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Just Add, Umm, Water
An anonymous reader writes "The US military has devised a way to ensure its troops in battle need never go hungry - with dried food that can be rehydrated using dirty water or urine. Bleh, but lightweight bleh." The original New Scientist story is available too.
"Engineer Ed Beaudry was quoted by the New Scientist as saying that the body would not find using urine to rehydrate food toxic in the short term, but in the long term it would cause kidney damage."
I think I'd rather steal food from natives than eat US Amry-supplied kidney damaging "food".
If you liked my post,
Fortunately, I've never been that hungry. I wonder if the phrase "I could eat my own urinated food" will catch on.
... Troops in battle are going to stop, drop their weapons, and pee on their food for a quick dinner?
ResidntGeek
Wow, just what we needed another way to make MREs more unpalatable!
I'll never ask a waiter for a glass of water again!
There are things we could feed our hard-working soldiers that they don't even need to carry... externally at least.
I suppose you really could say the food was piss poor.
Just wondering, when i clicked the article it said 'nothing to see here, move along'. What's that for?
That we are the world's greatest military force ever. Superior minds.
So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.
I wonder how many millions of dollars were spent on this mostly useless technology? Creating food with dirty water or urine is irrelevent. A soldier can last much longer without food than he can without water. Most people will die within five days if they don't get water. If you don't have access to clean water, you're in much worse shape. Lose 12% of your water and you're dead.
But if it helps you to survive a few days longer, that could mean the difference between life and death - you'd be able to ration your water reserve longer and still be able to eat.
Though I wonder why they didn't make the filter finer to filter out the urea.. Would it cost to much? Be to large?
Looking for hardware (Currently need: Large Etch-a-Sketch) Have one? See my journal!
Why not try some Dehydrated water?
And they wonder why its so hard to get new recruits these days...
Lets see, do I want urine or swam flavor today?
It could be worse, it could be Monday.
I'm not letting someone else hydrate my food.
I would like to outfit every coffee machine where I work with one of these filters so that I can pee in the coffee and not get in trouble (again). Satisfying for me, but still delicious for them. It's win-win!
I would suggest that urine would probably help the taste of MREs quite a bit...
"But I trust in the people's capacity for reflection, rage and rebellion." -Oscar Olivera
Just how effective is this filter at cleaning water? If it is cheap enough to be mass produced for soldiers' food, then it would be incredible for humanitarian purposes if it cleans water well. Many parts of the world cannot easily clean their own water.
Alphanos
Now all they need is Instant Water - just add water.
Host your self on a computer, encase that computer in neutron star armor. No need for sex, water, food. Just plug in an antimatter energy pellet. That is a real army of one.
-I am an elective eunuch.
"By the time we're done with you, you'll pee on your food, and you will love it, soldier!"
A post a day keeps productivity at bay.
My lowest rating. The sauce is extra tangy and with the urine base, needs no extra salt. Raaman with more zing. Bam!
That no matter how much you disagree with the US and its policies, our military is still one of the main reasons behind many technological innovations (and they damn well should be considering the budget).
If you have to ask, you'll never know.
So are they going to call them MRPs (Meals Ready to Pee on)?
Trolls lurk everywhere. Mod them down.
Is it really so hard to get a truck filled with water bottles or something to troops? Or even airlift water bottles in? What about morale? Of course one's morale is going to fall (understandably) when you're drinking your own urine!
As disgusting as it sounds to rehydrate a meal with urine, at least it's "clean" (in the sense that you won't get sick from it).
But dirty water? If you're in the middle of Iraq, I suspect the water may itself pose a health risk. I can't drink the water when I visit third-world countries, and I'd certainly be worried if our troops were exposing themselves to disease.
Pissing into a ramen noodles cup is not my idea of a meal.
TruePunk | Games
...is you!
And i've been using unfiltered urin for cooking.
Religion is a gateway psychosis. -- Dave Foley
So if you use urine, does it taste worse? Or better?
--
$tar -xvf
Great, another awesome reason to go and sign up right now.
:(
Bleh.
Some people are like slinkies--basically useless but they bring a smile to your face when pushed down the stairs.
Urea is very small molecule only a bit bigger than water. Even if you did have a membrane that could filter it out - it would take a very long time for enough water to diffuse across into the food.
Of a technology developed for combat that could be an enormous benefit to humanitarian efforts around the world. If cheap and reliable enough, this could save hundreds of thousands of lives.
