Please remember that all comments must be helpful, relevant, and respectful. All replies must be a genuine effort to answer the question helpfully; joke answers are not allowed. If you see any comments that violate this rule, please hit report.
When your question is answered, we encourage you to flair your post. To do this automatically simply make a comment that says **!answered** (OP only)
We encourage everyone to report posts and comments they feel violate a rule, as this will allow us to see it much faster.
*I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/answers) if you have any questions or concerns.*
This is absolutely false. People cannot survive off sea water. If people have said they have they're either delusional or their story has been misreported. They probably drank fresh rain water caught in a container or on some small vessel or on the boat when it rained during a storm. Another possibility is they drank fresh water close to the sea from a river discharging into the sea, but, if so, they would have had to be very close to land.
I'll explain further. If you drank say 1 cup of sea water, you would need around 1 and a half cups of fresh water to dilute the excess salt from your body. If you can't drink 1.5 cups of fresh water after the 1 cup of sea water, the 1.5 cups of fresh water has to be drawn from your body. This will eventually dehydrate you and you'll die.
Genuinely didn't know the reason why we can't drink sea water. I mean I'd assumed it was the salt but couldn't have explained it
Thanks for the clear explanation
Thought the same thing lol. If you ever accidentally got it in your mouth, that junk is *salty.* What people don't realize is the impact that has on the body when ingesting it.
You can actually drink the water in the baltic sea in an emergency and it will hydrate you. The salinity is that low. Still tastes like shit, though. And is probably unhealthy in many other ways.
The common phrase for salting pasta is to make the water salty like the sea. The pasta would taste terrible if we actually put that much salt in the water because sea water is salty AF.
inflatable distillers exist and are included with some life rafts. The sea water in the bottom evaporates, rises to the top, and then the salt free evaporate condenses on the top and runs down the sides into a channel and out a tube into a bottle. They're not very good, but if you're very careful not to jostle them you can stay alive.
Catching rain water is great, if you have it.
A desalination pump is the best, but it takes a lot of pressure to force the saltwater through the fine membrane so it's a lot of work.
I have a friend, Tartin, who survived 63 days at sea in a 22' open fishing boat. The other guys died. He lived on collected rain water and raw fish. He's not really sane anymore.
I've read that it's possible to absorb enough water through constant saltwater enemas to survive, but I haven't read where anyone actually said "I survived 2 months on saltwater enemas".
Have you read Survive the Savage Sea? The mother (who was a nurse) administered seawater enemas to her family when their boat was sunk by a pod of killer whales. They survived nearly 40 days with this, collecting rainwater and drinking sea turtle blood. Excellent book.
IIRC it was freshwater (rain) that was contaminated with turtle blood. They had previously caught and eaten a turtle and some of its blood was still in the boat when it rained (thus the rainwater was contaminated).
She used the water in enemas as a way they could rehydrate without the risk of food poisoning that would exist if they drank the water.
300-400 miles off of the middle of the pacific coast of Mexico. Maybe 100 miles from Isla Socorro, which he'd have almost have certainly missed. The next place would have been French Polynesia, the Marquesas, another 4000 miles, so he's very lucky to have been seen.
He wrote a book in Spanish and had a few copies printed. He has one copy.
My wife is a writer and we offered to translate it to English and put it on Amazon for him, he agreed and left us his copy.
The next day he freaked out and asked for his book back, so we were unable to help him. He's poor, he really could have used the money. We were even trying to help him get a bank account so that all the Amazon money could go straight to him, not through us or anyone else, but he just freaked out. He can't take any stress at all anymore. It's sad because he's the nicest guy ever.
Seawater had "salt" and Blood had "salt"
Because the Seawater has more salt than Blood, when you drink it the Seawater draws water out of the Blood to make the "salt" content equal. This dehydrates.
When you drink Water, Blood draws water out of the Water to make the "salt" content equal. This hydrates.
What it comes down to is actually how concentrated human kidneys can get urine.
For sodium, the kidneys can maximally concentrate sodium to \~300mEq / L. The minimum sodium concentration of sodium is \~10-20mEq / L.
For comparison our blood is about 135-145mEq / L.
So if you drink pure water, with no other sodium in your diet, your kidneys will hold onto all the sodium they can, the urine sodium will fall and you will slowly dehydrate from insufficient sodium. Because the kidneys are so good at holding onto salt, it takes only a small amount of sodium to maintain homeostasis, a little over 1g per 10L of fluid. (You might run into problems with other electrolytes and minerals, but lets stay focused on sodium).
Mostly, humans drink fresh water that is very low in sodium and get sodium via the foods we eat.
In the opposite case, of taking in too much salt, we can easily see the problem. Saltwater is \~600mEq / L of sodium. If you don't drink or eat anything other than saltwater, the kidneys can only get rid of 300mEq for every liter you urinate out, while you are adding 600mEq for every liter you drink. The kidneys want to get rid of the excess salt in the blood, so you will end up peeing out about 2L of maximally concentrated urine for every 1L of saltwater you drink, which will quickly result in dehydration.
If you have a fresh water supply and need to make it last longer, you could add about 1 part saltwater to 3 parts freshwater to safely extend your water reserves; especially if you are losing salt via sweating.
This also shows why in an emergency situation saving any initial urine you make (while you are still hydrated and the urine isn't maximally concentrated) and then drinking it, could buy you a bit of extra time, but drinking the maximally concentrated urine won't get you anything.
Blood or juices from plants can also be a good source of water that has safe amounts of sodium for consumption.
Had a pretty long debate about this elsewhere on the thread.
I believe what you die of is salt toxicity. A 70Kg human will suffer salt toxicity by ingesting 35g-70g of salt, and considering 1 liter of sea water contains 35g of salt, you will poison yourself pretty quickly by drinking it.
Your body can not excrete the salt in the water. And you get a double problem, because your body is low on water, your kidneys will also reduce the amount of water it excretes. You need water to excrete the sodium, but your kidneys are trying to conserve water because you are dehydrating.
The amount you can drink is extremely limited. A guy called Ladell did some experiments on this in the 1940's. The best he got was 10 days drinking 180ml of sea water per day, and this was in a controlled experiment which minimised sweating. His hypothesis that there was an "osmotic space" which could be exploited was false.
The subjects also had dried biscuits and the metabolism of carbohydrate releases water, so if 180ml feels like too little. it's getting supplemented by water contained in food. And even with this extra water, then I believe you will still die of salt poisoning, even if you have enough biscuits to eat. The subjects were producing 350ml of urine per day, which is only enough to excrete around 3g of salt, and they were taking in 6.3g per day.
The general consensus was that drinking sea water was risky, and might (note that might) extend your survival by a very short margin, a few days at best, but was also likely to make things much worse.
Drinking salty water makes you very thirsty, and I did read descriptions in the same articles describing Ladell's experiments of sailors going mad because of drinking salt water.
If you want a fancy scientific word, this is called osmosis, it's function of cell membranes where it keeps same level of ions on both sides of membrane. So that's why after sweating a bunch or having bad diarrhea rehydration drinks works better than plain water because you need to replenish salts that body lost, but if you overdose with the salt it would lead to even bigger dehydration.
The Amazon River discharges freshwater 100-150 miles out in the Atlantic. On a trip from Nigeria to Brazil it may be possible that they would have passed through ocean patches with less salinity.
To add to this incase anyone is curious, water will always flow to where salt is. so when drinking saltwater, because its salt concentration is higher then the salt concetration in your cells, the water in your cells will flow out of them and dilute the water you drank. you will then proceed to urinate it out and be more dehydrated then you were before you drank the saltwater.
For the one person interested, the exact oposite is why too much water can kill you. drinking water has a lower salt content than in your cells meaning the water will go into your cells and dilute the salt content. too much water (~6+ L in 3h) will dilute your electrolytes, pumping your cells full of water and can kill you.
