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When it’s dangerously cold

For people in the United States who are cold and can’t get warm: sleeping outside or in a car, in a home where the heat is off, or working in it. For the neighbor, the daughter, the stranger who notices. And for anyone who can’t pay the heating bill. Hypothermia: the signs, and what to do. Frostbite, and cold, wet feet. Carbon monoxide. A night outside. Helping someone else. No heat, or no power. Heaters and fire. Paying for heat, and shutoffs. Babies, children and older people. Warnings and wind chill. Working in the cold. And the words to say when you call or write. No quiz and no score. One thing at a time.

This page and its wording were written with AI (Claude) for Scarlet Beast (our AI policy). The facts come from pages read on October 2, 2026: the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (Preventing Hypothermia; Safety Guidelines: During & After a Winter Storm; and Carbon Monoxide Poisoning Basics); MedlinePlus, from the U.S. National Library of Medicine (Hypothermia; Frostbite; and Carbon Monoxide Poisoning: the summaries); the U.S. National Institute on Aging (Cold Weather Safety for Older Adults); the U.S. National Weather Service (Cold Weather Safety; During Extremely Cold Weather; Understanding Cold Weather Alerts; and Understanding Wind Chill); Ready.gov (Winter Weather); the U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Administration (Cold Stress); the U.S. National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (Cold-related Illnesses in Workers); the U.S. Fire Administration (Heating Fire Safety); the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission (Carbon Monoxide Information Center); the U.S. Administration for Children and Families (Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program) and EnergyHelp.us; USAGov (Get help with energy bills); the U.S. Department of Energy (Weatherization Assistance Program); the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (Find Shelter); the American Academy of Pediatrics (Cold Weather Safety for Children, on HealthyChildren.org); Poison Control, from the National Capital Poison Center (Carbon monoxide); and the front page of 211.org. The description of Crisis Text Line is from its own front page, read the same day. The American Academy of Pediatrics, Poison Control, 211 and Crisis Text Line are private organisations describing themselves; we have no connection with any of them. We did not call or text any line, contact any shelter, program, utility or office, or search any directory. We did not read any first aid manual or CPR course, any clinical guideline, any law or regulation, any state’s shutoff rules or income limits, any city’s cold weather shelter rules, any heater’s or alarm’s instructions, or the research behind any statement; where the page touches one of these, it says so. The American Red Cross’s winter storm page refused our request, so it is not used. Where two sources say different things, the page reports both; the plainest case is whether to warm a frostbitten area in warm water before medical help arrives. The page has no questionnaire and gives no score, on purpose: a list is not an assessment. It names no medicine, quotes no named person, and gives no figures for how many people are harmed by cold, fire or carbon monoxide; the sources have them, with their context. The temperatures, distances and times on the page are the sources’ own. Lines marked “Ours” are our own suggestions; there are more of them than usual in the part about sleeping outside, because the official pages say little about it. This page saves nothing: no account, no cookies, nothing you tick is stored or sent, and no analytics (privacy). Scarlet Beast is not a shelter, a clinic or a government agency, and takes no money from anyone named here. Found a mistake? Email [email protected].