Survival Skills: Avoid This (NON) Beverage
So you’re thinking about drinking some pee. Every time I teach a survival class, someone asks about pee drinking when we get to the section on water. But just because it’s yellow, I tell them, doesn’t make it lemonade. Before you pour yourself a tall warm glass of golden urine, you may want to read this.
THE MYTH:
Thanks to the TV exploits of certain shock-value survival personalities and the misadventure of Aron Rolston (and the subsequent movie adaption 127 Hours), many rookie survivalists have begun to think that it’s OK to drink urine when you run out of water. But does this practice make any sense? And is it even safe?
THE REALITY:
The average person can live about 4 days without any water to drink, if they have adequate shelter during that time. And while a few lucky survivors have lasted an extra day or two from pee drinking, those few special cases can’t suggest that it’s a good practice for us all. Even the urine from a well-hydrated human is still laden with waste compounds. In fact, over 3,000 compounds have been found in this lemon-colored liquid. Almost 100 of these come from bacteria in the body, and nearly 1,500 are waste from bodily processes. This leaves more than 2,000 chemicals coming from our diet, environment, medicines and cosmetics. In short, urine contains a lot of alarming waste products, and it’s something our body is trying to eliminate (not recycle). Furthermore, if conditions are grim enough that you are considering urine as a drink, it will be even more concentrated (read here: less water).
Normal urine is approximately 95% water and 5% waste, but as a person becomes more dehydrated, these numbers can change dramatically (making the urine even less desirable). Medically documented side effects of urine consumption include diarrhea, vomiting (more water loss), electrolyte imbalance, along with other unhealthy effects. Don’t believe it? Then just ask the U.S. Army. In their field manual for survival, piss is specifically called out on the "DO NOT drink" list, right beside ocean water and blood. Furthermore, the urine of someone with crushing injuries can be even more dangerous that the whiz of an unharmed survivor. Damaged muscle fibers leak harmful things (including a dangerous potassium compound) into the bloodstream, raising the level of salts and waste in urine. Even a pee guzzler with strong kidneys may not be able to handle this. And when the injured person is drinking their own pee – they are taking in salts that their body definitely doesn’t want. Sure, some potassium is needed by the body. But too much becomes a hazard. Ever heard of a “lethal injection”, it’s a shot of potassium that does the killing.
THE ALTERNATIVES:
Just because pee isn’t a great beverage choice, doesn’t mean that it’s worthless. Here are some other ways to stay hydrated, and for the adventurous, here are some alternative uses for your pee.
Get Creative. Except in the driest deserts, there is usually some alternative source for drinking water (besides drinking urine). From the plant kingdom, numerous plants contain water that can be extracted or tapped during certain seasons. Make sure you have positively identified the species you are considering, and determine which season it provides water and how to collect it. Squeezing the juice from edible berries is a good strategy, this way you don’t have to waste water pooping out all the seeds and pulp. But my favorite wild water source is maple sap, which can be collected between February and March by drilling a hole into the right tree. The water is perfectly safe to drink, being filtered by the woody tissues of the tree. The sap even has a trace of sugar, making it taste slightly sweet (and giving us the raw material to boil down maple syrup).
Take a squirt. Fresh urine produced by a healthy person (without any urinary tract infections) is quite clean. Some of our wiser ancestors knew this was safer than the local creek water to rinse wounds. Thomas Vicary (the royal surgeon of King Henry VIII) recommended urine as a way to irrigate and clean wounds – including those sustained in battle. If it’s straight from the “tap”, it’s even under enough pressure to remove debris from a wound. (But do try a squirt bottle of sterile saline solution first, if you have it in your med kit)
If it’s yellow, let it mellow. Stale urine has been used for thousands of years, for a wide range of purposes. Once the urine breaks down for a few days, it has a high concentration of ammonia. This was used by the ancient Romans to whiten their teeth, among other revolting chores. Later people used stale pee to dye their clothing, tan animal skins, make gunpowder, and even fertilize crops.