'If the chanting stops, he will die. My patient will die. I was certain of this-as certain as someone crouching in an unheated tent sitting on the highest mountain in the world can feel about anything.'

Dr Ken Kamler knows what happens when bodies are pushed to their limits. He has been to and studied the world's most inhospitable regions, and seen who survived and who did not. This book leads readers into six different and extreme environments: underwater, water surface, jungle, desert, high altitude and outer space. Telling the stories of his own and others' extraordinary brushes with death, Kamler explores the body's reactions to heat, cold, pressure, starvation, exhaustion and exposure, and reveals its miraculous survival strategies.