How long after cold temperatures should you expect to see the wood break opposed to bend

One of the ways people have mentioned with finding a dead perennial vs an alive perennial is branches breaking instead of bending. Despite the temperatures getting to -15 a few days ago and my fruit trees/bushes being in pots even my zone 6 fruit branches still seem to be bending just fine. I am wondering if this is a delayed reaction and how long it generally takes for wood to actually die if a frost killed it. After the polar vortex this week I am sure many others have this question too.

Freeze a banana. Then take it outside ā€˜after coldā€™ (after freezing temperatures) and see the time it takes to get limp as the mercury climbs on above 32F.

Not a perfect test, but close enough.

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If youā€™re old enough to remember the Challenger disaster on that cold Sunday in 1986, those ā€œOā€ rings in the rockets still stiff after the air temps got above 35ā€¦hence the malfunction.

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To be honest I have never heard of that unless it is the rocket that the teachers died on? Sounds like we should have expected results within a day than if anything died plant wise. I was born in 1996. There was big events that went on when I was a kid but being a kid I did not understand or care about the impacts it had. I did not get too into any big events until I was an adult which was not until 2015. There are some events I remember them talking about in middle school like the 9.0 earthquake in Japan or when America Killed Osama Bin Laudin but not understanding the impacts or why it mattered.

Understood.
Thatā€™s one reason I feel bad for the 20- and 30-somethings,
they never had history classes in school. All they have to
go by is experiences. And popular media that is more focused
on money and political correctness than truth and facts.

If you donā€™t have a record of the past, you donā€™t have much to base expectations of the future on either.

And soon as a generation fails to remember the lessons their parents or grandparents learned by suffering, the process repeats and another generation suffers. Been like that for millennia.

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I had history classes and one of my complaints about my history classes is they were not broad enough or I was so young that I donā€™t remember what they taught me. They taught about the upcoming pieces of America in elementary school but never touched on it again and I am sure it was not the tough side to America. In middle school I remember learning about the slave trade and Columbus and his expedition but it was not the full story to Columbus and his expedition. I also remember learning about the Indian war in 8th grade. In freshmen year I had to learn about geography for one semester. News flash I suck at geography still. In the other semester of Freshmen year I had to go Government class. During that class we learned about the different kinds of government. The main thing I remember about that was not the learning of government but that they used an online game called civic mirror. It was supposed to have you be acting in a way certain political groups act based on your role (dictator, Green Party is what I got etc). In the game you would have cycles on the year based on different governing statuses we would expect here in America (elections, law changes, city meeting and court lawsuit). Issue is instead of teaching us about how each party acts it taught us how gamed the system is and how it failed other people. The cheerleaders and popular football guys ended up taking everything and the kids that were not popular had their entire family and them die off. The popular kids won the elections and then proceeded to change the laws to benefit their own during the law change time and anyone who spoke up during the city counsel meeting would be sued during the lawsuit time. Repeat as until end of semester. As an adult I found certain parallels to the civic mirror game that were scary similar which is partially why I am so jaded to the system. So if anything government class hurt me in the regard to parts of my life because I just canā€™t unsee how corrupt some are or how certain ways of the system we live in are being abused which many donā€™t. Sophomore year to Junior year may as well be summarized as hitler was bad. I donā€™t mind learning about hitler but 2 years was a bit insane. We learned very little about the other parts of WW2. Senior year were took a semester on economy which was not bad in any way.

I see your perspective better.

Your ā€˜civic mirrorā€™ is sort of the same in businessā€¦or as Dale Carnegie put it, gain friends and influence people and you succeed.

For my part, I learned a lot about history and many other things in school, but have learned even more since.

And if you randomly pick 50 countries out of a hat, I can probably name at least 90% of their capitals and point to them on a globe that has no names on it
(And if I miss more than thatā€™ itā€™s probably that I remember its name it had from 50+ years ago rather than itā€™s current name.) {For example, Ivory Coast, Rhodesia, Ceylon, and Burma you donā€™t find on a map these daysā€¦and the former Yugoslavia is a mess.)

I think the correlation goes to many things with that civic mirror game. The people in charge are making the laws and the make the laws to benefit them and their supporters in any way. Their supporters are the massive businesses so the massive businesses win and the politicians win but the mom and pop stores that canā€™t lobby canā€™t win, the workers lose because they donā€™t get any benefits not owning a business supporting the politicians and are not creating the laws. The same goes with what you said where the popular people at work can more easily work their way up while the unpopular may be forced to stay at the bottom. The bottom people never make as much not getting promotions or not getting as favorable of reviews that their raise is based on and lose the game of life through no fault of their own. Since the people in charge are making the changes there is nothing the people on the bottom can do. It is something many do not realize but seeing the game and being able to draw real life comparisons that are negative just makes it harder to ignore. Most people are ignorant to many of these things and it simply does not concern them as a result. I feel as though school failed me personally. I make average for the typical American and have good benefits compared to many so am grateful for that but cannot deny that many with a high school diploma like me are very ill prepared for the world.

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Agree on the most of that. Still, you do have stories of immigrants that came having nothing, not even speaking the language, that start a tiny business and thrive. So, education certainly helps, but many have proven itā€™s not a prerequisite.
(Bill Gates and Elon Musk ate both school dropouts.)

Iā€™d have to say Iā€™d probably have made a lot more money over the years if Iā€™d kissed more asses and not pointed out the bosses ineptness from time to timeā€¦ :slight_smile:
Iā€™ve preferred the route of being correct, not popular or politically correctā€¦but sometimes I get a little over zealous and point out errors
rather than giving praise and pats on the back enough.