Oddly we had a thread about this in 2007.
A qoogle search came up with answers between 1 in 4 (assuming the fresh is distilled , which is fairly common on a life raft), and 1-5 and 2889g of distilled water to each 1000g of seawater .
So, to be safe 1-5.
Two plastic soda bottles and some duct tape or a piece of a t-shirt are all you need. Could easily get you at least an extra day. More if you start sooner, and have other containers to store urine and distilled water. You could conceivably carry the still on your shoulders as you walk, but you’d be better off doing your walking at night and distilling water in the day time. Perfect for when you are stuck at sea. I don’t know how much urine you can distill per hour of daylight, but whatever you get will extend your life.
I’m guessing that for many people, actually drinking their urine would lead to vomiting, for a multitude of reasons, and that too would be counter-productive.
Wasn’t there a guy who survived on salt water alone in a life raft? Iirc he soaked his shirt in salt water and then rang the water out into his mouth as a primitive filter. Then he dried the t-shirt and repeated the process.
You can’t filter salt out of seawater with a T-shirt.
On a few survival shows I’ve participated in (and by “participating” I mean watched), the contestants had some sort of filter device that they attached to the mouth of a water bottle, presumably for filtering out impurities.
I don’t suppose using this on a bottle filled with peepee would do any good?
mmm
I will start a sign up sheet for volunteers for a double blind study.
Once the urine group or control group reach a 50% mortality rate, we will halt the study. No reason to be sadistic just because we are searchers of truth.
FWIW, I used to know a guy who drank his own urine on a regular basis. I happened to encounter him doing so in the men’s room of a homeless shelter; he said his dad raised him to do that. I guess the family was sort of suburban survivalists.
If you have a transparent sheet of plastic, then it takes very little effort to set up a solar still. If you don’t have one, then you’re probably not going to be able to make one at all. I don’t think there’s any scenario where you can make one but it takes a lot of effort.
Drinking some urine on a regular basis is fine. But if you drink all of your urine, it’ll kill you pretty quick.
Um, not so. Even the most concentrated liquid urine is still mostly water. Just with more stuff dissolved in it.
Cecil addresses “urine therapy” at the bottom of this column:
A filter will not remove minerals, they are designed to screen bacteria or cysts like Giardia or E coli. They won’t remove pesticides or other contamination.
Seawater is a different problem. There are reverse-osmosis type pumps included in life raft survival kits.
I can see drinking my urine in an emergency situation, if that emergency was someone holding a gun to my head and saying “Drink your urine, or else!”.
You’d probably even have a ready supply, immediately available.
“Rule of threes”: three minutes without air, three days without water, three weeks without food. YMMV.
If you google “miners drank urine” (sans quotes) you’ll get a lot of stories about miners who did that and survived. Surprise, there isn’t a lot of reporting about the miners who did so and didn’t survived, so I’m not sure how useful that is.
Business Insider says “Don’t”:
Not sure I’d choose them as my primary source for survival info, mind.
Again, even with that, more effort than it is worth.
If you’ve reached that point you’ll be dead in minutes without fresh water. Unless a helicopter is one the way you’re going die whether or not you drink urine. The trouble with solar stills is the time it takes for distilling, not the energy required to set up a still. Start early if you expect to distill water from urine, or anything else.
rough rule of thumb is 3 minutes without air, 3 days without water, 3 weeks without food.
though I sort of argue about that last one [sort of] I had an issue and I stopped eating, only nutrition was chicken stock, water and black tea with mint [unsweetened, I was having issues with the taste of anything sweet, and I had issues with anything solid.] I got ill first week of September, bailed on school and my first real meal was Dec 27th. I did lose 20 pounds. I am cheesed off, I missed the last Thanksgiving a friend of mine cooked, he passed the summer after. Marc made the most amazing pies, and his whipped potatoes were heavenly.
Yeah, I assume the “three weeks without food” is based on the assumption that you’re in a survival situation, trying to walk out of the mountains or something, in which case you’re of course burning a lot more calories.
Plus you were getting some nutrition (not so much calories) from the chicken stock, perhaps most significantly some sodium, probably.
Only 20 pounds in over three months seems low!
I have a screwy metabolism - only time since 1980 that I have regularly eaten more than 1800 cal [american style reckoning, i know europe uses a different kcal/cal system and a different glucose rendering, my a1c normally hovers around 5.2 - 5.6.] i was doing chemo and radiation and it had stripped out my gut lining and it took me 4000 - 5000 cal a day to maintain weight. rad tech hate when the victims lose weight, they have to ct and redot the targeting tattoos.]
it did screw with my hunger reflex in that I no longer have one, I have a timer on my phone set to remind me to eat.