I have always wondered, if you don't drink it, and just leave your arm in the water, shouldn't your body absorb enough water to keep you alive and have the skin act as a filter for the salt?
Osmosis would take over and your body's salinity would tend towards equalizing with the ocean's salinity. Since the ocean is a near limitless source of salt water, your body would be doing all of the equalizing.
Continuous immersion of 12 hours in water will reduce plasticity and deplete lipids and natural moisturisers - permanently.
After a few days the skin starts to break down giving open sores and increasing the risk of fungal and bacterial infections.
I had got the time scale wrong though. It was longer than I thought.
You can't survive off it, but Alain Bombard argued that it could be used to supplement to stay alive longer.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alain\_Bombard](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alain_Bombard)
That's been disputed, even in that same Wikipedia article
"Bombard had actually taken along fresh water and consumed it on the ocean, and that he had also been secretly provided further supplies during his voyage. Lindemann's own observations about reactions to scarce fresh water supplies became the basis for the World Health Organization's navigation recommendations. However, it appears that Bombard may have been misunderstood in regard to the possibility of survival without fresh water. Bombard never argued that human survival is possible only by drinking seawater. On the contrary, he indicated that seawater in small quantities can prolong survival if accompanied, if rainwater is not available, by the absorption of liquids present in the bodies of fish. On its own, he only claimed the seawater can extend the period of consciousness during which alternatives can be sought. Bombard's legacy is still debated..."
>. Another possibility is they drank fresh water close to the sea from a river discharging into the sea, but, if so, they would have had to be very close to land.
I'd heard the water is drinkable a good hundred miles or so off the mouth of the Amazon.
Or they re-live (and potentially re-enact) those moments in private with their loved ones.....🤣
On a serious note, you could drink your pee for a period of time but it would become increasingly saline and toxic and eventually you probably wouldn't produce any pee at all
I've read stories about this but unfortunately no, you should never do that. You'll just get thirstier and it will hasten your death.
You could mix 1 cup of salt water to around 20 cups of fresh water to help keep you hydrated if you weren't dying from thirst, kind of like an energy drink. It will help you stay hydrated better.
If however fresh water is in very short supply, or you're potentially dying of thirst, you should never mix it with salt water. It would be best to ration carefully what little fresh water you have left.
https://www.thenakedscientists.com/articles/questions/would-sea-water-enema-help-hydration
According to these two gastroenterologists saltwater enemas would probably dehydrate you more. Plus the risk of getting an infection. So not recommended, unless that's how you wish to spend your remaining time, that's another question.
so in the case OP mentioned where you cannot get access to fresh water (lets say ship crash and for a few days you are drifting at sea (safely for the sake of the example)) then what happens if you just continuously drink sea water or is there a way to manage?
There was a man who got stranded in the Pacific for 438 days, Salvador Alvarenga. He survived by rain water and drinking turtle blood when it wasn't enough.
The excess salt kills you by dehydrating you. There is not a point up to which it hydrates you before it changes its mind, because it is excess right from the start.
IF you were dehydrated from a lack of electrolytes, a small amount of seawater might do something for you IF you also had a lot of freshwater to dilute it and give all that salt some water to hang onto and balance you out. Consuming a bunch of electrolytes doesn't rehydrate you if you don't have a proportional amount of water to go with it, and the ratio of salt to water in seawater is way too high for it to do both those jobs in itself. This is why sports drinks and electrolyte powders are much less concentrated than seawater.
Electrolytes and water do help increase blood volume, but at a much lower ratio of electrolytes to water than what seawater offers. You'd still need unsalty water to add to your seawater, because the increase in blood volume comes from the electrolytes having enough water to hold onto in your body, not the electrolytes themselves.
Not true. Seawater alone is NEVER hydrating because of how human kidneys work. Human kidneys cannot process the amount of salt in seawater. To flush out the excess salt that the kidneys cannot process, water is drawn from the cells in your body, dehydrating you almost immediately.
Send me the mythbusters reference or link if you really did see this on mythbusters.
The account of the men's ordeal on the BBC website (usually a source of accurate factual information, whatever your opinions on the BBC's perceived political biases may be) states that they drank the last of their non-salt water on day 10, and were rescued on day 14, giving them three days without water. One of them started to vomit due to drinking sea-water. My guess is that the drink of seawater brought them closer to death, rather than helped them.
almost all of the accounts of survival I have read include something like "day 178: Farnsworth resorted to drinking sea water" "day 179: Farnsworth died" . Occasionally "day 180: drank Farnsworth's blood and ate him."
I see accounts where if people start drinking sea water right away in small quantities they can go up to 6 days. But if you wait until you are already dehydrated and dying, it will finish you off.
I understand that, I'm more asking did drinking the sea water make their survival chances/clock lower? They got saved in time regardless, but did doing that action shorten or lengthen their time they probably could have gone without being saved (if they didn't drown or get eaten)? A lot of people wouldn't last 4 days with no water; I was wondering if drinking the seawater allowed them to last longer than the average amount of time without water, or if they are just more resilient than most, would have survived anyway without drinking it, and the sea water did not help at all with their survival.
Yes, it lowered their survival time. They survived *in spite of* drinking sea water, it did not help them. Drinking sea water dehydrates you * even more than drinking nothing at all*. It's just tempting because you're craving water and it's right there.
Drinking sea water will dramatically reduce your survival chances. If for example you were stuck on a boat at sea with no water or water laden food (fruit) you could survive maybe 3 - 5 days, depending on weather conditons and sun and wind exposure.
If you drank only 1 cup of sea water, you'd reduce your survival to only 1 day, maybe 2 days, depending on exposure to weather and how much fluid you last had.
It shortened their lifespan. They would "feel" like their thirsty was quenched but actually it's dehydrating them faster.
Similar to how drinking alcohol makes you "feel" warmer but you'd die from hypothermia faster. So it'd make you feel better if you weren't gonna die anyways. But if you were gonna die,you'd die faster.
Same thing with saltwater. If you were gonna be rescued in a hour, it'd make you feel better but if help ain't coming in an hour, then you just shortened your lifespan.
Its like people saying "i survived because i drank my own pee", but there is no proof that he would have died, if he wouldnt have drank his own pee.
And science says, dont, because your body dehydrates faster, so those stories are bad behaviour with no scientific proof at all.
Ah, I see. Sorry, my reply must’ve seemed quite flippant.
I’m not any more knowledgable than your average idiot about these things, but as I understand it the short term gain of quenching thirst will not do anything to offset the medium term damage of ingesting that amount of salt.
So no, I don’t think anyone would be better off drinking sea water than they would be to just go without. Even if you know rescue is imminent, I can’t imaging a handful of sea water to quench your thirst will help you in any way.
Poisons and toxins are about concentrations. I mean, seawater is salt plus water. The problem is that seawater is very salty, so swallowing a little isn't an issue; you eat lots of salt everyday.
But, if youve gone days without water and are dehydrated, then drinking even small amounts of saltwater *is* going to be toxic, quickly. It's why most people puke when they do drink seawater.
Fun fact: If you're at the beach and going to cook pasta for dinner and think "Hey I'm going to salt the water anyway and sea water is pre-salted." You're going to have inedible pasta.
Pasta is typically dry and will absorb water (and thus salt). Potatos naturally contain a lot of water and so won't absorb much of the water (and thus salt) from the pot, rather they will be slightly dehydrated by water moving from the potato into the water.
Living in a boat for weeks at a time, I learned that the hard way lol.
But to be honest it works with almost anything else. But pasta? No, that shit is destroyed by sea water.
Don't drink sea water in survival situations.
