I saw that show about the 10 most extreme survivors, and it was the water bear that won, able to survive even in a vacuum.<br /><br />Water bears are microscopic invertebrates that are amazingly rugged. They are made mostly of water. You'd think such a thing would have a hard time in a vacuum, but it turns out that their drought survival technique is so effective that it'll even work in a vacuum. They basically dry up on purpose. As soon as they are exposed to water again, they come back to life. Amazing creatures.<br /><br />More sophisticated animals have a harder time. Humans, for instance, are very complex and this complexity actually limits our options -- what one system will endure, another may not, and so on. However, we do not instantly explode in a vacuum, contrary to many B movies and paperback novels. As a matter of fact, there are three people who have been killed by "sucking space" -- the crew of Soyuz 11. It was a terrible tragedy; the first genuine casualties in outer space. A pressure equalization valve opened up while undocking from Salyut 1. This valve isn't supposed to open until they are hanging from their parachute in the final stages of descent; they were killed in less than a minute. The rescue crew didn't know what to expect when they opened the capsule; all telemetry had been perfect, except for the disturbing silence of the crew. When they opened it up, the crewmembers appeared to be in good physical condition, apart from being dead. They looked asleep. They attempted to revive them, but they'd<br />been dead for pretty much the entire descent, so it was hopeless. Autopsies revealed internal bleeding, particularly brain hemmorages. They probably died in a fashion similar to people who die of the bends (aeroembolism due to decompression). It's normally very painful. The good news is that when reviewing the cockpit recordings and recorded biometrics, they appeared to have lost consciousness very quickly due to lack of oxygen, so <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> <p> </p><p><font color="#666699"><em>"People assume that time is a strict progression of cause to effect, but actually from a non-linear, non-subjective viewpoint it's more like a big ball of wibbly wobbly . . . timey wimey . . . stuff."</em> -- The Tenth Doctor, "Blink"</font></p> </div>