Comments by "Evan" (@MrEvanfriend) on "Heat Exhaustion: Can heat kill you in medieval armour? (We find out, it wasn't nice!)" video.

  1. The difference was that these people trained and conditioned for it their entire lives. Training and conditioning are extremely important. I was in the US Marine Corps. I was extremely well trained and extremely well conditioned. I went to war in Iraq, which is disgustingly hot during the summer - well over 120 on most days. While the armor I wore there was neither metal nor fully encasing as 15th century medieval armor was, it was still heavy and didn't breathe at all. That was about 14 years ago. If you put me in the same environment in the same equipment now, over a decade after having left the Corps, I'd probably drop dead. But at the time, I could bear it, because I was trained and conditioned to do so. It was always miserable, it never got anywhere approaching comfortable, and the helmet that I wore there, which I still have, has salt stains on the liner from the sweat. There are other tricks as well, besides just conditioning and training. A good one having something wet wrapped around your neck - this cools the carotid arteries and thus the blood flowing into the brain, and can make a very big difference. I wouldn't be surprised if people back in the middle ages figured this out as well, and it seems to me that it would be easy enough to do even in armor (the flak jackets we wore had a high armored collar, and this didn't hinder it). Of course, drinking lots and lots of water is also key.
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  2.  @ModernKnight  I imagine that staying near water sources was key. I'm not a historian by any means, but I understand that Saladin's victory at the Horns of Hattin was at least partially attributable to the Crusader army not staying near a water source and being very low on water. Also, I don't exactly know when the campaigning season was in the middle ages. The only two battles I can think of the dates of offhand are Hastings and Agincourt, both of which took place in October when heat wouldn't have been as much of an issue. A fall campaigning season, especially if you have professional armies/mercenaries who don't need to go back to their farms might make more sense than the height of summer. Another interesting thing to mention would be the relative rarity of pitched battles in the middle ages, with siege warfare being more common. It seems to me that the problems of fighting in full armor in heat would be mitigated by sieges as opposed to open battle.
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