satan's armpit survival tips
hey. i don't know who needs to hear this. but if you're stuck without air conditioning in heat that's too humid to cool off by sweating, the TWO things you can do RIGHT NOW to dissipate your excess body heat are
quickest reset for your body temperature is to get fucking soaked. dunking yourself in cool water = instant relief, and even tepid-to-warm water is still going to transfer heat away from your body faster than air of the same temperature. a full-body bath, shower, or swim is most effective, but a cold footbath or a spraydown with a garden hose ain't nothing. aim for several quick rinses throughout the day if you can. we are NOT talking about lightly misting your skin here - the goal is to CARRY heat away from you, not add a thin layer of pseudo-sweat that just sits there getting nasty in air that's swampier than Satan's armpit.
press a cold object to an area with lots of blood circulation: scalp, neck, armpits, groin. put a chilled washcloth on your neck, hold an ice pack under your arm, sit down with Big Cold Drink propped between your legs. hell, combine the two methods and dunk your head in ice water.
(you should also be drinking Big Cold Drink, but more for hydration than direct cooling, because it's no match for the metabolic furnace of your core once it's in your stomach. you do want it there though. to replace all the water you're losing by sweating like a glass of iced tea in a steambath.)
if you don't have anything refrigerated to use, find a cool-to-the-touch heat sink to lie down on and maximize physical contact with it. stone, tile, concrete, brick, even soil in a well-shaded spot. basement or garage floors. these materials can soak up and store a lot of heat before warming up, so they'll siphon off some of yours if they haven't been baking in the sun.
most of the usual advice for not making heat stress worse also applies (hydration, shade, breeze, loose breathable clothing, limiting exertion during the hottest midday hours), and there are ways to make a living space without A/C more tolerable that still work in high humidity. block sunlight from windows. keep them OPEN with a fan-assisted cross-breeze at night, then CLOSED to seal in the cooler air, from sunup until indoor temp exceeds outdoor temp. minimize daytime stove/oven use. on hot nights sleep in the coolest room you can, even the basement; cumulative heat stress makes everything worse and you need as much nighttime relief as you can get. a dehumidifier will make the air stop badtouching you but also gives off heat, so ymmv on its ability to make your environment more livable - note, though, that humans can tolerate much higher temperatures in drier air.
the reason damp heat feels so nasty and is so fucking dangerous is that it nerfs all measures that rely on evaporative cooling, which is the One Neat Trick your body knows for actively removing excess heat. sweating doesn't just make you feel less hot: water needs thermal energy to evaporate and absorbs it from its surroundings, cooling them off. as the air gets too soggy with water vapor to accept any more, anything that relies on this process (including swamp coolers, misting fans, etc) stops helping. if you're overheating when the air is soup, the only thing your body can fucking do about it is produce even more useless sweat, so you need an external assist. find a space with A/C to cool off in, get in the fucking water, or put your pulse points on ice.
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