Ok, I watched the "Cold Weather Break Down" series of videos this weekend. In this scenario, there was no excuse. They started out dry, surrounded by tons of dry leaves. I can only image how comfortable they would have been if they had just built the second half of their shelter and used the fire only for cooking.

Seems like the first instinct is often to build a fire. Perhaps if you're already in danger of hypothermia you need to get the fire going before you're incapacitated, but otherwise, I'd start on my shelter first.

This "stay warm by the fire all night" madness has got to stop. Once you build an open shelter with a fire in front of it, you're a slave to the fire. You spend precious calories hauling wood and you can never sleep. I wonder if anyone's ever been killed by trying to maintain their fire...

As for their theory that if they had made the shelter smaller it would have been "easier to heat", it wouldn't have helped very much. With a fire in the open, it heats by radiation only. Unlike inside your house, there is no warm air to speak of. What radiation giveth, convection and conduction taketh away.

By the way, just staying the the vehicle would have been a better option. It would have become an "ice box" perhaps, but what would you call an open lean-to?

All that being said, I actually like this new format of videos! Its neat to see real people making the same kind of mistakes that I have made and learned from. It demonstrates how all the book knowledge in the world only goes so far. At some point you have to get experience. Can't wait to watch the Altoids tin series.