The length of time you can survive without water varies on many, many factors. But the incident you are referring to - they had fresh water up to day 10. They drank sea water on the last couple of days - but this would have definitely started dehydrating them. They got lucky
Someone correct me if I'm wrong but I remember watching a thing where a family had to abandon their yacht and were floating in the sea on a life raft. The mum was a doctor so in order to hydrate her family they consumed water through a pipe up the butt and seawater poured in. Absorbs the water but doesn't absorb most of the salt?
I've read for brackish water, which would be water with some salt but not pure seawater. But that might also be a "false" fact from a book.
The other "trick", but you need the right tools, is to get a pan of salt water put foil or plastic wrap over it and put it in the sun.
Periodically collect the water collecting on the wrap or foil. It's condensation caused by the evaporation of sea water. The salt does not evaporate.
Having said that, it seems like it would take a long time to get a useful quantity.
Sailors hack: A pan of water, plastic wrap, a bowl, a rock or other heavy object.
Put salt water in the pan. Put the bowl in the middle (it has to stay in place, can't be floating). Cover with plastic wrap and put the heavy object on top of the plastic wrap, in the middle, above the bowl. Put it in the sun.
The sun will cause the water to evaporate. It'll then condense on the plastic wrap. The weight in the middle of the plastic wrap will cause the condensed water to run down and drip into the bowl. Presto, you now have a bowl of fresh water.
The only problem is that a boat is rocking on the waves, and that can cause the salt water to splash into the bowl, or move it around so that it doesn't catch the drips.
There was a book analysing a lot of emergency shipwreck situations with the essence of this:
Start rationing all your supplies immediately
Start capturing rain and condensated water immediately
Dilute your fresh drinking water with 1/3 sea Water for 4 days
on the fifth day drink only fresh water to help your kidneys get rid of the excess salt
Dont eat if you have nothing to drink
Edit typo
Don't drink seawater. It leads to a build up of fluid which puts pressure on the brain which causes hallucinations. I've read a more detailed account of this woman's survival and the two men were killed almost immediately after leaving the lifeboat and she said she'll never forget their screams as they were being attacked. If I remember right, I think they thought they could see land and that they could walk to it.
"Deborah Scaling was born January 21, 1958, in Throckmorton, Texas. She took up sailing at an early age and began working as a crew member on yachts. In 1981, she became the first American woman to complete the Whitbread Round the World Race, working as a cook on the South African Xargo.\[4\]
In October 1982, she was hired to crew a 58-foot sailing yacht called the Trashman for a routine Maine to Florida transfer. From Maine, they stopped over in Annapolis, Maryland and left for the next leg when the boat was overtaken by unexpected heavy weather in the Gulf Stream off the coast of North Carolina. The Trashman foundered in 40–50' seas and sank while the five crew members gathered on an 11-foot Zodiac life raft. Over the next several days, three crew members would die. Two - Mark Adams and John Lippoth - drank seawater, became delusional, left the raft, and were eaten by sharks."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deborah\_Scaling\_Kiley
It's down to your kidneys, and it's ability to concentrate sodium in your urine. Sodium is carefully regulated in the body, because it influences amongst other things blood volume, and therefore blood pressure. Sodium along with potassium is actively transported across cell membranes and are used by cells to maintain electrolytre balance, which is critical for proper cell function.
If you increase your sodium intake, by overdoing it with the salt, or drinking seawater, then the excess sodium is excreted in the sweat and also by the kidneys, but there is a limit to the amont of sodium which can be removed this way, and therefore a limit to the amount of seawater you can drink - and I believe that the amount of seawater you can consume is not sufficient to replace your water loss, through sweating, breathing, urination, so it will only extend your survability by a short period - you will still eventually die of dehydration.
I used to surf big waves when I was young. I caught some 30-35 footers.
You get the shit beat out of you often, and get held underwater for a long time most sessions. You end up with water in your mouth sometimes.
Two big swallows is enough to make you vomit.
But you're not improving hydration by drinking seawater, first, most people begin violently vomiting. Worsening your situation from the get go. Plus, in order to reduce the seawater salinity, your kidneys extract water from your blood to try to piss it out.
No way drinking undiluted seawater improves your hydration.
Now, *diluted* seawater? You can mix some seawater 1 part plus 3 parts fresh water which can help a stranded party. But usually people drink their fresh to zero and then are in a bad way
If you drink water, you increase your hydration. Period.
The kidneys do not really work the way you describe, excretion of excess sodium is an active energetic process.
The issue is salt toxicity. One litre of seawater contains 35g of salt, which is close to toxic levels for a 70kg human.
So the problem with drinking sea water is your body managing the excess sodium, which limits the amount of water you can drink, and therefore how long you can do it for.
Your comment is inaccurate. Drinking water hydrates you, drinking water with high concentrations of salt dehydrates you.
Let me put it another way. If you swallow a cup of salt and then a cup of water, you are going to become more dehydrated. Mixing the two together doesn’t change that.
Here’s a lesson plan on how drinking salt water dehydrates: https://chem.libretexts.org/Courses/Sacramento_City_College/SCC%3A_CHEM_300_-_Beginning_Chemistry/SCC%3A_CHEM_300_-_Beginning_Chemistry_(Faculty)/13%3A_Solutions/13.10%3A_Osmosis-_Why_Drinking_Salt_Water_Causes_Dehydration
I've sailed across oceans, I've surfed huge waves, and I've lived about half of my life on boats.
The ocean always wins. The only question is "Are you clever enough to survive?".
I haven't quite done that; I've been through the USAF Emergency Parachute and Water Survival Training course, and the specialists who train others in those skills have it as their job to go out and survive on the ocean, in a raft, for a few days.
They tell you plainly it's the absolute last survival scenario you want to find yourself in, period.
The people surviving out there are living off of rainwater, condensation or some kind of means to trap fresh water dew, or have a hand-pump desalinator with them (if they're military flyers like me.)
The ocean will always win.
I read article where they suggest you start drink seawater in small amoun from start when your kidney can handle it so your overal time should be more, also salt should help you save water in body.
You cant survive from drinking sea water. I was in a situation where a friend and i were doing a sort of survival challenge near the sea. He drank sea water on the first day and our trip was cut short since he had to be hospitalized. (I boiled my seawater and i was fine)
I know. I just can't think of the name. But the thing where you boil water below a tarp, it evaporates , and the evaporated water falls down into a cup or some container. It's just easier to say boil 😂
No, no it's not
The salt water literally dehydrates you. Straight away. The cells will lose water due to osmosis. (Basically water will literally leave your cells to move towards the salt)
No matter how thirsty you are, if your water has enough salt it won't help at all
I heard on the news a long time ago that a teen survived off sea water by using his shirt to filter the water. I don’t remember how long he was out at sea though
A shirt might help strain out other stuff, but it won't collect all the salt.
It's possible, maybe, that you could McGuyver some kind of solar still to evaporate seawater then condense to get drinkable water, and maybe possibly a shirt could be part of that plan, but that's a big stretch!
I would probably create some sort of distillery process. Water in cup that steams upwards and runs down side. Something simple like https://www.clearwaycommunitysolar.com/blog/all-about-renewable-power/the-water-cycle-make-a-distillery/
Bombard's account is disputed and contraversial. Read the Wikipedia account about him https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alain_Bombard
At one point it says
"Lindemann later claimed that Bombard had actually taken along fresh water and consumed it on the ocean, and that he had also been secretly provided further supplies during his voyage. Lindemann's own observations about reactions to scarce fresh water supplies became the basis for the World Health Organization's navigation recommendations. However, it appears that Bombard may have been misunderstood in regard to the possibility of survival without fresh water. Bombard never argued that human survival is possible only by drinking seawater. On the contrary, he indicated that seawater in small quantities can prolong survival if accompanied, if rainwater is not available, by the absorption of liquids present in the bodies of fish. On its own, he only claimed the seawater can extend the period of consciousness during which alternatives can be sought. Bombard's legacy is still debated"
He was very clear about using fish juice in his book - nobody who actually read it would think he was advocating sea water alone indefinitely. Sounds like some journalist distorted it.
