A closer look
The human brain has a terrifyingly bad habit of panicking at the exact wrong moment. In the final, lethal stages of severe hypothermia, the exhausted muscles keeping your blood vessels violently constricted suddenly fail and relax. A massive rush of warm blood instantly floods your freezing skin receptors, tricking your delirious brain into believing you are literally on fire. Victims of 'paradoxical undressing' will frantically tear off all their warm clothing in sub-zero temperatures right before they finally succumb to the cold.