Nah, that would piss me off.
Sorry... somebody had to...
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According to the article, a day's food supply weighs three and a half kilograms (roughly 7.5 pounds), and this dried food technology can reduce that weight to 0.4 kilograms (0.9 pounds). My question is of where soldiers are going to find a whopping 6.6 pounds of urine per day in the middle of a desert. I admittedly don't know how many pounds of urine I produce daily, but I certainly don't think that even our highly trained fighting forces can produce more than a pound each per day. These P-meals (The P stands for "pouch") don't seem to be well thought through.
Patches O'Houlihan: "Is it necessary for me to drink my own urine? No, but I do it anyway because it's sterile and I like the taste."
"Sic Semper Tyrannosaurus Rex."
In WW2. The French had gas masks that used activated carbon. To use it you would have to urinate on a bag in front.
only here could this get modded "informative"
...I, for one, welcome our new piss-drinking overlords.
From the article,
This is the same organisation that created the "indestructible sandwich" that will stay fresh for three years (New Scientist print edition, 10 April 2002).
I have a 19 cent hostess twinkie left over from college. It sits on the mantle above the fireplace It still is soft and has no visible mold. Oh yeah, I graduated in 1976
Would you mind explaining to me, Private Genius, how there's a net difference in water intake between those two scenarios? If you pour a cup of water to rehydrate your meal, you're also drinking it.
I agree with other posters- this invention is the stupidest thing I've ever heard of and a colossal waste of money.
Please help metamoderate.
If you're in a desert, you still have to transport that water as well, and any weight savings are lost in that case.
Illness is caused by bacteria, viruses, fungus, and the like. All are bigger than water molecules. So you make a filter that is fine enough to filter them out, but let the water through.
As for how well this particular one works, I dunno, but they can be made to work amazingly well.
Drinking your own urine repeatedly disturbs me in a Second Law of Thermodynamics sort of way...eventually your not breaking even and you just fall down dead.
So are the new recruiting ads going to be changed to 'Army of Number One'?
Given the choice of the two I'd take the urine over the dirty water, I know urine's normally sterile unless there's a urinary tract infection present.
And thanks to a recessive gene, I can't taste it anyway!
I know someone's about to reply with "And how did you find that out?", so before you do, ask if you really want to know the answer.
Introducing the new Occam Fusion! Now with sqrt(-1) fewer blades!
..It's still higher quality than McDonalds and Burger King combined.
"You know there isn't a single soldier in Easy Company who'd double time it up and down Currahee just to pee in that guy's coffee."
Well now you can without the double time!
I think Fry has the best review of what it probably tastes like: "What's the worst thing that can happen... ewww, it's like a party in my mouth and everyone is throwing up."
I tried it with a bowl of cheerios..it's delicious
This is just an attention (advertising) ploy. Sure, you could use urine, but it would be stupid to do so, since the salt and urea in urine would increase dehydration. If you were that short of water, the last thing you would want to do is eat; especially if it would make you even more dehydrated. A soldier could go days (weeks even) without food, but only 2-3 days without water. Using mucky water, however, makes more sense. It sounds like the new MRE package has a filter similar to the portable water filter I carry in my backack on hiking trips. It was not cheap, though, so I am guessing that most of the research is to look into how to make the filter as inexpensive as possible, so an MRE supplied with one would not go for $100 or more. Centrifuge
"Just add, um, water?"
"Join the army and you'll see,
You can eat all you can pee!"
(A friend came up with this yesterday while we were talking about the article.)
"Consistency is contrary to nature, contrary to life. The only completely consistent people are the dead." A. Huxley
MREs have gotten steadily better over the years. The first meals were pretty bad. I remember dehydrated chicken & ham loaf (I'm not kidding) with horror. But by the early 1990s they were really good, and they've continued to improve over the years.
Just ask anyone who had to endure C-rations. They'll tell you about truly crappy combat rations.
As for the US Army's attempt to come up with a way to use dirty water or urine, the primary goal is to allow soldiers to use dirty water. Don't get too wrapped up in weird urine scenarios. Believe it or not, much of the world drinks water that's hazardous to the health of Americans. Delivery of potable water is a major constraint on the American way of war. We put immense logistical effort into making sure our soldiers get bottled water. This contributes to our outrageously bad tooth to tail ratio, and it makes the military more beholden on civilian contractors to provide logistics support.
