You nailed it. Smart, ot hard. Conservation of energy, not body mass. I'm back at 146 at 6'1" after going down to 108 and nearly dying. I am acclimating myself to heat again CAREFULLY. The HI was 108 today, and I am not shy about scurrying from patch of shade to shade.

The toughest man I ever knew was named George Hopkins. He was from Callahan County, Texas, and he grew up wild. He got inyo trouble, and got sent to the Navy instead of jail. During basic, they couldn't do anything with him, but he would not discharge, so they sent him to Panama Jungle school. He ran the instructors into the ground. They put him on the Lex. He liked to fight, so they said, OK, you'll box. He was all-navy heavy champ, and was going to fight for all-armed-forces, when he got drunk and hit an officer.

They sent him to Vietnam humping a radio rig for a SEAL team. He did two tours. While on leave in Tokyo, he got his ankle crushed in a motorcycle accident, and medicaled-out. I've got his DD-213, and it is amazing.

He came home, and could not get a job. He had to wear a frame brace on his leg. He finally went to work as the attendant of the ward for the dangerous criminally insane unit of the Abilene State School. He got 6 of his patients/inmates DC's to lesser units. They fired him for insubordination.

He learned to weld, he cowboyed [he worked with me a lot] and broke horses for a living. He was my friend. Lots of folks said he was nuts.

George looked at pain as just another bodily symptom, like sweating. When I knew him, he was not, probably, cardiolvascularly fit as a hard-core runner would be, but his capacity to do work was amazing. He did not know how to quit, and his physiolgy allowed him to get away with it. He did take care of himself: he was always hydrated, and he took snacks when he didn't want them. He also had inate quickness, which cannot be taught. George died at 48, of pancreatic cancer. My pancreas nearly killed me. I'm 48.

Go figure. You do what you can. I would put George up there as the most 'most likely to survive' person I have ever known, not just because of his body & physiology, but his temperment. And, if you were his friend, you'd live, too. But he died w/in 6 weeks of first symptoms.