>>231782You can't really soak wool. Still, I don't think anyone said wool would be warm when soaked. But it's not going to be completely cold either, it's going to be much warmer than anything else. And that's when soaked; when just wet from sweat, it's going to be perfectly fine.
Wool retains air molecules no matter what, thanks to lanolin; the least processed the wool, the richer in lanolin it is. Fishermen used to go as far as dipping their clothing in pure lanolin to make it even more waterproof, at the cost of smelling like a whole herd of wet sheep. Same applies to polypropylene and polyester, which are much better insulators than wool. Polyethylene comes close, but at some point, the process that keeps water out ends up keeping water in, so it goes to shit.
Wool also happens to generate heat when absorbing moisture as it expands. It's not going to make you warm, but it's going to prevent sweat for condensating, and thus make it an incredible breathable material. Humanity hasn't been using wool for centuries, and made cloaks out of it designed to protect you in any weather, without any reason.
The former claim was that being wet won't necessarily make you cold. And this is indeed true. In a bivy, unless you're sweating like a pig, it won't be the "wet" kind of condensation, only the slightly damp, and while it kills part of the insulation, you won't freeze in your sleep either.