Americans have shown time and time again that we prefer to win wars with logistics, and our enemies know this. Any flexibility, however small, that allows us to reduce our logistics dependency is good in my opinion.
Read the EFF's Fair Use FAQ
But it does make me start to wonder how long it will take until we have stillsuits.
I don't want knowledge. I want certainty. - Law, David Bowie
Why am I thinking stillsuits?
flask of ripe urine
pressed to dead bsd lips
bsd drink up
I once heard that if you are thirsty and you have a chance to drink your own urine don't drink it. Supposedly urine is worse than no water at all. Can anyone corroborate this or prove it false? I didn't read the article, that's assumed, but other posters said that it is really a filter that can change urine or dirty water into fresh. So it looks like this who story is only a about a "cloth" that works as a good filter. No one is really drinking urine. It does remind me of Dune, the movie, not the book, about the suit where it extracted urine and sweat to allow 100% water output to become drinkable. This is kind of like that.
Why don't you guys have friends or journals?
So now MREs taste like piss instead of tasting like shit? I'm not sure which is preferrable to be honest.
Camels are not referred to as 'ships of the desert' for nothing.
The important question is, "Is it low carb?"
http://www.popularculturegaming.com -- my blog about the culture of videogame players
Okay, here's a reason why the US Army would like to reduce the amount of water consumed by soldiers. It seems people are under the impression that soldiers haul all their own gear and consumables. Not quite.
We use vehicles to accomplish the logistical feat of transporting soldiers, equipment and water. The US Army calculates that the average soldier consumes something like five gallons of water daily. No, not just for drinking--hygiene, cooking (i.e., field mess facilities), etc. This figure increases for desert operations, for obvious reasons. Considering that five gallons of water is 40 pounds, and considering that a division comprises something like 10,000+ soldiers, then we are looking for something on the order of tons of water required daily. What's more, most of that water will need to be purified. So, the goal here is to reduce the burden on the military's logistical infrastructure by having the soldier consume less water. Sure, it's probably an expensive experiment that will be met with failure.
What's interesting is this is not the first time there's been a *big* experiment. In the '40s, when we were fighting another crazy ideology or two (fascism, national shintoism), some nut thought that we could train our soldiers to consume less than the required amount of water--especially for desert operations. The idea there was to reduce the burden to the military's logisitical infrastructure by having the soldier consume less water. What's disappointing is this: the human body requires a minimum amount of water to operate. The Army learned that lesson by watching dozens (I've heard as many as hundreds or thousands, but that seems a tad high) of soldiers died disproving the experiment. I think the loss of human life was more expensive than the loss of a few tax dollars. Besides, I think the government wastes money in several other areas that should be reined in first.
What those who want activist courts fear is rule by the people.
I like the part about the "indestructable sandwich". Sounds like a good title for a bad movie.
Wouldn't sweat and tears work if there was enough to rehydrate the pouch? They're both made of salt water. What about saliva?
Our knowledge is so powerful that it can now make food of urine.
The pride is too much for me, I fear my chest shall burst.
Intolerance for ambiguity is the mark of the authoritarian personality.
Engineer Ed Beaudry was quoted by the New Scientist as saying that the body would not find using urine to rehydrate food toxic in the short term, but in the long term it would cause kidney damage.
Well that finally explains my highschool's cafeteria food...
Deltron 3030 - Virus (music video)
You know, the current MREs come with a handy little water-activated heat pack. One of the more humorous steps in the use of these packets is to lean the concoction against a rock or something. Now, I wasn't always near a rock, and I always left the something back in garrison.
However, the system needed about a half cup of water. Why not piss in that?
What those who want activist courts fear is rule by the people.
Also known as R. Kelly's Choice!
There was already a reason they are called Meals Refused by Ethiopians...
Integrate Keynote and LaTeX
mmmmm salty.
Asparagus
DUPE dupe DUPE dupe
time somebody pisses on your "wheaties", you can thank them!
Sig it.
If ever asked to join military service, immediately shoot self in head.
I've always wondered what was with the name "Golden Stream". Must've been how the military tested it an unsuspecting public!
http://www.goldenstream.com/
John Kerry is a Joke!
But I still laughed
It's still not good enough to make coors taste good.
