IT'S HOT, IT'S COLD, IT'S HIGH, IT'S LOW...
Survival is the number one rule and goal of nature and any living form in nature. Multiple processes and abilities increase a species' chances to survive. You can address survival as a matter of the individual living form, or widen your scope and address the survival of the entire species. One of the prime and central abilities tightly associated with better chances of survival, is the ability to adapt to changing conditions, diverse environments, and overcome life-threatening situations and challenges.
Traditionally, we distinct between five hostile environments to the human race. All five environments withhold the potential danger of fast or slow death to humans. How hostile an environment is to a human depends not only on the characteristics of the environment itself, but the human body's ability to adapt to the conditions of that environment. Different individuals may show different extents of the ability to adapt and survive each hostile environment.
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The five common hostile environments include excessive heat environments, extreme cold environments, extreme positive vertical altitude environments, extreme negative vertical altitude environments, and outer space. The human body's ability to adapt to each hostile environment separately is not the same; we as humans, do better adapting and functioning in some environments compare to others.
The overall ability of humans to adapt to a new and/or hostile environment depends on our ability to: 1) adapt mentally; 2) adapt physiologically; 3) adapt genetically. One adaptation demand is not the same as the others. We can always elaborate on each one of the three, and further divide each one in to even more specific adaptations.
Genetic adaptations are heavily based on the process of evolution, an extremely slow process if left to its natural speed of occurrence. A person's ability to mentally adapt is widely variable and depends on the person's personal traits that influence mental adaptation capacity. The ability to adapt physiologically depend in the short term on built-in functions, while medium-long term physiological adaptations depend on the extent, quality, and frequency of exposure to the hostile environment.
Naturally, physiological and mental adaptations could have one or more genetic influencers. As is the case with many adaptations, to exercise, health challenges, and more, the sustainability of the adaptations depend on continuous exposures to the stimuli that resulted in the adaptations to begin with. The natural extent of adaptation is limited, yet to reach the full potential of adaptations depends on a growing overall extent of exposure.
Ultimately, on a relative scale, humans are the least adaptable (based on natural abilities and capacities) to outer space, then negative altitude (i.e. the depths; the deep sea), positive vertical altitude (i.e. heights; mainly mountains; anything vertically upwards limited by outer space), extreme heat environments, and extreme cold environments.
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