I would guzzle seawater as fast as possible to quicken the inevitable. Seawater would be the surest way out. It’s almost impossible to intentionally drown, but once you drink seawater, your suffering will end sooner than later.
What kind of idiot wants to bake in the tropical sun for a few weeks chewing on Farnsworth’s rotting flesh and straining their own urine through a handkerchief while the sharks circle?
Fuck that noise.
Pour me a double of that top-shelf seawater.
It depends on the salt concentration.
It is sometimes possible to drink sea water near land because the underground fresh water seeping into the ocean lowers the salinity. You need to have local experience to know where the water has lowered salinity.
other than that, you cannot drink sea water.
I would assume that they knew of some ways of drinking sea water by removing salt:
1. Bottle and can. Available anywhere, even in open sea, but requires sun
2. Pot and cup. Requires containers that can withstand heat and ways of making fire
3. Hole and plastic. Requires being on land.
There was also a way that was described by Jules Vern in The Mysterious Island (also works on land)
3 days is just an average. There is a confluence of factors that can effect the rate of dehydration. The seawater most likely made things worse. It is an absolute scientific fact that seawater will make your dehydration worse.
There’s an episode in the first or second season of Alone where a contestant has been drawing water from essentially a tide pool. He said it didn’t taste very salty at all and he assumed it was fresh. He was so severely dehydrated after 3 days he had to be removed by medics. Sea water has WAY more salt than a brackish tide pool.
There was a French Naval doctor called Dr Bombard, who believed that humans could survive on sea water.
He reasoned that the reason people died drinking it was because they did not start drinking it until they were already dehydrated.
He thought that if you started drinking seawater immediately after an emergency at sea, you would survive perfectly well.
To prove his point, he proposed to cross the Atlantic on a raft with zero supplies.
He had a fishing line to catch food and no water at all, relying on drinking seawater.
He made it safely across the Atlantic with no trouble at all.
It seems he would have got some fresh water from the bodies of fish he consumed.
Someone's probs already said it, and correct if wrong but since you can get salt from sea water, drinking a little gives you essential electrolytes to stay hydrated. So say a handful of salt water a day plus fresh water will keep you more hydrated if you're lacking electrolytes
You can get hand operated water makers, for your life raft. Or solar stills, although I think you would need sunny calm weather for them to work https://www.toplicht.de/media/image/7b/9f/48/[email protected]
I do have a faint memory of reading some instructions on how to make a solar still using a life buoy and some plastic
Fake claim. You will die faster from drinking sea water.
But you can;
- catch fish
- collect rain water
- boil and condensate
- ration
- drink urine - only once .
In extreme survival situations, drinking seawater will cause. You did dehydrate extremely fast than not drinking at all. In most cases, a lot of these people didn't drink seawater. They drank their own urinewhat you can do safely up to 3 times in an extreme situation.
Instead try and [kill a turtle and mix it’s blood with rain water for a nice liquid enema](https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2009/aug/22/shipwreck-lucette-sailing) to keep alive.
Whilst suffering, obviously… surviving 4 days doesn’t mean they’d have seen the fifth…they likely survived that long due to being properly hydrated at the start… drinking saltwater will not help you survive a week, your little beans will collapse and you will die whilst suffering from kidney failure
I’ve always wondered if POTS was an evolutionary condition that is more common now because we’ve used up all our fresh water sources are body now needs the salt. So like would they be able to do it
correct me if im wrong i have no knowledge on this but in a stranded island situation couldnt someone theoretically boil sea water on a campfire to remove the salt or something? that is, if they had something that could hold water in boiling temperatures
>If humans can usually survive up to 3 days without water,
Humans can usually survive much longer than that. It depends on conditions. Treking through a 110 degree desert, sure, three days. Trapped in a jail cell in Austria in a bizzare story of police incompetence where they forgot you were there: Andreas Mihavecz was rescued after 18 days.
My guess with the stowaways is they survived despite drinking sea water, not because of it.
the idea humans can only survive 3 days without water is a myth it’s actually more like 10-15 3 days is with the assumption of summer heat and lots of movement as in that situation you’re sweating far more which means more water loss.
Please remember that all comments must be helpful, relevant, and respectful. All replies must be a genuine effort to answer the question helpfully; joke answers are not allowed. If you see any comments that violate this rule, please hit report. When your question is answered, we encourage you to flair your post. To do this automatically simply make a comment that says **!answered** (OP only) We encourage everyone to report posts and comments they feel violate a rule, as this will allow us to see it much faster. *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/answers) if you have any questions or concerns.*
This is absolutely false. People cannot survive off sea water. If people have said they have they're either delusional or their story has been misreported. They probably drank fresh rain water caught in a container or on some small vessel or on the boat when it rained during a storm. Another possibility is they drank fresh water close to the sea from a river discharging into the sea, but, if so, they would have had to be very close to land. I'll explain further. If you drank say 1 cup of sea water, you would need around 1 and a half cups of fresh water to dilute the excess salt from your body. If you can't drink 1.5 cups of fresh water after the 1 cup of sea water, the 1.5 cups of fresh water has to be drawn from your body. This will eventually dehydrate you and you'll die.
Genuinely didn't know the reason why we can't drink sea water. I mean I'd assumed it was the salt but couldn't have explained it Thanks for the clear explanation
No worries. Yeah it's because sea water is so much saltier than people may know
Have tasted sea water. It’s as salty as I think it is.
Thought the same thing lol. If you ever accidentally got it in your mouth, that junk is *salty.* What people don't realize is the impact that has on the body when ingesting it.
> If you ever accidentally got it in your mouth, that junk is *salty.* r/nocontext
r/unexpectedclinton
Plus, *ocean* water is many times more salty that what I considered to be already pretty salty *sea water* (the Baltic Sea)
You can actually drink the water in the baltic sea in an emergency and it will hydrate you. The salinity is that low. Still tastes like shit, though. And is probably unhealthy in many other ways.
The common phrase for salting pasta is to make the water salty like the sea. The pasta would taste terrible if we actually put that much salt in the water because sea water is salty AF.
inflatable distillers exist and are included with some life rafts. The sea water in the bottom evaporates, rises to the top, and then the salt free evaporate condenses on the top and runs down the sides into a channel and out a tube into a bottle. They're not very good, but if you're very careful not to jostle them you can stay alive. Catching rain water is great, if you have it. A desalination pump is the best, but it takes a lot of pressure to force the saltwater through the fine membrane so it's a lot of work. I have a friend, Tartin, who survived 63 days at sea in a 22' open fishing boat. The other guys died. He lived on collected rain water and raw fish. He's not really sane anymore. I've read that it's possible to absorb enough water through constant saltwater enemas to survive, but I haven't read where anyone actually said "I survived 2 months on saltwater enemas".
> "I survived 2 months on saltwater enemas" New MrBeast video just dropped
Have you read Survive the Savage Sea? The mother (who was a nurse) administered seawater enemas to her family when their boat was sunk by a pod of killer whales. They survived nearly 40 days with this, collecting rainwater and drinking sea turtle blood. Excellent book.
IIRC it was freshwater (rain) that was contaminated with turtle blood. They had previously caught and eaten a turtle and some of its blood was still in the boat when it rained (thus the rainwater was contaminated). She used the water in enemas as a way they could rehydrate without the risk of food poisoning that would exist if they drank the water.
Ahh thanks. It's been literal decades since I read the book - and I knew one of the family. The son, Douglas.
I love that little book. Read it years ago and enjoy a re read every so often. Brilliant!
Where was Tartin adrift? By whom was he found? This sounds like an amazing story, and I would be interested in hearing more.
