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.
