Urine

[TopSod]

Not the nicest of subjects but a serious one nonetheless.

Would you drink your own urine if you were in a situation where your stores of water had run out, local water is contaminated or NLA?

What are the implications of doing so? How long could it be done for?

[Briggs 2.0]

Erm....no. Drinking it neat is not a good idea at all.

However, it is possible to distill and filter urine for example the Lifesaver products enable you to do this, here is their blurb:

You can filter urine with the LIFESAVER bottle or the LIFESAVER jerrycan and it will remove all microbiological contamination however as there is a certain amount of salt in urine the resulting water will have a level of salt dissolved into it that the LIFESAVER bottle will not remove. This will increase as the urine is repeatedly filtered. We suggest that you could potentially do this up to four times before the salt levels become dangerous. However it is recommend that you seek alternate water sources before using the LIFESAVER bottle in this way.

So you'd be putting salt back into your system which will make you more dehydrated. If it was me I'd look for a better source of water and apply filtering way before I ever considered drinking urine. Have a read of what Loft Wiseman has to say on the subject, he suggests anything but drinking it.

[jansman]

Read all the manuals. Urine is bodily waste.
However. Urine is a great activator for compost heaps. Also, diluted, is a damn good liquid fertiliser.

[Stasher]

? ! ?

I thought it was possible to do so in EXTREME circumstances and that you could sustain life by doing so. Didn't some ultra marathon runner (who got lost) manage to survive doing this in the desert? Or is that an urban legend?

[TopSod]

It's not something I'd ever want to do, I just wondered what everyone elses thoughts were on it! After all, as preppers surely we look at alternative resources for any given situation where others would fail?

I did once catch a bit of a programme on tv where this guy had a bath full of his own urine, and he bathed in it every single day and drank nothing else but that too.. eew

[Decaff]

Bet he smells nice..

[Holomon]

? ! ?

I thought it was possible to do so in EXTREME circumstances and that you could sustain life by doing so. Didn't some ultra marathon runner (who got lost) manage to survive doing this in the desert? Or is that an urban legend?

Briggs is quite right, the sodium content of urine is very high and so it's highly inadvisable to drink your own urine. You'd be better off making a condensate trap out of a poncho or tarp and relying on that for water. Or in good old blighty just wait for the rain.

There are a lot of survival sources that say you should never do it, like the US Army field manual. But then there are people that have drunk their own urine and swore it was all that let them survive.
So yeah, it's possible to do, but no, it would have to be the absolute last resort...and if you're prepping, shouldn't be necessary

[Stasher]

Thanks Holomon, so only if I'm about to die. Got it!

[Holomon]

Thanks Holomon, so only if I'm about to die. Got it!

lol yes, I guess, but no guarantees so if you die anyway, please don't sue me.

This guy did it prior to cutting off his own arm to get free of a boulder;

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aron_Ralston

Otherwise I'm struggling to find anyone else except Bear Grylls as a backup, and he's not exactly reliable. Probably uses lucozade to "demonstrate" how you'd do it if you had to.

[Stasher]

Uuuuurgh! Aaaaargh!

Now that is one extreme prepper.

What are my options?

a) death
b) something so awful I wouldn't wish it on my worst enemy

Hmmm, lets go with plan b