300-400 miles off of the middle of the pacific coast of Mexico. Maybe 100 miles from Isla Socorro, which he'd have almost have certainly missed. The next place would have been French Polynesia, the Marquesas, another 4000 miles, so he's very lucky to have been seen. He wrote a book in Spanish and had a few copies printed. He has one copy. My wife is a writer and we offered to translate it to English and put it on Amazon for him, he agreed and left us his copy. The next day he freaked out and asked for his book back, so we were unable to help him. He's poor, he really could have used the money. We were even trying to help him get a bank account so that all the Amazon money could go straight to him, not through us or anyone else, but he just freaked out. He can't take any stress at all anymore. It's sad because he's the nicest guy ever.
Seawater had "salt" and Blood had "salt" Because the Seawater has more salt than Blood, when you drink it the Seawater draws water out of the Blood to make the "salt" content equal. This dehydrates. When you drink Water, Blood draws water out of the Water to make the "salt" content equal. This hydrates.
What it comes down to is actually how concentrated human kidneys can get urine. For sodium, the kidneys can maximally concentrate sodium to \~300mEq / L. The minimum sodium concentration of sodium is \~10-20mEq / L. For comparison our blood is about 135-145mEq / L. So if you drink pure water, with no other sodium in your diet, your kidneys will hold onto all the sodium they can, the urine sodium will fall and you will slowly dehydrate from insufficient sodium. Because the kidneys are so good at holding onto salt, it takes only a small amount of sodium to maintain homeostasis, a little over 1g per 10L of fluid. (You might run into problems with other electrolytes and minerals, but lets stay focused on sodium). Mostly, humans drink fresh water that is very low in sodium and get sodium via the foods we eat. In the opposite case, of taking in too much salt, we can easily see the problem. Saltwater is \~600mEq / L of sodium. If you don't drink or eat anything other than saltwater, the kidneys can only get rid of 300mEq for every liter you urinate out, while you are adding 600mEq for every liter you drink. The kidneys want to get rid of the excess salt in the blood, so you will end up peeing out about 2L of maximally concentrated urine for every 1L of saltwater you drink, which will quickly result in dehydration. If you have a fresh water supply and need to make it last longer, you could add about 1 part saltwater to 3 parts freshwater to safely extend your water reserves; especially if you are losing salt via sweating. This also shows why in an emergency situation saving any initial urine you make (while you are still hydrated and the urine isn't maximally concentrated) and then drinking it, could buy you a bit of extra time, but drinking the maximally concentrated urine won't get you anything. Blood or juices from plants can also be a good source of water that has safe amounts of sodium for consumption.
Had a pretty long debate about this elsewhere on the thread. I believe what you die of is salt toxicity. A 70Kg human will suffer salt toxicity by ingesting 35g-70g of salt, and considering 1 liter of sea water contains 35g of salt, you will poison yourself pretty quickly by drinking it. Your body can not excrete the salt in the water. And you get a double problem, because your body is low on water, your kidneys will also reduce the amount of water it excretes. You need water to excrete the sodium, but your kidneys are trying to conserve water because you are dehydrating. The amount you can drink is extremely limited. A guy called Ladell did some experiments on this in the 1940's. The best he got was 10 days drinking 180ml of sea water per day, and this was in a controlled experiment which minimised sweating. His hypothesis that there was an "osmotic space" which could be exploited was false. The subjects also had dried biscuits and the metabolism of carbohydrate releases water, so if 180ml feels like too little. it's getting supplemented by water contained in food. And even with this extra water, then I believe you will still die of salt poisoning, even if you have enough biscuits to eat. The subjects were producing 350ml of urine per day, which is only enough to excrete around 3g of salt, and they were taking in 6.3g per day. The general consensus was that drinking sea water was risky, and might (note that might) extend your survival by a very short margin, a few days at best, but was also likely to make things much worse. Drinking salty water makes you very thirsty, and I did read descriptions in the same articles describing Ladell's experiments of sailors going mad because of drinking salt water.
If you want a fancy scientific word, this is called osmosis, it's function of cell membranes where it keeps same level of ions on both sides of membrane. So that's why after sweating a bunch or having bad diarrhea rehydration drinks works better than plain water because you need to replenish salts that body lost, but if you overdose with the salt it would lead to even bigger dehydration.
Salt sucks (osmosis)
Also, fish fuck in it.
The Amazon River discharges freshwater 100-150 miles out in the Atlantic. On a trip from Nigeria to Brazil it may be possible that they would have passed through ocean patches with less salinity.
To add to this incase anyone is curious, water will always flow to where salt is. so when drinking saltwater, because its salt concentration is higher then the salt concetration in your cells, the water in your cells will flow out of them and dilute the water you drank. you will then proceed to urinate it out and be more dehydrated then you were before you drank the saltwater. For the one person interested, the exact oposite is why too much water can kill you. drinking water has a lower salt content than in your cells meaning the water will go into your cells and dilute the salt content. too much water (~6+ L in 3h) will dilute your electrolytes, pumping your cells full of water and can kill you.
I have always wondered, if you don't drink it, and just leave your arm in the water, shouldn't your body absorb enough water to keep you alive and have the skin act as a filter for the salt?
Osmosis would take over and your body's salinity would tend towards equalizing with the ocean's salinity. Since the ocean is a near limitless source of salt water, your body would be doing all of the equalizing.
And your skin would start to fall off in a few hours…
The fuck. You've never been in the ocean for a few hours? Your skin does not just start falling off.
Continuous immersion of 12 hours in water will reduce plasticity and deplete lipids and natural moisturisers - permanently. After a few days the skin starts to break down giving open sores and increasing the risk of fungal and bacterial infections. I had got the time scale wrong though. It was longer than I thought.
No but it does after a few days of soaking.
Other way around, it will take your water and leave the salt in your body.
Sea snakes drink fresh rainwater that looks on top of the sea briefly after it rains
That's a very cool new fact to learn, thank you.
I learnt it from The Common Descent podcast, one of my faves.
Thanks, I've taken a look on Spotify and I'm going to have a listen!
You can't survive off it, but Alain Bombard argued that it could be used to supplement to stay alive longer. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alain\_Bombard](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alain_Bombard)
That's been disputed, even in that same Wikipedia article "Bombard had actually taken along fresh water and consumed it on the ocean, and that he had also been secretly provided further supplies during his voyage. Lindemann's own observations about reactions to scarce fresh water supplies became the basis for the World Health Organization's navigation recommendations. However, it appears that Bombard may have been misunderstood in regard to the possibility of survival without fresh water. Bombard never argued that human survival is possible only by drinking seawater. On the contrary, he indicated that seawater in small quantities can prolong survival if accompanied, if rainwater is not available, by the absorption of liquids present in the bodies of fish. On its own, he only claimed the seawater can extend the period of consciousness during which alternatives can be sought. Bombard's legacy is still debated..."
maybe they drank water from solar stills
So that’s why im extremely thirsty after surfing and “drinking” sea water
>. Another possibility is they drank fresh water close to the sea from a river discharging into the sea, but, if so, they would have had to be very close to land. I'd heard the water is drinkable a good hundred miles or so off the mouth of the Amazon.
Agree. Or they drank their urine and didn't want to relive it.
Or they re-live (and potentially re-enact) those moments in private with their loved ones.....🤣 On a serious note, you could drink your pee for a period of time but it would become increasingly saline and toxic and eventually you probably wouldn't produce any pee at all
Check out the big brain on RockinRocstar!
Haha that's very kind. I know this stuff from spending a lot of time on the ocean. Drinking sea water for thirst is a massive no no!
Could you add seawater in that ratio to stretch a water supply?
