Hypothermia: Preventing the Silent Killer

Winter airsofting is one heck of an experience. There is no doubt about that. Gameplay is slower, more methodical, and it’s a different kind of fun. Even with this fun, it’s important to prepare yourself appropriately for the weather. Without taking the appropriate precautions, you can fall victim to an environmental emergency.

One of the most common environmental emergencies during the winter is hypothermia. Hypothermia is when the body gives off more heat than it can generate and artificially intake. Hypothermia occurs when the body drops below 98.6 degrees Fahrenheit, which is the internal temperature the body needs to maintain in order to function properly. The body can lose heat through four different mechanisms:

• Radiation: When heat is given off into an area or object that has a lower temperature than the radiating object. A person standing outdoors in subfreezing temperatures radiates heat to the surrounding cold atmosphere, primarily through extremities.
• Convection: Convection is the process by which heat is given off into adjacent cold molecules. Thermodynamic laws dictate that heat travels to areas that lack heat (also known as the cold). Convection exists purely because of these thermodynamic laws that exist.
• Conduction: Conduction is when heat is passed through a colder object by direct contact. Water is an excellent conductor of heat. Water will conduct heat 240 times faster than air, which is why a patient immersed in cold water is subjected to more rapid progression of hypothermia than a patient struggling with the cold.
• Evaporation: This is when liquids is heated to a gaseous state, causing a loss in temperature. This is the process of perspiring, which is one of the regulatory mechanisms a body uses to maintain normal temperature.
• Respiration: This is when air heated by the body is exhaled into the atmosphere and replaced with cooler ambient air.

Symptoms of Hypothermia:

The symptoms of hypothermia are categorized in stages in order to make it easier to recognize. These stages can progress at an undetermined rate, especially when liquids are involved.

• First Stage: The body shivers in an attempt to raise its core temperature.
• Second Stage: There is mental apathy and loss of motor functions
• Third Stage: There is a decreased level of responsiveness and freezing of the extremities (fingers, toes, etc).
• Fourth Stage: The vital signs begin to decrease and slow.
• Fifth Stage: Death.

When you are attempting to access body temperature, you should feel the patient’s torso and abdomen. This is the best indicator for body temperature since you are verifying core body temperature. If it is cold to the touch, you should check verbal and motor responses. If the patient is shivering, then they may be in stage one. If shivering is absent, check for stage two and stage three symptoms for motor function and verbal imparities.  

Skin color will progress from normal pink to red then pale then cyan as hypothermia progresses. It will also become stiff and harder.

Caring for a Hypothermic Patient:

Care for patients with hypothermia begins with their removal from a cold environment as well as the removal of any and all wet clothing. The patient should be gradually be warmed by the use of blankets and warm liquids to the groin, axillary (underarm area), and the cervical (neck) regions as well as the core area. Digesting of warm liquids is at the digression of the patient and should never be forced.

Localized cold injuries, such as frostbite, may occur in extreme hypothermic situations. To minimize damage to these extremities, splinting and a gradual rewarming of the injured extremity should be considered.

Ways to Prevent Hypothermia:

Preventing hypothermia is easy and the nature of airsofting lends to the use of effective cold weather gear while staying compliant with stereotypical militaristic looks. Fighting hypothermia means that you are attempting to combat heat transference mechanisms.

• Using Appropriate Layers: This is critical to combat ambient air and water. If you expect the weather to be colder but with dry conditions, consider a soft shell and a waffle layer with a thermal layer. If you expect rain, then consider a hard shell instead of a soft shell or a soft shell with water wicking abilities.
• Staying Dry: Staying dry is extremely important to hypothermia prevention. Note the fact that I stated earlier. “water will conduct heat 240 times faster than air”.
• Redundancies: Bringing extra layers and backup layers is heavily important. These extra layers will determine how well you stay dry and warm in the long term. I personally bring two soft shells just in case my outer layer becomes wet.
• Stay Hydrated: Staying hydrated is extremely important in the summer and the winter. Digestion of warm water is not only better for hydration but, in the winter, it is easier for you to stay warm while having a warm core.
• Be Realistic: Being realistic is easy. If you feel that you are too cold, then stop and warm up. If you feel that you are losing feeling in your fingers, then combat that by warming up your extremities. It’s so important that you are proactive with hypothermia because recovering from hypothermia might involve a trip to the hospital instead of slinging BB’s.

