How Long Can You Survive Without Water?
Akash Peshin
After successfully distracting
yourself by running your fingers on the hamster wheel that is your Instagram
feed, you finally leave your devices alone to fall asleep.
Instead, you find yourself in the
uncomfortable unknown, where your inquisitive self, bursts into life and
vanquishes your sleep as you look closely and notice the unnoticed, ask the
unasked, meandering just below your nose when you were consumed in the
dailiness of your life.
Wait a minute, Why do I have
toe-nails?! Or I wonder how long could I survive without water?
Short Answer: On average, a person can
survive 3 days without water, but some have reported to survive around 8 to 10
days.
Why is water so important?
Thirst is a survival instinct and I’m
guessing by now you’ve realized that water is one of the most essential
nutrients required by living things.
Water regulates our body temperature,
digestion, aids the disposal of waste and is needed by the brain to produce
hormones and neurotransmitters.
So… it’s pretty important. Clearly.
Mind=Blown, right?
Water is the most abundant molecule in
our body, making up more than 65% of our body’s liquid content.
After using up the water from external
sources, the body uses the water stored in our fat cells to satiate its thirst.
This is how camels survive without
water for days in the scorching heat of deserts – by extracting water from fats
all around their body.
The human body, unfortunately, does
not have as much storage capacity.
After an excruciating week without
water, sweating ceases, leading to an unavoidable increase in our body
temperature and digestion becomes impossible due to a lack of saliva or
intestinal juices, while blood pressure decreases due to low blood volume.
Under such feeble conditions, death is
just around the corner.
Surviving without water comes down to
disrupting the balance between losing water and gaining it.
This means that survival can be
stretched if the rate of losing water through sweating, urinating or exhaling
rapidly is less than the amount gained by consuming food and liquid.
How long can you live without
water?
On average, a person can survive
without water for about 3 days, but some have reported to survive around 8 to
10.
This amount of time can also be
stretched and contracted by external factors, such as temperature, humidity and
the health of an individual.
For instance, athletes exercising
intensely in the dry heat can dehydrate and die within hours.
Whereas, the record holder for
surviving the longest without water survived for 18 days after he was put in a
jail and forgotten for over two weeks!
However, it is reasonable to point out
that he was indoors in the absence of the sun or any heat.
Yep, forgotten.
Also, one can live without water
indefinitely, provided you have eaten enough water-containing foods to replace
the lost water.
Our body doesn’t necessarily need
“pure water”; it only requires electrolytes and nutrients in aqueous solution,
so that they are available to be absorbed.
It enacts a terminal step in a line of
reactions involving the oxidation of hydrogen or hydrocarbons to provide
energy.
Poon Lim, a Chinese sailor whose ship
sank in 1942, survived 133 days on a raft in the open ocean.
He ran out of supplies in the first
month itself leaving him 3 months without a drop of fresh water!
So how did he survive? He caught and
ate fish and drank seagull or shark blood. However repulsive, it kept him
alive.
So, your query does not have a fixed
answer. The average is about 3 days, but you could try out for yourself.
Now, give your mind a break and get
some sleep!
Akash Peshin is an Electronic Engineer from the University of Mumbai, India
and a science writer at ScienceABC. Enamored with science ever since
discovering a picture book about Saturn at the age of 7, he believes that what
fundamentally fuels this passion is his curiosity and appetite for wonder.
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