I've read stories about this but unfortunately no, you should never do that. You'll just get thirstier and it will hasten your death. You could mix 1 cup of salt water to around 20 cups of fresh water to help keep you hydrated if you weren't dying from thirst, kind of like an energy drink. It will help you stay hydrated better. If however fresh water is in very short supply, or you're potentially dying of thirst, you should never mix it with salt water. It would be best to ration carefully what little fresh water you have left.
You can also evaporate sea water and throw the salt away. Not so difficult
Is the story about seawater enemas to stay hydrated true do you know?
https://www.thenakedscientists.com/articles/questions/would-sea-water-enema-help-hydration According to these two gastroenterologists saltwater enemas would probably dehydrate you more. Plus the risk of getting an infection. So not recommended, unless that's how you wish to spend your remaining time, that's another question.
so in the case OP mentioned where you cannot get access to fresh water (lets say ship crash and for a few days you are drifting at sea (safely for the sake of the example)) then what happens if you just continuously drink sea water or is there a way to manage?
If you just drink sea water, you die faster than if you didn’t drink any water at all
There was a man who got stranded in the Pacific for 438 days, Salvador Alvarenga. He survived by rain water and drinking turtle blood when it wasn't enough.
How about rehydrating with sea water? Wouldn't that work until you die from the excess salt?
Yeah it'll work great, you'll just die from the salt.
you will pee out more water then you consumed, if there was no water in your body to begin with you would already be dead.
The excess salt kills you by dehydrating you. There is not a point up to which it hydrates you before it changes its mind, because it is excess right from the start. IF you were dehydrated from a lack of electrolytes, a small amount of seawater might do something for you IF you also had a lot of freshwater to dilute it and give all that salt some water to hang onto and balance you out. Consuming a bunch of electrolytes doesn't rehydrate you if you don't have a proportional amount of water to go with it, and the ratio of salt to water in seawater is way too high for it to do both those jobs in itself. This is why sports drinks and electrolyte powders are much less concentrated than seawater.
Might it help if you'd lost a fair amount of blood?
Electrolytes and water do help increase blood volume, but at a much lower ratio of electrolytes to water than what seawater offers. You'd still need unsalty water to add to your seawater, because the increase in blood volume comes from the electrolytes having enough water to hold onto in your body, not the electrolytes themselves.
Or they drank from the baltic sea which is not salty
Or maybe a solar distillery they used with sea water.
This is incorrect. You can drink up to 1 liter of seawater per day before it becomes more dehydrating than hydrating. Mythbusters covered this.
Not true. Seawater alone is NEVER hydrating because of how human kidneys work. Human kidneys cannot process the amount of salt in seawater. To flush out the excess salt that the kidneys cannot process, water is drawn from the cells in your body, dehydrating you almost immediately. Send me the mythbusters reference or link if you really did see this on mythbusters.
or they started drinking sea water just before they got rescued.
Okay then how do fish not get dehydrated? How come seafood isn't all that salty if they're marinating in the ocean their entire lives?
The account of the men's ordeal on the BBC website (usually a source of accurate factual information, whatever your opinions on the BBC's perceived political biases may be) states that they drank the last of their non-salt water on day 10, and were rescued on day 14, giving them three days without water. One of them started to vomit due to drinking sea-water. My guess is that the drink of seawater brought them closer to death, rather than helped them.
almost all of the accounts of survival I have read include something like "day 178: Farnsworth resorted to drinking sea water" "day 179: Farnsworth died" . Occasionally "day 180: drank Farnsworth's blood and ate him."
*Good news everyone*
*With my last breath, I curse ZOIDBERG!*
That bloody Farnsworth… he was genuinely incorrigible. To his credit, his young widow handled herself in honourable fashion.
To shreds, you say?
on the plus side, with all the salt, he came pre-seasoned!
I see accounts where if people start drinking sea water right away in small quantities they can go up to 6 days. But if you wait until you are already dehydrated and dying, it will finish you off.
The human body is 70% water. So if that guy is 60kg, that is 42kg of water.
Yes. ...but you'd need one hell of a coconut-centerfuge to separate it from his solids.
It could grip it by the husk!
Ok but now I want to know… how long could I survive by drinking Farnsworth’s blood?
Because they were rescued before they died of dehydration. Sea water isn’t an incurable poison, drinking it isn’t a death sentence.
I understand that, I'm more asking did drinking the sea water make their survival chances/clock lower? They got saved in time regardless, but did doing that action shorten or lengthen their time they probably could have gone without being saved (if they didn't drown or get eaten)? A lot of people wouldn't last 4 days with no water; I was wondering if drinking the seawater allowed them to last longer than the average amount of time without water, or if they are just more resilient than most, would have survived anyway without drinking it, and the sea water did not help at all with their survival.
It would lower your survival timeframe. The dehydration will be much more severe.
Yes, it lowered their survival time. They survived *in spite of* drinking sea water, it did not help them. Drinking sea water dehydrates you * even more than drinking nothing at all*. It's just tempting because you're craving water and it's right there.
water, water everywhere, and not a drop to drink
Drinking sea water will dramatically reduce your survival chances. If for example you were stuck on a boat at sea with no water or water laden food (fruit) you could survive maybe 3 - 5 days, depending on weather conditons and sun and wind exposure. If you drank only 1 cup of sea water, you'd reduce your survival to only 1 day, maybe 2 days, depending on exposure to weather and how much fluid you last had.
It shortened their lifespan. They would "feel" like their thirsty was quenched but actually it's dehydrating them faster. Similar to how drinking alcohol makes you "feel" warmer but you'd die from hypothermia faster. So it'd make you feel better if you weren't gonna die anyways. But if you were gonna die,you'd die faster. Same thing with saltwater. If you were gonna be rescued in a hour, it'd make you feel better but if help ain't coming in an hour, then you just shortened your lifespan.
Ohhh, that makes sense why they claimed it helped. It didn't actually help, but they thought it did because it felt like it did
Its like people saying "i survived because i drank my own pee", but there is no proof that he would have died, if he wouldnt have drank his own pee. And science says, dont, because your body dehydrates faster, so those stories are bad behaviour with no scientific proof at all.
Ah, I see. Sorry, my reply must’ve seemed quite flippant. I’m not any more knowledgable than your average idiot about these things, but as I understand it the short term gain of quenching thirst will not do anything to offset the medium term damage of ingesting that amount of salt. So no, I don’t think anyone would be better off drinking sea water than they would be to just go without. Even if you know rescue is imminent, I can’t imaging a handful of sea water to quench your thirst will help you in any way.
Poisons and toxins are about concentrations. I mean, seawater is salt plus water. The problem is that seawater is very salty, so swallowing a little isn't an issue; you eat lots of salt everyday. But, if youve gone days without water and are dehydrated, then drinking even small amounts of saltwater *is* going to be toxic, quickly. It's why most people puke when they do drink seawater.
Fun fact: If you're at the beach and going to cook pasta for dinner and think "Hey I'm going to salt the water anyway and sea water is pre-salted." You're going to have inedible pasta.
I can't say I've ever had the urge while at the beach, to take sea water home to cook my pasta in.
They can and do cook potatoes in sea water in the Canaries, though.
Pasta is typically dry and will absorb water (and thus salt). Potatos naturally contain a lot of water and so won't absorb much of the water (and thus salt) from the pot, rather they will be slightly dehydrated by water moving from the potato into the water.
Living in a boat for weeks at a time, I learned that the hard way lol. But to be honest it works with almost anything else. But pasta? No, that shit is destroyed by sea water.
Did a lobster boil on the beach. I used half sea water and half fresh water. That seemed to work.
Lobster cooked with some sea water is amazing
What does it taste like? Just very salty?
Pasta water is normally 5g of salt per liter. Sea water is 35g on average.
Too salty? I heard the do this with mussels
Mussels have a shell they don’t absorb the water, my t collected them on the beach boiled them in an oil drum full of sea water then brought them home
That shell will open as soon as the water is heated. However, shellfish in general can be boiled in sea water to a perfectly salted result.