CPR: The Successful Failure

Cardiopulmonary resuscitation. CPR. I remember sitting in junior high school and high school health class, rolling my eyes for every “CPR training session”. Secondary education spent entire months dedicated to teaching CPR. Why? I saw no point in them because I thought I’d never end up in a situation where I would need CPR. I thought everyone and everything was invincible. Now, at the end of my 4^th year in college, I can see how important these procedures are. I have also seen a very inconvenient truth about CPR. No matter how much we learn or how much class room time we spend on CPR, its failure rate is definitely higher than its success rate.

The point of CPR is designed to preserve brain function. If done properly it extends the chance for resuscitation through other means, naturally or artificially. Idealistically, the factors of success with CPR include:

• Compression depth of at least two inches
• Compression rate of at least 100 compressions per minute
• Allowing the chest wall to recoil fully between every compression
• Minimizing interruptions

The problem is that CPR is only designed to preserve brain functions in the event of cardiac arrest. The probability of CPR actually restarting the heart is statistically low, in contradictory to Hollywood’s glorification of CPR. It can only limit tissue damage and minimize the amount of damage to the patient’s brain. This problem stems from the manual nature of CPR. It’s similar to putting a Band-Aid on a two inch laceration. You aren’t addressing the main problem, instead you are attempting address the main problem indirectly by attempting to solve a different issue. It will help, there is no doubt in that, but overall it is a daunting task.

So you might be asking, who is this guy to bash on CPR? Well first, finish the paper. I am not bashing CPR but rather I am taking a very critical stance about CPR and two, I have been in 5 separate incidents that required CPR. One of the most notable situations is why I started exploring the realm of emergency medicine. It was a 55 mph head on collision that I ran across. In that situation, CPR was pointless but attempted none the less. I did what I was taught in high school, 30 compressions, 30 breaths. I did not allow the chest to fully decompress because I was in shock and not thinking, and my CPR technique was old. I really can’t help but think “what if” questions, such as, what if I was more up to date and aware about the “advancements” in CPR techniques. The advancements in CPR techniques include the movement towards soley using compression rather than balancing compression and artificial resuscitation (rescue breathing).

The second situation I was in that included CPR was the most recent. I noticed a huge change in my mentality towards medical situations. When I came upon that accident with Sean while driving up to a Spokane Airsoft operation, we ran across the aftermath of a drowsy truck driver. I was calmer and more educated, which led to initial success in quasi-securing the patient without having any of the proper “tools” to C-Spine.  I don’t even think Sean knows this (since he was actively rerouting traffic for first responders) but we had to do a very awkwardly positioned CPR.  I will note that we had no other choice and that we did our best to give the patient proper spine support. We had no choice. I was in the proper position to do compressions so I did so (while my temporary and BLS qualified partner continuously checked C-Spine and her support).  It directly led to success. She began breathing roughly and her pulse became more prominent (although still week). Although it led to initial success, after paramedics and firemen showed up, she died. I did attempt CPR again but to no avail. The blue palm was ominous.

  

CPR isn’t a nuclear option. Nukes work and they work well. Think of CPR as a last resort. I will be blunt; I think CPR is futile but necessary. If you need to do CPR, you have a more critical issue at hand. However, as discouraging as I am, advancement in medical technologies and practices have increased our ability to sustain and even improve brain functions during a medical emergency. It’s not only critical for people to know these potentially life-saving procedures but I feel that it should be a requirement. As negative as I was earlier, I hold the view that if we can spend 50 minutes of our time learning simple techniques can one day save a life, and then it’s worth it. On top of that, public automated electrical defibulators (AED’s)  are becoming more prominent and the technology integrated in these AED’s are simple enough to use that I have seen 10 year old children successfully apply AED’s to dummies.

