Man drinks urine and survives

Good point V. IIRC, I think I read something about the calorie/heat as it relates to snow on a Backpacker forum a few years back. Makes sense.
 
Depending on the weather and how hard you are fighting to stay warm melting snow inside your mouth may put you under as far as your core temp is concerned. I remember seeing a report about that couple in OR. They were very unprepared all the way around.

Obviously the best way to melt snow is with a fire or some sort of stove. Barring that I think you could melt snow with body heat without lowering your core temp.

When temps are hovering around the freezing point you can breath on a snowball and get it to melt enough to suck water out of it. You can use the body heat you are already loosing to melt snow, especially if you are heavily dressed and have to be active. This is different than eating snow and using your core temp to melt it. Most of the time that I've been in extreme cold and was dressed to sit, as in hunting, whenever I had to move the coat got opened up or removed to shed the excess heat and prevent sweating. That excess heat can be used to melt snow if necessary, a ziplock full in a coat pocket or placed between the outer layers will melt.

I'm a confirmed non-drinker when it comes to urine.

Here's a related link to another story. Man survives 11 days eating snow and ice...http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9E05E1DA133BF93AA35751C0A96F958260

Wow, just when you thought you've seen every nutty thing on the internet! I give you Ice Chewers.com

http://www.icechewing.com/index.php?sid=4b9625e9b9fa31632e2bb141eec2af77

Apparently these are the guys to ask. Mac
 
V_Shrake said:
There's a very sound reason for NOT eating snow, and it has nothing to do with it "taking more water to melt it in your body" or whatever. It's a simple matter of calories.
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Both are usually warned about, often in survival books by "experts" which is why I mentioned both, however neither are well supported by facts or logic.

If you have sufficient food t eat (providing calories to stoke the boiler, so to speak) then eatinc snow for hydration would have no ill effects.
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It takes quite awhile for food intake to induce enough change in metabolism to lower core body temperature, in fact some people have a very high metabolic resistance which means they don't react this way strongly, it is why some people drop weight very fast when food is restricted and others don't, the reaction of metabolic rate and food intake varies significantly from one individual to the next. Hypothermia is usually due to improper insulation, unexpected shock usually. Around here it is always the same, you go through the ice and the water sucks the heat out of you near instantly.

But snow *does* take away from core body heat and if you're already weakend from hunger, you're going to die of hypothermia.
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Yes it is a strain, however before you advocate it as a critcal one consider that actually warming water up to body temperature takes a significant fraction of the heat required to melt it, now does this mean you should advocate warming all water over a fire before you drink it? As well the heat capacity of just air is only 1/4 that of water, assuming it doesn't contain significant snow/ice crystals in which case it is much higher, and you need about 100 times the weight of air as you need water in a day, and all that cold air comes out at body temperature so it sucked a lot of heat out of you warming it up.

Now if you are already going into hypothermic shock then yes it probably isn't a good idea to shotgun large volumes of ice because you no longer are actually producing enough heat to maintain core temperature, but it should be obvious water isn't your problem. However the above restriction gets advocated in general and it is made out to be the critical factor in heat loss when it reality it is a small fraction of the heat strain on your body and applied mainly to the *waste* release of heat. Note any movement induces a severe thermal load on the body as it disturbs the warm layer of air around your body and now you have to heat up all the new cold air again and this strain is directly on the tissues which have to generate body heat this is what wind chill actually refers to, the air isn't any colder, you just never warm it up and get that insulative barrier around you.

I was out in the woods today, it was only -5 C with light wind, very mild for winter here, however still at that temperature any exposed skin will start inducing a large thermal load on your body, much greater than using the *waste* heat shunted constantly out of your mouth to melt snow, especially if melt small amounts and never reduce the inside temperature of your mouth because the body temperature air constantly coming out of your lungs has a significant amount of heat energy in it. Yes you can find examples of people who ate ice and died, you can find example of people who did anything and died, however correlating the two especially to the point that it can be proven that it is a critical strain is another matter especially when you look at just how much of a strain it is compared to the other multitude of thermal gradients and how they load the internal heat engine.

Pict, usually the common advice is to use the waste heat from your body, melt it inbetween your clothes so it never acts like a significant heat sink for your body. However I have never seen a thermodynamic arguement which shows this to be a signficiant strain when considered to the massive other influences, especially consider what it actually loads and to what extent.

-Cliff
 
Whatever, Cliff.

Pict, I read one thread on that ice eaters forums, and it looks like most f the posters (at least in that thread) were women who actually had an addiction to it. I wonder if this is a woman thing or what? I knew a guy once who was constantly chewing ice whenever he got a soda from a fast food place, but he didn't go as far as the posters over there. I wonder what could induce people to crave ice that way? Odd, to say the elast.
 
