On Fri, 27 Jul 2007 22:21:00 -0700, Chuck Gould
wrote:

And many people die almost right away from cold water immersion shock.
They either gasp involuntarily and get a lung full of water and drown
or go into cardiac arrest.

My only experience with really cold water, many years ago, was that it
was difficult to catch a breath because of involuntary contraction of
the chest and diaphragm muscles. Fortunately I was hanging onto the
edge of a canoe with my head above water, able to survive for a minute
on very shallow breaths. After that I was able to slowly work up to a
full breath but it took a while and some very concerted panic
avoidance.