You may be confused by my point so I will sum everything all together. CPR’s job is to preserve brain functions and is highly unlikely to restart the heart; however CPR is highly glorified. It is not the save all technique. In fact, statistically, it is questionable at best. However, CPR is a necessary failure. CPR can and will continue to save lives. Even with increased availability in AED’s, we need to make sure that we aren’t technologically reliant. We need to take time out in our day to learn life saving techniques, not only CPR, in order to make sure when the time comes, if ever, that we are prepared.  Don’t consider my failure stories as a discouragement to learning CPR; view them as a lesson to be learned from. CPR can potentially be a life-saving technique and it may grant your patient one last chance to say good bye. CPR is a successful failure.

Crye Precision Versus Condor Outdoor: Understand Value and How That Affects Our Decisions

As players continually develop into the airsoft culture, one way or another, they are exposed to two types of players, “speedsofters” and “milsimmers”. These titles aren’t meant to offend anyone but rather they give us a realistic perspective of each group’s ideologies. The hardcore “speedsofter” just wants to play. They don’t care about looks and are dedicated to practicality and sending BB’s down range. The hardcore “milsimmer” not only prefers a different kind of gameplay but a different kind of approach to purchasing gear. Dedicated impressionists will shell out hundreds of dollars to a single plate carrier to reenact military personal for an airsoft game. So why is there such a large difference between the hardcore speedsofting consumer and the hardcore impressionist consumer? Why does one consumer so highly value condor and another so highly value Crye. Well let’s explore this from a consumer behavior point of view.

The first thing we need to go over is how customers process product attributes (feature) to value. By figuring out how people establish values, we will be able to understand how customers make purchases based off of these values. Before that though, I am going to slow way down. There is a lot of business and consumer behavioral terminology that applies to this. I will attempt to simplify everything and break it down piece by piece.

The process of identifying product attribute and creating value out of these attributes is known as the means end chain. The means end chain consists of four parts: product attribute, consumer benefit, executive framework, and personal value. You can see it denoted below.

Product attribute can be defined as the product features and specifications. It’s what the product is at its rawest form. For instance, if we look at Crye G3 combat pants, they offer internal knee pad placement, different pocket placement, breathability, and beaver material as their choice for stretch material.

Now that we established product attributes, we can lead into consumer benefits. The consumer will evaluate product attributes and see if they can gain some kind of benefits from it. For instance, the internal knee pads (an attribute) can be seen by a consumer as a way to add comfort. The “comfort” is a consumer benefit. Since we have comfort, companies can establish executive frameworks. Executive frameworks are basically marketing strategies. I really don’t want to get into that. All you need to know is that executive frameworks gives us our leverage point (a selling point) that we can use to create value. Crye Precision probably recognizes that their internal knee pad slots give consumers more comfort. They basically have found their leverage point. They can how create marketing strategies to brand themselves as “more comfortable” which gives the consumer a numeral value for this comfort. Basically, the price of the item is what we perceive as value. We assume that price is value.

So how does this help us? Price is the key. If we assess both groups, the hardcore speedsofter and the impressionists, we find that their price sensitively is absolutely different from one another. This translates out to that they value different things. As obvious as this is, most debates forget this simple fact. Impressionists believe that quality is the most important attribute to making a purchase decision. They believe in value accrued from the future value gained from that one time purchase. The value of impressions itself cannot be ignored as well. Impressions are the mainstay of military simulation. Without impressions, there would be little physical differentiation between speedsofting and milsim events. The value or enjoyment that people gain from impressions cannot be underestimated. This is why impressionists are relatively price insensitive. They are willing to pay for that additional value gained.

