia is the clock.