10 Real Human Superpowers

Cold Resistance/Total Autonomic Control

Most Dutch people’s superhuman abilities are confined to the areas of tulip farming, windmill construction, and hashish procurement, but Wim “Iceman” Hof has dedicated his talents to exploring the ability to control the body’s autonomic functions, i.e. the release of hormones and chemicals in response to outside conditions or internal disease. Remarkably, his techniques of meditation and self-reflection seem to actually work. Hof holds eighteen different world records related to cold, having spent nearly two hours immersed in an ice bath with no ill effects, and performing a number of cold-weather stunts such as attempting to scale Mount Everest in shorts (he turned back only after injuring his foot). Scientific examination reveals that Hof can control the amount of stress hormones and inflammatory cytokines in his blood, allowing autonomic processes to run faster and more efficiently, and thermal imaging has shown that his core temperature while submerged in ice drops significantly less than the average human. While researchers argue that the sample size (by which they basically just mean Wim) is too small to determine whether or not autonomic self-control is a mutation unique to Hof’s system, Hof is more than willing to teach his meditation techniques to anyone willing to spend the next thirty years sitting in a pool of ice with an eccentric Dutchman.