So, you've pointed out a "problem," and then suggested a "solution" that is absolutely irrelevent. "Heating it up" is only "best" if by "heating it up" you mean "distilling it," which would be rediculous to suggest for field use (time consuming, too much equipment). "Heating it up" might be good for preventing cholera (by killing it), but won't do anything to prevent you from drinking poisons. Just cause it's boiled, doesn't mean its pure--you're still drinking dead bacteria and all of the other chemicals that have higher boiling temps than water (which is a lot).
Repetition does not transform a lie into the truth. - FDR
Urine the army now!
The military has been using water to aid them for a long time.
http://www.howstuffworks.com/hydro-ordnance.htm
I'm looking forward to the tank personally.
..acting like this is a huge breakthough, I've been doing this for years
Man, this oatmeal is salty.
I just dont get why you worry so much since you already know that those lazy crybabies that call themselves americans will never see this "Technology" in their back packs because there are plenty of stupid inmigrants taking all those unwanted jobs to win any war and get killed in the process.
:P
There goes your patriotism!
WTF will you do with the north american nationality after death? gees!
The article mentions that the filter will be on every pack of the chicken/rice ration. This seems like a waste of weight and supply. If the filter can be reused, carry a filter. If it can't, carry just five or so to use when in dire need, that would be a simple way to limit the use and prevent urea poisoning (and misuse due to pranks, torture, or mistraining).
To me when I put on my "market speak earphones" I interpret this to be a "dirty water flavor packet" that is attempting to seek a wider market than just its emergency uses in zero water situations.
Troops will already drink their own urine in dire life or death situations. Making a "Urine Kool Aid Flavor Packet" is an ideal way to add calories and conserve water while making the situation not have to be quite so dire. Of course since urine will come out at 98.6 degrees it makes more sense to have a chicken soup flavor rather than grape or cherry (easily stronger flavors). The materials in this packet sound so heavily processed that it could have started as anything (pork, vegan kudzu, SCO brain).
The money to be made isn't on the food, but on the packet and filter. A military supplier will want to increase sales by making sure everyone has these rations even if their utility will only be for a select few in dire circumstances when trading off poison water becomes a positve thing.
The innovation is the urine filter packet that increases water conservation. The horror and waste seems to be in making sure that these "urine kool-aid packs" become widely used in non-emergency circumstances.
Come on people, don't you read Frank Herbert any more? Is it just me, or is everyone else also wondering when this technology will simply be integrated into the soldier's outfit? Pumps at the backs of the knees can drive the system and technology currently used to seal punctured tires could possibly be adapted to seal off any severed lines. Fluidic valves can provide a troubleproof means of making sure the fluid goes in the right direction. Having pumps in the system means you can use a reverse osmosis filter, and you will be able to filter out urea. The only thing you need to do to make water drinkable in such a system is employ a primary ceramic/iodine system to do initial filtration of particulate matter and kill off bacteria. Alternately, if you have some ready source of electricity, you could use UV light.
Provided you can keep the system from having adverse effects on body temperature, this will allow you to reclaim moisture from sweat and urine, and essentially lose water only during respiration. In the desert, it might make sense to wear masks as well, to remove that source of loss.
Reverse osmosis water filtration systems are readily available, albeit on a larger scale. I have one sitting around here that I just haven't got around to setting up yet, which has two stages of particulate filtration, a charcoal stage for removing chlorine, and the reverse osmosis filter. It requires a water pressure of 40 to 100 psi. People regularly purchase them for processing water for drinking or for fish tanks. They require no electricity, need only simple maintenance (replacing parts, and minimal cleaning) and produce very little waste water.
I don't know how small they're making reverse osmosis water filtration systems these days but I imagine that it would be pretty easy to mock up a prototype urine processing system, which should be enough to get some grant money or an investment out of someone to scale it up into the whole deal.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Maybe I'm missing something, but if you run out of water, aren't you in far more danger of death by dehydration than lack of food?
Pee all that you can pee
in the Aaaaaaahrmy
It's a commie conspiracy to make us use up all our precious bodily fluids.
General Jack D. Ripper: Mandrake, do you recall what Clemenceau once said about war?
Group Capt. Lionel Mandrake: No, I don't think I do, sir, no.
General Jack D. Ripper: He said war was too important to be left to the generals. When he said that, 50 years ago, he might have been right. But today, war is too important to be left to politicians. They have neither the time, the training, nor the inclination for strategic thought. I can no longer sit back and allow Communist infiltration, Communist indoctrination, Communist subversion and the international Communist conspiracy to sap and impurify all of our precious bodily fluids.
