Hypothermia

"Your tauntaun'll freeze before you reach the first marker!"

- Tigran Jamiro, warning Han Solo about the danger of hypothermia

Hypothermia was a condition caused by exposure to extreme cold temperatures that could be fatal if not treated. The condition could be warded off through layered clothing or by using a space heater to generate heat. While species adapted for hot environments like Rodians were particularly suspectible to hypothermia, it could also affect beings native to cold worlds, such as the tauntauns of the planet Hoth. Tauntauns suffering from the ailment displayed distress signals of loud bleating and violently thrashing their heads. In spite of the cold, the internal body cavity of a tauntaun killed by hypothermia was capable retaining heat for some time after death.

Han Solo experienced hypothermia in his hands when he spent the night before a coaxium heist in 10 BBY in the Iridium Mountains on Vandor with Tobias Beckett's gang. Years later in 3 ABY, while serving with the Alliance to Restore the Republic at Echo Base on Hoth, Solo rode a tauntaun into a snowstorm to find and rescue the missing Luke Skywalker. During this excursion, his tauntaun collapsed and died of hypothermia because of the cold.

Behind the scenes
Hypothermia first appeared in the 1980 movie Star Wars: Episode V The Empire Strikes Back. It was first identified in the 2018 novel Most Wanted by Rae Carson and the book's audiobook version of the same name.

Appearances

 * Most Wanted
 * Most Wanted audiobook
 * Solo: A Star Wars Story: Expanded Edition
 * Solo: A Star Wars Story: Expanded Edition audiobook
 * Star Wars: Episode V The Empire Strikes Back
 * The Empire Strikes Back: So You Want to Be a Jedi?
 * The Empire Strikes Back: So You Want to Be a Jedi? audiobook
 * Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back junior novelization