The hardcore speedsofter is a completely different story. They just want to sling BB’s downrange and stay within a reasonable budget. This budget is their consumer benefit and Condor’s leverage point. Condor attempts to address the budget minded airsofter. In fact, a lot of companies try to keep costs down so they don’t have to compete directly with real steel companies or else they will have to provide the same value that the real steel companies provide. They address the need for budget equipment to price sensitive customers.

When one sides argue Condor or Crye, it makes me roll my eyes. There is so much more than just “this is better”. It comes down to what the consumer values the most. Even though this read addresses the extremes of one side or another, we can assume that most players are a little of both. There is a time and place for everything and this rule doesn’t exclude Crye Precision or Condor. 

The Truth About "LiPo Ready" and LiPo's Simplified

So what is a lithium polymer battery? Lithium polymer batteries belong in a class of batteries that uses a lithium base to create direct connection to power one way electrical systems. Basically lithium polymer batteries will provide power to your motor. So how is this different from nickle based or alkaline based batteries. Well the answer is in the amount of potential lithium based batteries can give systems. There is a reason why lithium batteries are used for laptops or in medical equipment. They are extremely reliable and extremely powerful for its size. They can be used in the cold weather better than nickle metal based batteries and they can give you great trigger responses. Since it provides more power and more punch, a lot of airsoft manufactures have capitalized on an idea called "lipo ready". They argue that you need a "better" gun in order to run lipo batteries.

Well I hope you do at least do some engineering KWA...

You want to know the reality of lipo ready? It's a marketing tool to lure in uneducated airsofters (like... literally... not meaning to insult anyone here). It was developed by KWA marketers (who hired a marketing firm down in California) to brand their rifles and to give it an additional perceived value boost. It also gives perceived quality ques about the product. It teases consumers into thinking that the gun is made better for specific use with lithium based batteries. Basically it is designed to show the consumer that this gun has incremental innovation. In reality its a myth. Its an idea created by marketers (like me) who are trying to increase sales.

I thought this was lipo ready...

When you think "lipo ready", you think 1) arcing and resistance and 2) gear train durability. In all reality most guns already have this. For 1, you technically don't need a mosfet (variable resistors, that may or may not be computerized) or low resistance wires to run lipos. The amount of wear a 7.4v 21 amp (1400 mah 15c) battery is less than a 9.6v 1600mah nimh (which runs at an equivalent of 8 C btw). The amount of amperage your motor technically needs is around an average of 30 amps meaning that feeding it more amps will decrease stress on the motor. Also most trigger contacts are using alloys resistant to arcing. Arcing is when there is a plasma discharge between connections that typically oxidizes the contact points. This oxidation causes impurities in the connection points which makes the connection less efficient. In worse case scenarios, it will prevent connection between the two points. Mosfets are thought to prevent arcing but in reality they wont prevent arcing, it will only decrease the amount of arcing caused by your gun. Mosfets puts additional stress on the gun by adding resistance to your electrical system (however I still recommend it for an 11.1 since it technically does help with arcing). It comes down to the end user to decide if a mosfet is for them. Doing a proper cost benefit analysis will go a long ways.

Example of a computerized mosfet

The second issue is gear train durability. Angle of engagement (AoE) and shimming is a HUGE must but most companies are already correcting AoE and already shimming their guns as part of their initial design. It really comes down to the materials being used. Is your piston a low density polycarb...? Then switch it out! However most polycarbs (and most materials used in the gear train for that matter) is already strong enough to handle lipos.

Even the best fails if it doesn't have the right support (Siegetek Gear strip)

Now realize it's not the lipos itself that cause issues. Problems are caused the by-products of lipos (and all lithium based products). Because of the increase amperage to your battery, you will see your motor running faster because its pulling the amps it needs to actually run efficiently. This causes your internals to move faster which means that you will reach your product degression rate faster. You aren't really putting additional wear on it, you are running it more efficiently. Each gear has only a certain amount of cycles before it dies and each spring can only retract so many times. By running it faster, you are just reaching these predetermined numbers earlier.

