The award winning 2010 film 127 hours portrays the
real life experiences that outdoorsman Aron Ralston
suffered when a boulder trapped his wrist against a
stone wall, and the extreme measures he took to survive.
In the end, Ralston rationed his food out,
drank his own urine, and finally cut off his
own hand in order to escape and return home.
And for some of you, the self amputation
wasn’t even the worst part of that statement.
But for better or worse, drinking one's own urine has
been shared enough as a survival tactic that there’s even
a slew of memes about that one time Bear Grylls did it.
Which leaves me with a question: Is
this really a survival technique?
And what would it take to resort to that?
Today’s episode looks at extreme measures
taken to survive extreme circumstances.
We’re not doctors or survivalists, we’re just trying
to look at the situation from an unbiased perspective.
If you’re concerned about surviving in the
wilderness or another situation with limited
resources, check out a guide from a trusted source.
Or talk to someone who actually goes outside.
And with that out of the way… let’s get into it!
July, 2020, an 82-year-old woman and her 64-year-old
daughter from the Shaanxi province of China were taking
the elevator from the first floor to the second floor
of their four storey home when the power to it seemingly
shut down, trapping them within the pitch dark car.
They have a four storey house?
With an ELEVATOR in it?
Why don’t we have an elevator?
Not exactly the takeaway I expected there, but first, yes.
People with mobility issues often
have elevators in their homes.
Second, you know I don’t make that kind of money.
Trapped inside and without any way of getting
help, the mother stood on her daughter’s shoulders
to break the lift’s light, and pulled out the
iron wire inside to pry open the elevator’s door.
The two took turns breathing in fresh air, until
they were rescued a full four days and three nights.
But wait, um, I know you can last a week without
food but isn’t it only three days without water?
Good catch, Chill!
Yay!
Humans need water.
While we have records of humans going for three
weeks without food—Mahatma Gandhi famously went
on a hunger strike for 21 days, and magician and
performance artist David Blaine supposedly survived
44 days without food—about a week is the most generous
estimate for how long one can survive without water.
And that’s assuming that the
person isn’t an 82-year-old woman.
A more reasonable estimate would be three to four days.
So here’s a question for you—how did these two manage
to survive for 96 hours while locked in an elevator?
Umm, with granola bars and positive affirmations?
Nice try, but actually they took
turns to drink each other’s urine.
I would like to take back my, “yay”, please.
“Yay” refunded.
Howard, tell him about his compensation!.
One large coffee with a double dose
of information you didn’t want.
No Howard no!
If survivalist and TV show host Bear Grylls is to
be believed, “your own urine is safe to drink”,
though it was later advised against in his series
Born Survivor, since urine contains toxins.
Yet drinking your own urine seems to be a common
trope in survival stories, from 127 Hours to the
tale of Rishi Khanal who drank his own urine to
survive being trapped in rubble from an earthquake.
Or in the words of Doctor Yin Aiping,
"We know that urine is mostly water.
Although it contains some toxins, it can
still be used to temporarily sustain life.”
"These fluids are vitally important.
Without them, these two people could
not have survived for so long."
But is this just a survival technique, or is there more to it?
Well, there is a certain historical
context for drinking urine.
You have got to be kidding me.
I really— I really wish I was.
But no.
According to the Smithsonian, urine was once a key
ingredient in a number of cleaners, especially for the
ammonia, and was even gargled to whiten teeth by the Romans.
There is also “amaroli” a sanskrit term referring to a
practice where one drinks the first urination of the day.
Is it pronounced amaroli, I don’t know…
This episode’s about drinking pee and I’m
trying to get through it as fast as I can.
And in terms of chemical makeup, urine is both sterile, and
composed of about 95% water according to Popular Science.
Ok, first of all, ew.
Yeah. Ewww.
Second of all, I can’t help but notice that there’s
a certain five percent that’s not accounted for here!
Very good Grill, you’re right.
That other five percent is very important since it’s the
waste that our body’s excretory system is getting rid of.
Just like how a sewer may see mostly water flowing
through it, our body expels waste along with water too.
Some of the waste that our body removes this way includes
chloride, sodium, potassium that your kidneys filter out.
And while at first drinking it may not have too
many harmful effects, the more you drink, the higher
the concentration of waste products in your body
will become, and the more dehydrated you’ll get.
In fact, it might be most valuable to
think of this like drinking seawater.
Using your kidneys like a sort of filtration system, your
body expels excess salt by diluting it with freshwater stored
in your body’s tissues, and is replenished by drinking it.
If you drink seawater it just brings in more
salt - eventually resulting in bad things.
Could you—could you define “bad” please?
Well, our urine contains about 2%
salt while seawater contains about 4%.
In order to flush all the salt out, your
body would need to produce more urine.
But since that requires more water than you drank,
it takes that from your body’s tissues which
dehydrates your body, and eventually results in
your kidneys being unable to dilute the water.
Over the span of a few days, you’ll experience dry
mouth, thirst, muscle cramps, and your body will kick
in coping mechanisms such as increasing your heart rate
and constricting blood vessels to keep blood flowing.
But without fresh water eventually, these mechanisms will
fail, leading to organ failure, coma, and even death.
Yeesh.
Yeesh indeed.
Now, for the two women trapped in an elevator, it is
possible that resorting to drinking their own waste
saved their lives as the doctors who treated them said.
But it is important to note that, even as a last
resort, drinking urine is generally ill advised.
The US Army Field Manual’s water procurement guidelines
state that urine should never be substituted for water
due to the toxins present and its 2% salt content.
A belief that is echoed by Helen Andrews of the
British Dietetic Association, or in her words:
"There are no health benefits to drinking your own
urine, and in fact I think it could be quite detrimental.
Each time you put it back it will come out again even
more concentrated and that is not good for health as
it could damage the gut… If you are stranded, your
body will try to conserve as much water as it can.
Drinking your urine would be like drinking seawater."
But perhaps the best summary of the situation comes
from the Winchester Hospital, which described it
as, “When faced with life-threatening dehydration,
drinking urine may make some sense, since the
temporary benefits are likely to outweigh the risks.
However, this last ditch effort will be short-lived, since
the kidneys stop making urine as the dehydration worsens.”
At the end of the day, the main takeaway should be
that two women who suddenly found themselves trapped
managed to survive and were rescued after prying open
the doors wide enough for the daughter to climb out
and call for help, even if they had to take steps that
would be considered… off putting to get to that point.
And while doctors and Bear Grylls have said that such
measures can help you survive in extreme circumstances, I
don’t think anyone’s in a real hurry to test that hypothesis.
Not unless you’re in real trouble, that is.
Ugh.
That pun was so bad that it doesn’t even deserve my anger.
I think I’m actually calm right now.
Are you… Are you gonna draw on my shirts again?
No, I think I’m… good actually?
I’m gonna go watch Luke Worm.
I’m proud of that one.