Piss drinking general - Water purification and it's consequences

[SSj_Ness (Yiffed)]

Genuinely surprised nobody posted the classic Bear Grylls meme yet.

 

[frari]

I realise that it's a meme, but don't drink piss in a survival situation. Piss is even more full of salts and minerals than seawater (if that piss is from someone dehydrated), so drinking it would be a very bad idea and would cause you to become dehydrated faster.

You can drink piss if you are also drinking other liquids, but not if you are trying to stay hydrated.

 

[Swiss46]

You can drink piss if you are also drinking other liquids, but not if you are trying to stay hydrated.

If I'm drinking other liquids why am I also drinking piss? Genuine question I was under the impression that it was a move of last resort.

 

[Higgs Bonbon]

Coffee filters and boiling are good for short term.

If you can't start a fire it's probably raining, in which case look up and open your gob.

 

[Hamstirer]

Very solid advice. Boiling is a guarantee to kill pathogens, but distillation removes just about everything.

Distillation will remove the minerals for the water and then that water will pull the minerals out of your body after you drink it. It's not a super idea to be drinking nothing but distilled water.

 

[Angry Shoes]

If I'm drinking other liquids why am I also drinking piss? Genuine question I was under the impression that it was a move of last resort.

It's sterile and I like the taste.

 

[Pattern Juggler]

Anyone used one of those desalination kits? 14 GPH at 600 watts sounds pretty good, but no idea what ongoing consumables are like.

 

[D_Tractor]

What's a good reverse osmosis unit for everyday use that doesn't need to be permanently hooked up to plumbing?

 

[LaxerBRO]

I use the following setup when I go camping:
1. Collection:
Fill up a marked non-potable 1 gallon jug with stream water.
2. Basic filtering:
I zip tie a fine mesh cloth over mouth of the jug and pour it into a small water bottle with a Britta or other filter, use a basic filter like Britta or similar. (This is done to filter out larger particles that can clog the finer more expensive filters.

3. From the water filter bottles, I squeeze the water into a Sawyer pre-treatment bag (in gray) Sawyer sells the kits in .1 (bacteria) to .02 micron (some viruses) (the one pictured is out of production but Sawyer has a newer one):

4. This water is then poured into a water bottle with a UV light:

Why all the steps? The newer Sawyer gravity system is about $45 dollars but with the finer particular filter, dirt and particulates can make it clog easier. The added steps I have will preserve the more expensive filter for longer. Additionally, the UV light kills any viruses that makes it through.

 

[Cirrhosis_of_Liver]

Very solid advice. Boiling is a guarantee to kill pathogens, but distillation removes just about everything.

Why distill water when you could make vodka?

 

[frari]

If I'm drinking other liquids why am I also drinking piss? Genuine question I was under the impression that it was a move of last resort.

That was a just for the hippies (and poos) that think drinking piss gives some sort of health benefits. Yes, some faggots think drinking piss is good for you. While I disagree with it (natch), I don't think it's been shown to be inherently bad for you.

 

[Slap47]

If I'm drinking other liquids why am I also drinking piss? Genuine question I was under the impression that it was a move of last resort.

It is not though.

There is a SurvivorMan episode where he discusses this. I think its the Kalahari desert one. First thing you do before that is dig a hole and set up a system that collects condensed water. It collects quite alot of water from it.
It worked for a while, but he simply had to give up and walk back to camp. At the point where you have nothing but piss is just where you die.

In all likelihood you will not be in a survivor situation in the hottest desert in the world. There should be water. You might get Giardia from drinking poopy puddle water, but its still water and won't kill you right away.

 

[Robotic Kiwi]

I have come across a passive and primitive method of filtering swamp water using the wick effect from vines from a YouTube video (see below). Simply cut a live, growing vine , keeping note the direction of the vine from the root to leaves (don't do upside down or it may not work) placing the lower vine part into a jar of water water and the other into another jar (seal that jar so bugs don't get in it, and make it lower than the other to aid in the flow) and just wait a long time. This seems to work for tree branches as well but requires a bit more setup and finesse to properly get the flow going properly and safely, as seen in the video,.
It seems to filter out a lot of nasty stuff,(notably pathogens) from the water, however it will not filter out some stuff, such as minerals and elements the plant will naturally absorb. Also don't be dumb and use poison ivy to filter the swampwater.
For example:
Plants typically absorb potassium to help grow, and "plants growing in K deficient soils of the southeastern U.S. are more prone to absorbing 137Cs decades after atmospheric deposition, and that this contamination is transferred to foods by animal foragers."Source, and Archive
So if your going to be doing this and there was nuke testing / nuclear fallout, run it through another type of filter, since any trace of Caesium-137 from Nuclear bomb testing will not be filtered out.