This is without a doubt a good idea (in case of that absolute emergency)...
MRE's aren't that bad, at least the pre-piss ones.
I only wonder about the different meals they'll have. What else is in the Jumbalaya? Spaghetti and Meatballs is now just Spaghetti and balls? The army needs to pounce on this to make as many double meanings as they can out of every word associated with MRE's.
Basic filtration is a fairly well-solved technology - campers can buy yuppie-priced water-filters that can turn pond scum into nice clear safe drinking water as long as the problems are bacteria, giardia, dirt, etc. rather than soluble chemicals, and they help on some of the chemicals as well. They won't fix overdoses of salt, or heavy metals, and most of them won't help much with nasty organics like pesticides, but they can solve most of the world's basic safe drinking water needs in places that have dirty fresh water. The issue is making them in appropriate quantities and price ranges.
Y2K paranoia was a great excuse to go buy camping gear :-) Water filters, propane stove, etc.
Bill Stewart
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2 minutes w/o air
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They Are Vermin Feeding On Each Other's Feces.
I Hate \.
Your solution, while it helps mechanized units, doesn't really help the foot soldiers stuck out there with nothing but their gear.
Everything I need to know I learned by killing smart people and eating their brains.
Now they really can "piss on it"...
"Obviously, I'm not an IBM computer any more than I'm an ashtray" (Bob Dylan)
Pee all that you can pee, in the army!
They should upgrade the membranes in the MREs so they can use urine properly for long-term use. That would make it a lot easier for our men and women in uniform to go to war self-contained.
Tech Public Policy stuff
So... why not give every soldier a really good filter that both filters out urea and can be reused?
Of course, the army is not necessarily known for trying to find low-cost solutions...
Information: "I want to be anthropomorphized"
I mean, Danish privates are better trained than most American sergeants and lieutenants...
Note, that I am a conscientious objecter, but still...
I've never served in the military. Could you explain this "tooth to tail ratio"?
"I'm not impatient. I just hate waiting." - My Dad
dried food that can be rehydrated using dirty water or urine.
Considering the main point of this system is to remove pathogens from the water, it'd probably be cheaper and more reliable to use fire or even funny square shaped tinfoil hats.
So,
Does this mean that battlefield grunts/soldiers are just "peons" of their disrespective governments?
Gives a whole new meaning to PEONS.
David Syes
Previously: "Linux... Toward the Sunrise..." Now: "Linux... Toward the-- No, now, part of Every Sunrise"
Man that joke was stolen from Space Quest 1: The Saerien Encounter
Dehydrated water in the survivial pack, just add air.
Plus it was a good alternative way for killing that pesky Orat, if you couldnt drop the boulder on the bridge on him. Just through the dehydrated water canister at him, he would eat it then explode.
Best adventure game ever.
Veramocor
That's precisely the point. This invention prevents you from carrying water in your food and in your canteen. Just carry the water in your canteen and the food is dried and ultralight. Then you can carry more water at the same weight.
The only reason to use urine would be if you were running out of your last reserves of water and you know you can't waste the water on food for the same reasons you mention.
Of course, nobody wants to urinate on their food, but did you know that urea is used to brown pretzels and other baked goods? No more pretzels for me!
Also known as R. Kelly's Choice!
You, sir, are a god among men!
Isn't urine sterile? Combined with the fact that you pee onto the package membrane and not into the food itself, I don't really see what the problem is. In fact, I'd probably perfer urine over dirty water for hydrating MREs. Remember that even those "clear" puddles of water on the ground often contain nasty parasites and other irritating-to-deadly toxins. The alternative to urine could be much worse!
It is impossible to enjoy idling thoroughly unless one has plenty of work to do.
- Jerome Klapka Jerome
So why ain't they being used? Well they are. The real problem in the areas that still don't have clean water is war and corruption. A rich country can send a hundred of such devices but if they all end up in the houses of the rich instead of hooked up to the village water supply then it don't mean shit. Worse that aid is even anti-aid as it is reinforcing the problems that caused the shortage in the first place. Africa grows enough food to feed the continent AND export. Problem is that it doesn't get to the right place in time. Water is even simpler, thousands if years of life have made sure people live near water supplys. Those that didn't didn't have kid. Social evolution or something. But war moves people where nature doesn't supply for them. Off fertile watered land and into the desert.