Also one more thing, your motor will only pull what it needs. Just because you plug in a 22.2v 100 amp battery doesn't mean it will pull all 100 amps. It will only pull 30 amps if it needs 30 amps. WOAH hold on. what is this random voltage, amperage bull crap? Well lets go over all that! Lets take a 7.4v 1400mah battery with 15-25c.

7.4v: This refers to the voltage of the entire pack. Since each cell holds 3.7v, this pack must have 2 cells wired in series. The common pack voltages you’ll see for airsoft use will be 7.4v and 11.1v, however, we are starting to see people screwing around with 22.2 and 44.4 battery backs to stress test their guns.

1400mAh: This is the capacity of the battery in milliamp-hours. Although not exactly, mah can be see as how long your battery will last. The larger the capacity, the longer the battery will last.

15-25C: This is the c-rating. The c rating is the discharge rate of the battery pack. This is how much the battery pack will discharge at one time. The first number normally denotes the constant c-rating. The constant c-rating is how much your battery will typically discharge. The second number normally tells us our burst c-rating. This is the absolute maximum your battery can discharge at one time. This normally happens during amperage spikes or if the motor pulls more than needed.

So how did I get those amperage numbers earlier? Here! I will show you that as well! The equation is pretty dang simple:

(C Rate x Capacity)/1000 = Discharge Rate (in Amps)

We can use the battery above as our example. Our constant c rating is 15 and our capacity is 1400. So if we take 15 and multiply 1400, we get 21,000 then we divide by 1000 and that gives us 21 amps. Pretty easy stuff!

In all reality, lithium based batteries are as common as nickle metal based batteries. They have more electrical potential and will make your gun function faster, better, and more efficiency. There is nothing to fear about lithium batteries. Most suspicion towards lithium based batteries are from older subpar (B and C level lithium cells) that were prone to catastrophic failure. Realize that most modern A level lithium batteries are top notch and actually take a lot to make them explode. My father, an electrical engineer, struggled to set one off with a hatchet and matches. We actually had to start a lead explosion in order to set it off. Saying that, there is some important facts that you need to know about them. 1) if your rounds per second (RPS) decreases, you need to disengage and change out your batteries. Lithium batteries have a very stable energy output (in comparison to your nickle metal batteries). When you shoot a nickle metal battery, you will notice that your battery will slowly decrease RPS over time. This will eventually lead to your gun not shooting anymore. A lithium battery will continue to show the same amount of RPS over time but then suddenly decrease is the charge reaches below 3.5v per cell. At 3.5v, your cell will only have around 4-5 percent remaining. In order to prevent damage to your lipo cell, you will need to change it out and charge it.

Well then... this escalated quickly.

Another thing you will need to understand about lipos is how interlinked each cell is to each other... but wait... what is this "cell"? A lipo cell is a cell that provides 3.7v. Each cell connected to provide a total voltage. These voltages compound on top of each other. If you have 2 lipo cells, you have 7.4v and if you have 3 lipo cells, you will have 11.1v. Easy enough! Its super important that these cells are charge and kept at similar voltages. Uneven voltages is an indicator that your battery is not good to go anymore. In order to charge these cells simultaneously, you are recommended to use a balancer. Even though you don't have you, realize that most if not all lipo users use balancers. Its a huge risk to charge otherwise. Most chargers will attempt to charge one cell at a time without a balancer.

One last thing I feel is important to note. There is NO difference between RC lipos and airsoft lipos. They are exactly the same compound and just come marketed to different target markets. Airsoft lipos do have the advantage of normally fitting buffer tubes and handguards (or where ever you wish to store your battery) but RC lipos tend to be cheaper. Just do some serious shopping before investing in "airsoft lipos".

Looks like this guy didn't read my blog about lipos... escalated quickly.