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Talk:Death zone

I was looking for "Death Zone" after my manager at work was talking with another co worker about going hiking and what the Death Zone was and such. I found: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_zone

and told my manager and co worker the information.

I then got an email from my manager about this page / site:

http://www.8000metres.com/death-zone

I am not looking to start a fight, I just want to know how to ensure which is right!?

MLCarter1976MLCarter1976 17:17, 29 December 2006 (UTC)


Hi there. I own that site and would love to know too. That info came from the UIAA Mountain Medicine Centre who I would have thought knew what they were talking about, but I could be wrong! Is there something specific that you want confirmed?

Cheers.

Andy

What's "staying longer than necessary"? I think it would be better to add a certain time interval after which it becomes life threatening, not simply a generic "longer than necessary". —Preceding unsigned comment added by 217.245.118.208 (talk) 11:29, 14 October 2007 (UTC)

Contradiction

At the time of writing, the article seems to contradict the Outer space article. This one states that the death zone begins at 7,3 km while the other states that it's 8 km. Added contradiction tag. Ashanthalas 22:14, 29 March 2007 (UTC)

PBS says it is 8000m, consistent with Outer space. Someone keeps changing it to 7300m without providing citations. I've reverted it back to 8000m (as per citation), but I'm open to discussing and reconciling different citations. hike395 02:13, 30 March 2007 (UTC)

Death Zone: Arbitrary term or an empirically determinable one?

I always took this "death zone" business to be an arbitrary term and location, however; several sources, including this article, make claims that it refers to some physiologically-determined portion of space. This article, for example, states: The death zone, in mountaineering, refers to altitudes above a certain point where the amount of oxygen cannot sustain human life. The point is generally tagged as between 7,000 and 8,000 m (23,000 and 26,200 ft) Is there any evidence to support views like this? It doesn't seem like there's any scientific evidence cited on this page to back up these claims, and I'm wondering if anybody knows whether any exists? Whether or not the claims can be maintained by wikipedia policy, it would seem to be helpful to get to the bottom of whether there's any scientific basis for statements such as these, and perhaps that could be reason to alter some of the statements in this article, whether or not they are strictly permissible per the sourcing requirements. It strikes me that the kind of statements made in this article and elsewhere in regards to the "death zone" are of a type that seem unlikely to be derived empirically: they generally lack precision sufficient to make their meaning clear, and the spectrum of meanings discernible seem to be contradicted by casual observations (discovery channel specials of people living in the death zone without oxygen, i.e. in the case of the quote mentioned above). I'd be interested to here of any thoughts on this issue or whether or not you think it matters.--Δζ (talk) 04:01, 22 March 2010 (UTC)

While the term "Death Zone" seems to have been coined by mountain climbers themselves, there are scientific papers that support its definition at 8000m. See, e.g.:
  • Huey, Raymond B. (2 July 2001). "Limits to human performance: elevated risks on high mountains". J. Experimental Biology. 204: 3115–3119. {{cite journal}}: Unknown parameter |coauthors= ignored (|author= suggested) (help)
  • Grocott, Michael P.W. (2009). "Arterial Blood Gases and Oxygen Content in Climbers on Mount Everest". N Engl J Med. 360 (2): 140–149. {{cite journal}}: Unknown parameter |coauthors= ignored (|author= suggested) (help)
  • Proffitt, Fiona (10 June 2005). "Science in the 'Death Zone'". Science. 308 (5728): 1541–1542. doi:10.1126/science.308.5728.1541.
hike395 (talk) 04:47, 22 March 2010 (UTC)

Merge with Effects of high altitude on humans?

The content for the article seems to be strongly overlapping with Effects of high altitude on humans. Should we merge the articles? —hike395 (talk) 04:44, 29 March 2010 (UTC)

   I'm on my way to the corresponding talk page to be sure that it links back to this part of the discussion of the handling of these apparently mutually inextricable pages & topics. (Hopefully it already links back to here, but you'd never have known that from this end.)
--Jerzyt 00:49, 19 December 2017 (UTC)