Frostbite Questions

Not sure whether this counts as frostbite or not, but here goes:

In my fantasy WIP, I've got a scenario where a seven-year-old boy is being held captive in the magical equivalent of a walk-in refrigerator. The room is cold enough to keep fruits and vegetables fresh. The boy has been drugged unconscious and is laying on the marble floor. He's wearing a long-sleeved shirt, trousers, socks and shoes. He'll be in the same position for four to six hours.

Questions: The biggest question is would he suffer any injuries from the cold? What would be the appropriate treatment?

Thanks in advance!

Thanks, Cyia! Sounds like I need to look up hypothermia. I hadn't considered lack of air, but that shouldn't be an issue. The room's door doesn't seal that tightly.

Drachen Jager said:

Second for hypothermia. Frostbite only gets you at sub zero temperatures (celsius).

Unless he's warmly dressed six hours would kill a young boy. It would probably do a number on a healthy adult.

Click to expand...

Six hours at refrigerator temperatures could be fatal?

Hmm... I need to consider the timing. The scenario is flexible as to where the boy is being held so I can change it to a simple storeroom rather than a refrigerated room, but at the moment I like the idea of the cold room. The ones who put him there are trying to incapaciate but not kill him, which is why I was thinking they also drugged him. It's important to their plot that he doesn't wake up for a while.

Thanks for the link, Drachen Jager!

All right, I can change the scenario so that he's not touching the ground. The scene has been arranged so that it looks like he tried to stand on a barrel to reach something off an upper shelf, but the barrel's lid slipped, he fell inside and knocked himself out, and the barrel tipped over. Originally I had him half in, half out of the barrel, but if he's all the way inside that will give him some protection.

Sounds good. I was making it a cold room partially to demonstrate the possibilities of magic in this world (magical tokens embedded in the walls are keeping the temperature down), but I also need to consider the needs of the plot (both mine and the story conspirators who put the boy there in the first place). The boy is a pawn in a kidnapping plot, and it's vital to the conspirators' plot that he's not discovered too soon.

So that begs the question of what is stored in the room. This world has a pre-industrial level of technology, with the addition of magic to give them things like refrigeration. I'm flexible on the possibilities, but there needs to be something in the room that a little boy might consider a treat.

Question: should apples in barrels be refrigerated? I've been thinking he's in an apple barrel, but I haven't confirmed yet how apples should be treated.

Thanks!