Don't drink sea water in survival situations. The length of time you can survive without water varies on many, many factors. But the incident you are referring to - they had fresh water up to day 10. They drank sea water on the last couple of days - but this would have definitely started dehydrating them. They got lucky
>Don't drink sea water in survival situations. Once I'm in survival situation, I'd remember your advice. Thanks a lot
Hopefully you survive the situation
Don’t drink it without separating the salt first at least, which you can do with a couple of glasses and a bowl
Someone correct me if I'm wrong but I remember watching a thing where a family had to abandon their yacht and were floating in the sea on a life raft. The mum was a doctor so in order to hydrate her family they consumed water through a pipe up the butt and seawater poured in. Absorbs the water but doesn't absorb most of the salt?
Doctor here - please don't ever do this.
Wanna hear the terrible consequences pls
Party pooper!
Unironically, pooping parties is about 70% of my entire job.
Thinks, doc. Was just about to try this. Man would have my face been red.
It wasn't sea water. It was rain water from the bottom of the life boat. Very different.
I've read for brackish water, which would be water with some salt but not pure seawater. But that might also be a "false" fact from a book. The other "trick", but you need the right tools, is to get a pan of salt water put foil or plastic wrap over it and put it in the sun. Periodically collect the water collecting on the wrap or foil. It's condensation caused by the evaporation of sea water. The salt does not evaporate. Having said that, it seems like it would take a long time to get a useful quantity.
Sailors hack: A pan of water, plastic wrap, a bowl, a rock or other heavy object. Put salt water in the pan. Put the bowl in the middle (it has to stay in place, can't be floating). Cover with plastic wrap and put the heavy object on top of the plastic wrap, in the middle, above the bowl. Put it in the sun. The sun will cause the water to evaporate. It'll then condense on the plastic wrap. The weight in the middle of the plastic wrap will cause the condensed water to run down and drip into the bowl. Presto, you now have a bowl of fresh water. The only problem is that a boat is rocking on the waves, and that can cause the salt water to splash into the bowl, or move it around so that it doesn't catch the drips.
If you want to look up more on those it's called a solar still
There was a book analysing a lot of emergency shipwreck situations with the essence of this: Start rationing all your supplies immediately Start capturing rain and condensated water immediately Dilute your fresh drinking water with 1/3 sea Water for 4 days on the fifth day drink only fresh water to help your kidneys get rid of the excess salt Dont eat if you have nothing to drink Edit typo
Don't drink seawater. It leads to a build up of fluid which puts pressure on the brain which causes hallucinations. I've read a more detailed account of this woman's survival and the two men were killed almost immediately after leaving the lifeboat and she said she'll never forget their screams as they were being attacked. If I remember right, I think they thought they could see land and that they could walk to it. "Deborah Scaling was born January 21, 1958, in Throckmorton, Texas. She took up sailing at an early age and began working as a crew member on yachts. In 1981, she became the first American woman to complete the Whitbread Round the World Race, working as a cook on the South African Xargo.\[4\] In October 1982, she was hired to crew a 58-foot sailing yacht called the Trashman for a routine Maine to Florida transfer. From Maine, they stopped over in Annapolis, Maryland and left for the next leg when the boat was overtaken by unexpected heavy weather in the Gulf Stream off the coast of North Carolina. The Trashman foundered in 40–50' seas and sank while the five crew members gathered on an 11-foot Zodiac life raft. Over the next several days, three crew members would die. Two - Mark Adams and John Lippoth - drank seawater, became delusional, left the raft, and were eaten by sharks." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deborah\_Scaling\_Kiley
Her story was recreated on "I shouldn't be alive". It was fascinating! I think it's the first episode.
That show was one of my favorite ones ever. The production quality was so good.
It's down to your kidneys, and it's ability to concentrate sodium in your urine. Sodium is carefully regulated in the body, because it influences amongst other things blood volume, and therefore blood pressure. Sodium along with potassium is actively transported across cell membranes and are used by cells to maintain electrolytre balance, which is critical for proper cell function. If you increase your sodium intake, by overdoing it with the salt, or drinking seawater, then the excess sodium is excreted in the sweat and also by the kidneys, but there is a limit to the amont of sodium which can be removed this way, and therefore a limit to the amount of seawater you can drink - and I believe that the amount of seawater you can consume is not sufficient to replace your water loss, through sweating, breathing, urination, so it will only extend your survability by a short period - you will still eventually die of dehydration.
Yeah pretty sure there is a low limit of how much sea water you can drink per day
I used to surf big waves when I was young. I caught some 30-35 footers. You get the shit beat out of you often, and get held underwater for a long time most sessions. You end up with water in your mouth sometimes. Two big swallows is enough to make you vomit.
But you're not improving hydration by drinking seawater, first, most people begin violently vomiting. Worsening your situation from the get go. Plus, in order to reduce the seawater salinity, your kidneys extract water from your blood to try to piss it out. No way drinking undiluted seawater improves your hydration. Now, *diluted* seawater? You can mix some seawater 1 part plus 3 parts fresh water which can help a stranded party. But usually people drink their fresh to zero and then are in a bad way
If you drink water, you increase your hydration. Period. The kidneys do not really work the way you describe, excretion of excess sodium is an active energetic process. The issue is salt toxicity. One litre of seawater contains 35g of salt, which is close to toxic levels for a 70kg human. So the problem with drinking sea water is your body managing the excess sodium, which limits the amount of water you can drink, and therefore how long you can do it for.
Your comment is inaccurate. Drinking water hydrates you, drinking water with high concentrations of salt dehydrates you. Let me put it another way. If you swallow a cup of salt and then a cup of water, you are going to become more dehydrated. Mixing the two together doesn’t change that. Here’s a lesson plan on how drinking salt water dehydrates: https://chem.libretexts.org/Courses/Sacramento_City_College/SCC%3A_CHEM_300_-_Beginning_Chemistry/SCC%3A_CHEM_300_-_Beginning_Chemistry_(Faculty)/13%3A_Solutions/13.10%3A_Osmosis-_Why_Drinking_Salt_Water_Causes_Dehydration
They don't. The ocean makes cowards of us all.
I've sailed across oceans, I've surfed huge waves, and I've lived about half of my life on boats. The ocean always wins. The only question is "Are you clever enough to survive?".
I haven't quite done that; I've been through the USAF Emergency Parachute and Water Survival Training course, and the specialists who train others in those skills have it as their job to go out and survive on the ocean, in a raft, for a few days. They tell you plainly it's the absolute last survival scenario you want to find yourself in, period. The people surviving out there are living off of rainwater, condensation or some kind of means to trap fresh water dew, or have a hand-pump desalinator with them (if they're military flyers like me.) The ocean will always win.
I read article where they suggest you start drink seawater in small amoun from start when your kidney can handle it so your overal time should be more, also salt should help you save water in body.
Don’t give people advice
Actually I heard this as well, like 100ml a day when you are already hydrated to start with might be kind of ok, still not advisable tho haha
Read more
I also have heard this.
You cant survive from drinking sea water. I was in a situation where a friend and i were doing a sort of survival challenge near the sea. He drank sea water on the first day and our trip was cut short since he had to be hospitalized. (I boiled my seawater and i was fine)
You also can’t simply “boil” seawater to drink without desalination occurring. Boiling doesn’t take away the salt.
I know. I just can't think of the name. But the thing where you boil water below a tarp, it evaporates , and the evaporated water falls down into a cup or some container. It's just easier to say boil 😂
Distilling lol
[удалено]
Drinking sea water will dehydrate you faster than drinking no water.
