“If you are stranded on a desert island, should you drink seawater or your own urine’?

Answer 1

It depends on how quickly you want to die. Seawater is about 3.5% salt by weight, where 1.0% is regarded as toxic. Take that much dissolved salt into your body and your metabolism very quickly goes into crisis. Water molecules leach out of cells to dilute and carry off the sudden intake of salt, and this leaves the cells dangerously short of the water they need to carry out their normal functions. They become, in a word, dehydrated. In extreme situations, dehydration will lead to seizures, unconsciousness, and brain damage. Meanwhile, the overworked blood cells carry the salt to the kidneys, which eventually become overwhelmed and shut down. Without functioning kidneys you die. That is why we don't drink seawater.

Drinking urine puts you in an immediate Catch-22 situation. Urine contains a whole cocktail of chemicals (including salt) which your body eliminated. Reingesting them requires your body to go through the whole process of elimination again. You acn't urinate powder - it has to be liquid, i.e. the eliminated toxins are suspended or dissolved in - you guessed it - water. You'll take it in and excrete it right out again, with almost no material gain.

Best case - if your only dietary water is seawater, in a hot, dry environment you'll last about four days. If it is urine, six to eight days.

Not good.

Answer 2

Don't drink seawater, the salt makes your thirst worse. Drink your own urine, I done this many a time in 'Nam and you can recycle it and keep yourself going for days. smells bad but tastes alright. In a platoon detachment of three or four you can go up to a week without drinking fresh water by just drinking each other's urine.

Answer 3

neither..seawater will kill you, urine is just gross....find some natural water source, or better still, use your life raft to condense some seawater into pure water and drink that.....

by allowing the seawater to evapourate, collect the vapour and drain this off into a handy coconut...

Answer 4

seawater has salt and urine COULD be the same thing but i wont try urine to find out.

Answer 5

Your own urine for a little bit, then find a way to purify the water/another source (fruit etc.)

Answer 6

you can drink your own urine up to 3 times. its better than sea water, however if you have a limited supply of freshwater you can mix 25% sea water into your fresh water to stretch your supply

Answer 7

You are supposed to drink your own urine because salt water would dehydrate you, don't forget to boil it first. Also, I've always wondered how are you supposed to produce pee when you are dehydrated?

Answer 8

My own urine

Answer 9

you should collect seawater and distil it to create freshwater using available materials.

Answer 10

I'd drink coconut juice from the coconuts, or fruit juice from the fruit!