Living with 50°C or 122°F -- an experiment

Written on 15 August 2025.

Do temperatures exceeding 40°C in France seem unbearable to you? Imagine what life could be like at 50°C in 2050. Our journalist tested this out in a truck simulating these extreme conditions. 50°C: this temperature seems surreal for the summer of 2025. However, according to Météo-France, it could well be reached in France by 2050.

Elsewhere in the world, it is already a reality: at the end of July, Turkey joined the increasingly less exclusive club of countries where the thermometer has exceeded 50°C.

The Climate Sense truck is the somewhat sadistic invention of Christian Clot, an explorer who loves to plunge the human body into different extreme situations to better study its limits.

When the truck door closes, the air enters my mouth like a blast from a hair dryer. The whole thing feels like embracing the fate of a vegetable that is going to be candied at low temperature. At the back of the cramped space are three treadmills on which the explorer invites us to walk for ten minutes. “It's 8 a.m. on a day in 2050. You're going to work and walking in the shade. It's already 122°F...”

Within two minutes, the body automatically activates its cooling systems: vasodilation of blood vessels to dissipate heat, profuse sweating, and faster breathing. My complexion turns peony pink.

My skin becomes a sweaty membrane, my eyelashes stick together, and beads of hot sweat roll down from my forehead to my neck. I tell myself that under these conditions, I would never walk to work. In the back of my mind, a conviction takes hold: "No one will be able to keep up this pace, no children will be able to go to school, no employees will be able to work outdoors, human societies will slow down. "

But after twenty minutes at 50°C, it's like having chewing gum in your brain, thoughts slow down, sentences lose their structure. Heat impairs cognitive abilities, and the phenomenon becomes tangible.

Neuroscientists refer to a decrease in nerve conduction: messages circulate more slowly, short-term memory becomes blurred, and attention becomes fragmented. Participants describe a “mental fog” and an inability to organize their thoughts.

After thirty minutes, confusion can set in, accompanied by the risk of heatstroke: nausea, dizziness, disorientation. In a real-world environment, these symptoms can lead to loss of consciousness or even death if the body's internal temperature exceeds 40 °C  (104°F.) 

When the door opens, the outside air—though warm—feels light and breathable. You step outside with the feeling of having visited a hostile planet: our own, in 2050! Most people recover in a few minutes, but it took me three hours to regain my senses.

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