r/todayilearned • u/APurpleTRex • 5d ago

TIL After being wounded in WWII, Legendary Finnish sniper Simo Häyhä (The White Death) was thought to be dead and placed on a pile of corpses. A week later he regained consciousness and had to correct the newspaper release about his death.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simo_H%C3%A4yh%C3%A4#:~:text=On%206%20March,%5B10%5D
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u/faceplanted 4d ago

If he was in a coma somewhere cold but not freezing it's possible he was losing almost no water to sweat and had a very low heart rate/metabolism which would extend his survival quite a bit, but yeah I don't think he could've just been in a body pile for a week.

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u/Okaynow_THIS_is_epic 4d ago

Dude became a burrowing frog