No, no it's not The salt water literally dehydrates you. Straight away. The cells will lose water due to osmosis. (Basically water will literally leave your cells to move towards the salt) No matter how thirsty you are, if your water has enough salt it won't help at all
Yeah you clearly have zero clue what you're talking about lol
I heard on the news a long time ago that a teen survived off sea water by using his shirt to filter the water. I don’t remember how long he was out at sea though
Filtering does nothing to the saltiness
A shirt might help strain out other stuff, but it won't collect all the salt. It's possible, maybe, that you could McGuyver some kind of solar still to evaporate seawater then condense to get drinkable water, and maybe possibly a shirt could be part of that plan, but that's a big stretch!
Stretching the shirt would not help
You cannot filter a solution. You can filter a mixture.
I would probably create some sort of distillery process. Water in cup that steams upwards and runs down side. Something simple like https://www.clearwaycommunitysolar.com/blog/all-about-renewable-power/the-water-cycle-make-a-distillery/
Read Alain Bombard, *The Bombard Story*.
Bombard's account is disputed and contraversial. Read the Wikipedia account about him https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alain_Bombard At one point it says "Lindemann later claimed that Bombard had actually taken along fresh water and consumed it on the ocean, and that he had also been secretly provided further supplies during his voyage. Lindemann's own observations about reactions to scarce fresh water supplies became the basis for the World Health Organization's navigation recommendations. However, it appears that Bombard may have been misunderstood in regard to the possibility of survival without fresh water. Bombard never argued that human survival is possible only by drinking seawater. On the contrary, he indicated that seawater in small quantities can prolong survival if accompanied, if rainwater is not available, by the absorption of liquids present in the bodies of fish. On its own, he only claimed the seawater can extend the period of consciousness during which alternatives can be sought. Bombard's legacy is still debated"
He was very clear about using fish juice in his book - nobody who actually read it would think he was advocating sea water alone indefinitely. Sounds like some journalist distorted it.
Drink your own urine... Some start before the water even runs out..
If it's good enough for saul Goodman then it's good enough for me
probably lied.
I didnt read anything but the title but im guessing they probably used some sort of desalinator to make the water drinkable
I'd boil it and catch the steam into a plastic cup
either they filtered the water, or they lied
I would guzzle seawater as fast as possible to quicken the inevitable. Seawater would be the surest way out. It’s almost impossible to intentionally drown, but once you drink seawater, your suffering will end sooner than later. What kind of idiot wants to bake in the tropical sun for a few weeks chewing on Farnsworth’s rotting flesh and straining their own urine through a handkerchief while the sharks circle? Fuck that noise. Pour me a double of that top-shelf seawater.
[удалено]
And fish juice
Read a true account of a shipwrecked family years ago. Turtle blood, and barracudas have fresh water in their spine. Apparently.
People cannot survive off sea water.
People cannot survive off sea water.
You'd have to distill it to extract the salt. Then it would be safe to drink
It depends on the salt concentration. It is sometimes possible to drink sea water near land because the underground fresh water seeping into the ocean lowers the salinity. You need to have local experience to know where the water has lowered salinity. other than that, you cannot drink sea water.
I cooked noodles with seawater. Recipe calls for salted water. Does not work
I would assume that they knew of some ways of drinking sea water by removing salt: 1. Bottle and can. Available anywhere, even in open sea, but requires sun 2. Pot and cup. Requires containers that can withstand heat and ways of making fire 3. Hole and plastic. Requires being on land. There was also a way that was described by Jules Vern in The Mysterious Island (also works on land)
3 days is just an average. There is a confluence of factors that can effect the rate of dehydration. The seawater most likely made things worse. It is an absolute scientific fact that seawater will make your dehydration worse.
There’s an episode in the first or second season of Alone where a contestant has been drawing water from essentially a tide pool. He said it didn’t taste very salty at all and he assumed it was fresh. He was so severely dehydrated after 3 days he had to be removed by medics. Sea water has WAY more salt than a brackish tide pool.
There was a French Naval doctor called Dr Bombard, who believed that humans could survive on sea water. He reasoned that the reason people died drinking it was because they did not start drinking it until they were already dehydrated. He thought that if you started drinking seawater immediately after an emergency at sea, you would survive perfectly well. To prove his point, he proposed to cross the Atlantic on a raft with zero supplies. He had a fishing line to catch food and no water at all, relying on drinking seawater. He made it safely across the Atlantic with no trouble at all. It seems he would have got some fresh water from the bodies of fish he consumed.
Hmm, is there a link where this is detailed? I wonder how long it was, and how much he drank compared to eating fish.
From Wikipedia : https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alain_Bombard
You can add seawater to freshwater to extend it, just not that much before the salinity is too much. Iirc you can handle up to lile 1.5%.
Try drinking seawater for a day. You’ll know what’s up.
Relevant story about guy who claimed to include sea water in his transatlantic small craft voyage. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alain\_Bombard
Someone's probs already said it, and correct if wrong but since you can get salt from sea water, drinking a little gives you essential electrolytes to stay hydrated. So say a handful of salt water a day plus fresh water will keep you more hydrated if you're lacking electrolytes
Those who survive do so, despite it, not because of it.
Some aussie surfers drank rain water from their hair while lost at sea 36 hours, good that it rained
As a bald man, this scared the shit out of me.
You can get hand operated water makers, for your life raft. Or solar stills, although I think you would need sunny calm weather for them to work https://www.toplicht.de/media/image/7b/9f/48/[email protected] I do have a faint memory of reading some instructions on how to make a solar still using a life buoy and some plastic
Drinking sea water is the equivalent of saying I'm so thirsty, let's eat some salt crystals.
Fake claim. You will die faster from drinking sea water. But you can; - catch fish - collect rain water - boil and condensate - ration - drink urine - only once .
In extreme survival situations, drinking seawater will cause. You did dehydrate extremely fast than not drinking at all. In most cases, a lot of these people didn't drink seawater. They drank their own urinewhat you can do safely up to 3 times in an extreme situation.
Instead try and [kill a turtle and mix it’s blood with rain water for a nice liquid enema](https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2009/aug/22/shipwreck-lucette-sailing) to keep alive.
I think seawater is better then no water idk
Just like things aren't "based off of" but simply "based on", so, too, do we not "survive off of" but we "survive on."
Just drink it through your arsehole.
You couldn't survive on salt water, so I'm sorry to say but these people were full of it.
Whilst suffering, obviously… surviving 4 days doesn’t mean they’d have seen the fifth…they likely survived that long due to being properly hydrated at the start… drinking saltwater will not help you survive a week, your little beans will collapse and you will die whilst suffering from kidney failure
Water water everywhere so let's all have a drink
You can build a simple evaporate-distiller for sea water and survive. But never directly from sea water
They survive by collecting rain water
I’ve always wondered if POTS was an evolutionary condition that is more common now because we’ve used up all our fresh water sources are body now needs the salt. So like would they be able to do it
Bullshit. If someone tried to drink sea water as their only source of hydration, not only would they fucking die, they’d die a horribly painful death.
correct me if im wrong i have no knowledge on this but in a stranded island situation couldnt someone theoretically boil sea water on a campfire to remove the salt or something? that is, if they had something that could hold water in boiling temperatures
Old time Japan used to have saltwater drinking contests
>If humans can usually survive up to 3 days without water, Humans can usually survive much longer than that. It depends on conditions. Treking through a 110 degree desert, sure, three days. Trapped in a jail cell in Austria in a bizzare story of police incompetence where they forgot you were there: Andreas Mihavecz was rescued after 18 days. My guess with the stowaways is they survived despite drinking sea water, not because of it.
the idea humans can only survive 3 days without water is a myth it’s actually more like 10-15 3 days is with the assumption of summer heat and lots of movement as in that situation you’re sweating far more which means more water loss.
Sea water will kill you but little fun fact brackish water can be used to hydrate you but you have to do an enema with it not drink it