How to survive several days without water

[MellowOne]

A doctor I know told me that one way to survive without water is to recycle your urine. I know it sounds totally gross but urine is 95% water and actually sterile as it's filtered through the kidneys so it's not dirty. He said there are stories of people surviving doing this.

I wish I could word out to people in these stranded places to try it.

[Tace]

1. Yes, This Is A Traditional Survival Method

Many, many people through the ages have survived using this method. It pops up in maritime stories about sailors at sea, or beachwrecked, without water.

[slor]

2. I thought it actually makes things worse...

is this true?

[TornadoTN]

3. It's not ideal, but it works

I'm trained in S&R, and that is a tactic that is on the books in the absolute worst case scenario. However, if your body passes a certain point and is unable to produce urine, then it is a lesson in futility.

[MellowOne]

6. Isn't it true

That there are nutrients in the urine that the body is expelling. I know most people pass most of their vitamins out in urine.

[Bouncy Ball]

10. Yeah, BUT

ingesting the same waste doesn't mean your body is necessarily going to use those nutrients this time, either.

As you ingest and re-void the same output over and over, the waste products become more concentrated. Your body squeezes out all it can use from it.

[d-artignan]

8. It's the worst, because it's salt

That means that you lose water instead of gaining it, since there will be more salt coming into your system. If there is no alternative then you are better off drinking the water from the Mississippi even though it is not clean. The body is more likely to work with the pollution in that water. Drinking urine will only dehydrate you sooner.

[Bouncy Ball]

11. Which is why I said it's VERY temporary, VERY stop-gap and

VERY last resort type stuff. I'm not sure I could go there with you on drinking water with gas, oil, rotting flesh, horrible chemicals, etc, but I'd try to do anything I could before I was drinking urine.

[Lindacooks]

4. Yes, good idea, but if you're dehydrated you're not producing

any urine.

[Totally Committed]

5. Those poor people should drink their own urine to live?

Bush should rot in hell for what he has done to these poor people. And, how do you get children and babies to drink their own urine? I know it is a survival technique, and you were thoughtful to post it, but it just makes my blood boil to think these people who have suffered so much need to drink their own urine to survive in AMERICA because Bush had to get in one last day of his vacation before deciding what to do about relief.

Goddammit.

TC

[MellowOne]

9. I'm beyond the point of hate for Bush

So I feel exactly the same way. But when I see pictures of all these people needing water, it's better than dying, if it will give them a chance to survive.

[Bouncy Ball]

7. It's only a stop-gap measure, obviously, and a very limited one

at that, but yes you CAN do it.

One caveat: the urine should be ingested pretty quickly after voiding, because, while it is sterile when it LEAVES the body, bacteria quickly start reproducing in it. So it wouldn't be a good idea to say, let it cool off or anything, before drinking it.

:-(

And as someone else pointed out, you will start to produce less and less urine each time. The body filters out all the water it can use from it, but after a while it is more and more concentrated waste product.

God this is horrible. It's a survival technique, yes, and I wonder if some in NO have already started doing that....

[kevinhnc]

12. Doesn't work

This won't work. The kidney can only concentrate urine up to a certain point. It's exactly the same reason we can't live off of ocean water...its more concentrated than urine can be.

At a certain point, drinking maximially concentrated urine would be a waste of time and effort, and may make you sick. And that point is not long after you run out of water and begin to become dehydrated.

[northzax]

14. that's not actually the reason we can't live off ocean water

the real reason is that water enters our bodies, from the intestinal tract, through osmosis. Ergo, from the place with more water to the place with less water. One was the blood attracts water from the intestines is because blood is slightly salty, and water flows, by osmosis towards salt.

but if you have water in your intestines that is saltier than your blood, it will attract water FROM the body into the intestines and dehydrate you.

yes, that's the short version.

[faithfulcitizen]

13. Yes, I will never forget this b/c of the story of a women & baby...

trapped during a mudslide in Europe (i forget where though). Anyway, her and her baby survived by her drinking her own urine and nursing her baby. They were in an incredibly confined space. they lived after 9 days I believe. What an extraordinary mother...

[northzax]

15. technically, urine in your bladder is sterile

but your urethra isn't, so when it exits your body it is no longer sterile.

[FormerRepublican]

16. There are some other survival things that can be done.

The sun will purify water. For example, if you find a black pot somewhere, you could potentially set a shallow pan of water somewhere and as the sun heats it, it will pasturize the water. If you find some plastic, you can increase the efficiency by covering the pot. You can also use an object to capture evaporated water (like you get when you leave a bottle in the sun and water collects at the top of the bottle) and that will be totally pure and safe to drink if you have some way of collecting it. So if someone found a couple of plastic pop bottles floating in the flood waters, they could use them to set up a small evaporative still to collect enough water to stay alive.

There are a couple of things that can be done in a desperate case to survive a little longer.

Of course, this in no way excuses the government's incompetence.

[MellowOne]

17. Oh My goodness!

People are using urine as a cure! Check out these two websites (I just did a search).

http://www.wfmu.org/LCD/19/urine.html

http://www.bobsilverstein.com/urine.htm

[mermaid]

18. This Is Fucking Gross!!

Reminds me of a guy I knew who lived in a boarding house, on the third floor. The only bathroom was on the first floor, and so he used to pee into empty Coke bottles at night, rather than go downstairs. Anyway, one time, when I was at his place...he accidentally picked up the wrong bottle and chugged...and immediately threw up!

How could you drink urine without throwing up?!? I couldn't!!

Hell, I'm about to throw up just remembering this, and it wasn't even ME that chugged the pee!!