V,

I was amazed, one poster said he goes through 8 gallons of ice a day. The dude must be like a human chipper. Mac
 
V_Shrake said:
Whatever....
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This is why where are so many myths about survival, over simplification. The body is a very complex heat engine, it makes a pretty severe difference to an engine how you load it, in terms of the amount, the rates and where you load it.

Go to Alberta where it gets so cold that the cars have to be kept heated or they won't start, you plug them in when you go into a supermarket for example. Now does it make a difference if the engine gets cold or the muffler gets cold. The answer should be obvious, it is the same question, physically.

The above warning, which is common, ignores the multitude of other factors which also induce heat loss and are far greater and also ignores the fact that it loads one of the waste reliefs of heat from your body, you are going to lose that heat anyway.

Actually spend some time outside and see which cools you down faster, melting small amounts of snow and ice, or exposed skin, breathing really cold air, disturbing air, etc., or apply some basic thermodynamics using the heat capacities and latent heats.

In such extreme conditions there are lots of things which are more relevant such as using your body heat to warm up the air you breath, or recycling the heat from the breath you exhale. However these are never discussed, but the warnings about snow/ice still persist with no actual science or data to support them.

-Cliff
 
V_Shrake said:
...I read one thread on that ice eaters forums, and it looks like most f the posters (at least in that thread) were women who actually had an addiction to it. I wonder if this is a woman thing or what?...
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Yahoo health said:
...Eating Disorder, Pica Type
Pica Eating Disorder

General Discussion

Pica is an eating disorder that is characterized by the repeated eating of non-nutritive substances over a period of one month or longer. Patients may eat non-edible objects such as paint, plaster, dirt, ice, or laundry starch. Pica generally affects small children, pregnant women, and people whose cultural environment is most compatible with the eating of non-food items...
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Yes, you do generally hear more about this (PICA) in women.
 
Cliff Stamp said:
This is why where are so many myths about survival, over simplification. The body is a very complex heat engine, it makes a pretty severe difference to an engine how you load it, in terms of the amount, the rates and where you load it.

....Go to Alberta where it gets so cold that the cars have to be kept heated or they won't start, you plug them in when you go into a supermarket for example....

-Cliff
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???
No it doesn't. In fact it does not get that cold in Inuvik, in the Northwest Territories, or anywhere else in the populated free world. Unless you are in the supermarket for 6-8 hours. Not to mention the fact that there are no power outlets at the supermarket. Or that the store manager/owner would kick your ass for using his electricity.
Please try have at least some basis in fact before you spout off. Or better yet, stop typing and pick up a book. Or go outside and use a knife for something other than breaking it in your mom's basement.
Or maybe stop arguing with EVERYONE.
It is possible, however unlikely, that you don't know everything, Cliff.
Damn.
YOU are ruining this forum.
 
Jim, while I admire your tenacity, it's really no good arguing with Cliff. He thrives on attention, ANY type of attention. The more you acknowledge his presence, the more annoying he becomes. I gave up on trying to get a coherent dialogue going with him, and my brain feels so much better now. :)

Honestly, Cliff, why can't you let *anything* go? If you preceive that somoene has an opinion different than yours, you attack them until they either give in or just quit arguing. It's noting but a huge waste of bandwidth. We were done with this thread, until you had to "prove your point" yet again. Let it go, dude. :jerkit:
 
Jim Craig said:
Unless you are in the supermarket for 6-8 hours.
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People do work there, however the relatives I have there commented as it is was something they did while out, it never gets that cold here, only about -30C dead air at most, I'll clearify it next time I talk to them. This of course was not the actual point of the post which was in relation to the myth of the huge heat drain of melting ice/snow which ignores the other wealth of thermodynamic interactions and how they actually load the body, hence the muffler/engine point. But yes it would be obviously better to let myths about survival continue than to actually debate them logically.

-Cliff
 
Bottom line.
Eating snow, or drinking ice cold water, burns MANY calories to bring your core temperature up.
Drink water at room temp..
Drink urine only if necessary..or.. if you've some fetish :barf:

I would imagine urine would be far better than nothing as an ABSOLUTE last resort.
So would WD 40 :eek:
 
Cliff Stamp said:
...Go to Alberta where it gets so cold that the cars have to be kept heated or they won't start...
-Cliff
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Lived in Quebec for about six months and one of the first things that puzzled me was why so many cars had electric plugs sticking out their grill. Was explained to me that they are connected to engine warmers to help start the car in cold weather.

I always carry a supply of handwarmers in the winter just in case I get stuck somewhere. Use them at work inside my gloves and they seem to help keep the rest of the body warm as well. :)

Guess if urine was the only thing for me to drink in an emergency then I'm just going to have to die. :barf:
 
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