Big Sur cliff plunge survival hydration

keep an eye on 'jackass'.

 

uber riders would have no idea...

 

# radiatorwaterchallenge

There were several stories in Dubbaya Dubbaya 2 where airmen who were shot down in North Africa survived by drinking water out of the radiators of shot up vehicles, HOWEVER(!!) this was back in those quaint days before emissions devices which necessitated adding junk like ethylene glycol and propylene glycol to the water - so when I heard the story I sorta figured that the newsies might just have gotten that titillating little fact all the way wrong.

I was not surprised by this.


Fun Fact:
If you think that ingesting icky things like propylene glycol is bad for you, then you may not want to read this if you're one of the unfortunates that is into vaping..... (from the Googles)

"Reputable" E Liquids Contain a Combination of These Ingredients:

• Propylene Glycol (PG) and/or Vegetable Glycerin (VG) These are the two most common ingredients that you'll find in e liquid since they're used as the suspension agent for the flavorings and nicotine. ...
• Non-Oil Food Grade Flavorings. ...
• Nicotine....[yeah, riiiiiight!]

 

Propylene glycol is non toxic and not to be confused with very toxic ethylene glycol. Both can be anti freezes.

PG is also used in theatrical smoke/for machines. Sort of like community vaping without nicotine.

 

somehow, vaping is even more obnoxious than smoking.

 

And DAMN are they bold in your face about it. Very quick to spout how safe it is while exhaling next to you.

 

Not in my region. We have some fairly strong laws about smoking in public places, and vaping is not exempt.

 

I'll give them this:

Sometimes the noxious fumes that they exhale at least sometimes smell better than hemp-heads or nicotine junkies, and it does not seem to cling to the inside of a car like smoke does.
BUT....whoever came up with the JUUL "starter packs" ought to be brought up on charges of crimes against humanity and tried in an open court with the parents of newly nicotine addicted children as jurors.....

Big tobacco's got NOTHING on them.....

 

I challenge Reddit readers to drink directly from their radiator hoses. That might help clean up the gene pool.

 

More importantly, ill considered. Reddit readers are whomever, and reading with motivations that cannot be remotely sensed. Reddit writers (posters) invite others to judge them according to posted content. Some of those judgements may be unkind.

Thinning herds with a chronic clumsy toxin is ill considered in another way. One might hope that only those 'deserving' slow, painful deaths make accurate decisions about themselves here. But always, collateral damage includes medical staff who are not always equipped to diagnose blood levels of ethylene glycol (it is not in everyone's 'test-for' list). So, medicals working out those cases are unavailable for other work. On behalf of innocents. You might be one of those innocents someday.

I'll not suppose that all ~5000.yr in US who get diagnosed and treated for ethylene glycol tox. correctly chose themselves for Darwinian Dismissal. If others suppose that, it's on them and their presumption of perfect insight.

 

If it's not already perfectly obvious, if you crash yourself into a survival situation, no liquid of your car is for drinking. No solid part of your car is for eating. Beyond those, many mechanical parts may aid your survival.

Famous Bear Grylls famously drank his urine on camera. On camera is actually the important phrase here. It means he had support staff ready to respond if their media property got into a bad way.

You, in survival situation, will not. You probably have two kidneys that probably retain their 'designed-in' overcapacity. So you can drink pee for a while, until they hit the line. If it comes to that, you will have de-survivaled yourself to some extent.

 

... which is one reason my cars have aftermarket liquids stashed inside. Plastic bottles under seats, foils pouches in a trunk survival kit. More than a gallon right now, maybe falling to a couple quarts in winter.

Would it be best, once discovering oneself in such a no-potable-water pickle, to immediate start saving the initial thinnest pee for possible consumption later?

It seems to me that it will take some time from notice of the dire situation, until one actually becomes desperate enough to actually drink it. Long enough to have needed several pee breaks in the interim. It seems that if such consumption is necessary, earlier thinner excretions would be less toxic and more useful than current excretions.

 

Pee 'drink now or store'? question points to a ubiquitous microbial enzyme urease. Never thought about it, but as you press...

Store. Then boil or at least heat your yellow bottle. Urease will have converted urea into ammonia and CO2 and both those depart upon heating. Remains a more kidney-friendly beverage. Drink up.

 

I reviewed for unnamed journal a soil-ecology manuscript by unnamed authors. They measured enzyme urease in all their treatments and not surprisingly found no differences anywhere.

Says I "You effing idiots, urease is everywhere and teaches nothing. You learned how to do this easy assay in school and bring it for no reason to the big leagues".

OK I'm a hard grader, I get that. But here finally fuzz accidentally leads to a beyond-Bear-Grylls treatment of human-in-distress water balance.

 

Fire. You always gotta be able to make fire. This is our genus' millions-year big thought.

 

condensate off the evaporator
Musty, Icky, Makes me think of Legionnaires' disease

urease the only thing that's happening in that storage period
No

urease as a microbial enzyme, who's making it?
Ubiquitous microbes. Maybe you think you can sterilize them away. I doubt it

Are we to assume the multiplying critters are all nonpathogenic?
No. Frankly I'm still looking for that nearby stream/seep with a liberated radiation hose.

how well are those absorbed in the gut anyway?
Very well. Only way to "pass on through" is poop. Pee is 'internal' All pee was previously circulating in bloodstream. People know that already, right?

water reclamation on the ISS
Excellent system. Emphasizes reverse osmosis with lots of bells and whistles to keep membranes from clogging. I'd drink that, but ideally diluted with some bourbon I'd smuggled aboard. I mean, since we are all about wild speculation here.