Spoiler: Source video for further details

Name: Newly Discovered PRIMITIVE WATER FILTER! 100% Effective
Date: May 18, 2024
URL: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nSBwJNDDUfc

 

[Roman Guman]

Water purification kits sometimes have two parts- one has excess chlorine to kill everything, the other destroys the chlorine so you won't get sick
Most don't bother and make you drink nasty pool water.

you can chemically destroy excess chlorine in bleach/tablet treated water with vitamin C

Table 1. Ascorbic acid​
Ascorbic Acid​	pH​	Temperature (�C)​	Dissolved Oxygen (mg/L)​	Total Chlorine (mg/L)​	Free Chlorine (mg/L)​
5 gal tap water​	7.6​	22.3​	8.3​	0.75​	0.05​
+15 mL -6% sodium chloride​	8.0​	21.7​	9.7​	66.6​	47.8​
+2.5 g ascorbic acid​	6.2​	21.1​	5.7​	0.00​	0.02​

Table 2. Sodium ascorbate​
Sodium Ascorbate​	pH​	Temperature (�C)​	Dissolved Oxygen (mg/L)​	Total Chlorine (mg/L)​	Free Chlorine (mg/L)​
5 gal tap water​	7.6​	22.7​	9.5​	0.79​	0.05​
+15 mL -6% sodium chloride​	8.1​	21.7​	9.1​	52.6​	47.6​
+2.5 g sodium ascorbate​	7.0​	21.1​	6.7​	0.02​	0.00​

more info

 

[IdiotPlusPlus]

you can chemically destroy excess chlorine in bleach/tablet treated water with vitamin C

Damn that's handy to know! I know my local tap water is kept under 1mg/L and based on that link 1g of Vit C will treat something like 350L of water at that level to remove the chlorine.

Would be much cheaper and faster than using a Brita or something lol

 

[Mike Matei's Penis]

 

[Aero the Alcoholic Bat]

If you're at the point where you'd even consider drinking piss, you're probably already screwed.

 

[Thel]

The way you would want to purify drinking water is mostly dependent on where you find yourself in a "societal collapse".

If you were stationary, such as in a home/complex/bunker/whateverthefuck, distillation is the way to go. Guaranteed to kill any and all bugs in the water, while also removing poisons and debris. A still is very easy to make with pretty cheap parts. I've attached a diagram. Reminder that as long as you get a fire started and going strong, even wet wood will burn.

If you're mobile, you have more to worry about. You aren't going to carry a still around in your pocket, and while boiling is perfectly fine in unpopulated areas, you may find yourself in some unfortunate scenario where you're down river of the cancer aids factory, and all the water in a thirty mile radius has 5w20 motor oil in it.

It is in my (admittedly limited) experience that you avoid that sort of thing by just carrying extra water if you suspect an area is contaminated, but I cannot speak to the efficacy of purification straws at removing various poisons and chemicals from water.

Otherwise, just carry a portable camping stove to boil it. Twig stoves are super light, and take up no space, but take a few extra minutes to get the water up to boiling. Gas stoves weigh more, and take up more space, but work much faster, and are much harder to spot if you're trying to hide. Hell, local terrain and objects therein can usually be made into a decent stove when on the move, as seen in this attached demonstrational video of proper hobomaxxing.

 

[Pure Autism]

You could attempt to make a water filter like in this short video in any configuration you can. Of course everyone would advise you to still attempt to boil the water produced by it to eliminate possible viruses, bacteria or fungus.

However a lot of this is circumstantial as it heavily depends on your local environment. For example if you live on a mountain that doesn't have heavy pollutants in it's environment like factory complexes you could just gather rain water and filter it through this system and you will probably be completely fine. Same with gathering water by digging a well next to a river or stream and letting the soil do the filtering. Of course if you have natural springs near your locality that are producing clean drinking water try to have coordinates to them as they should remain completely safe unless someone decided to deploy heavy chemicals or some other fuckyou.

Unless you live in a urban environment you shouldn't be "too" pedantic with water as most of the bacteria found in naturally filtered water should be completely harmless to a human. Humans were relying for millennia on such water sources and we have biological systems in place to mitigate some of the risks.

But of course none of this is written in stone, just general guidelines. The best thing to have is knowledge of your local environment so you can adapt accordingly. If you intend to loiter around an apocalyptic urbanscape, figure out ways to create fire or stockpile water.

 

[User names must be unique]

If you're at the point where you'd even consider drinking piss, you're probably already screwed.

Your brain can do weird things in life or death situations. I remember reading about a guy stuck on a life raft for a long time, he started eating fish eyes and guts to supplement the little water he had something he could barely tolerate eating quickly became his favourite part of the fish.

on the topic of piss drinking there are grades to piss.

if you're pissing a 1-4 and you don't know where your next drink is coming from it's probably worth bottling for later if you can, 5-6 is probably okay too if you can supplement it with some water. 8+ drink it if you must but you're fucking dying if you don't get some water in you soon




There's another source of water nobody seems to have touched on: food. Edible Leaves, berries, fruit, are all going to be at least 70% water if not more, even if they're not nutritionally significant as long as the surfaces are clean they're unlikely to make you ill the plant having done the filtrations and sterilization for you.

Tree sap is incredible too but seasonal, in the spring in the northern hemisphere you're unlikely to be struggling for water sources.