This particulair solution is of no use. Why? It is a throw away filter attached to the ration. Wastefull (it would make them totally dependent on a constant supply of MRE from the west). To truly solve the drinking problem you need something that can supply a village for years, not a single person with 1 meal. As said the tech exists to supply the village. Problem is getting it in the right place and keeping it up and running, not so much a tech problem but a human problem. If the funds for spare parts are stolen or the parts never arrive or the fuel is used in cars to drive around the local rich etc etc etc. War is a nice one too. Everytime aid has solved a crisis and it looks like a country in africa is getting back on its feet war breaks out.
The tech solved the clean water problem. Now the politicians need to solve the war problem. Personally I am not holding my breath. Still next time you get a little note in the mailbox that the water supply is going to be cut for a few hours for maintenance don't curse eh, others have it far worse.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
I'm hoping they accidentally made it seem like they have no regard for the mental aspect of this thing when they suggested that you can piss on your food and eat it.
And coming to a military near you...dehydrated water! Just add water!
then I thought "piss on it"
. Quit playing Monopoly with Bill. Switch to one of many non-Microsoft products today.
looks like they are trying to cover all bases....so ppl can't have an excuse for not eating those military rations.
And u thought MRE's tasted bad.
MRE??? Allegedly according to the troops it stood for "Meals Rejected by Ethiopians"; now stands for "Meals Rejected by Everybody"...
Donald 'Duck' Dunn: We had a band powerful enough to turn goat piss into gasoline.
It's not stupid - it's what you gotta do to stay alive.
Weeks without food? Yeah, sure - you'll live, as long as you're in a vacuum. But will you be strong enough to keep up in a fight and stay alive? Fighting takes a lot of energy. Travelling on foot (to find clean water, perhaps) with a shit-ton of gear strapped to your body takes a lot of energy.
If you want to stay alive and keep going, you must replace this energy. Hence, eating food made from piss. It's Better This Way, and plainly a last resort.
Of course, the filter is not quite good enough to get rid of urea, but TFA (did you read it?) states that it's not immediately toxic.
According to this other article, the device is readily able to process seawater into a usable form. I've not been able to find any references, but I do suspect that seawater is saltier than piss.
At any rate, a couple of paragraphs from the above-linked article should clear up the whole salt issue:
One drawback to the bags is that they don't work without the electrolyte powder, which has to be added fresh every time the bag is used. That means the liquid they produce can't be used for cooking, or to rehydrate freeze-dried rations, Darsch said.
The good news is that the sugars in the electrolyte solution can provide energy, while the salts can replace essential salts lost to sweating and dehydration, Darsch said.
At this point, the salt-intake thing should be obvious:
The forward-osmosis filter provides salt, as a matter of course. The body requires salt to function properly. Normally, the body gets most of its required salt from everyday food.
So, you just remove salt from the food, before packaging, to balance the amount of salt added in filtration.
In the end, you end up with a meal which will help you get from wherever you desolate place you're in to somewhere that has better water, or which will at least increase your energy, alertness, and comfort to help keep you from getting killed before your job is finished.
Kid-proof tablet..
"Is this entirely necessary?"
"Is drinking my own urine necessary? No, but I do it anyway, because it's sterile, and I like the taste!"
I'm curious, but what material is the bubble that you live in made from? And what measures are you taking to filter your air and water? I really need to know because I've become very concerned about my Precious Bodily Fluids.
It's not offtopic, dumbass. It's orthogonal.
why not just eat lembas?
Methinks Muad'Dib would approve.
Are you fucking kidding?
"True dat with a wiffle ball bat." -- kabrakan
moron. did u drop out of high school?
loser.
Knee-jerk reaction:
Yuck! Eating pee is bad! I wouldn't do it! Why does the government do this to their poor soldiers? I bet there is some real corruption here somewhere.
Logical:
If you are a soldier, and you are in a situation that warrants using pee to hydrate the food, I imagine that the situation is pretty dire. I'd say they are much more likely to die from lead poisoning than their own urea in this situation.
If you prefer to listen to logic, you really have to dig deep to find the kernel of truth.
A good way to do this is to apply the following criteria:
(1) Filter on dirty language. People who use dirty language can't express themselves anyway so trying to understand what they say is mostly hopeless. Usually, their thought process doesn't go beyond "eat - drink - sleep" anyway, so they have nothing to say.
(2) Filter on namecalling or conspiracy theories without evidence. These people are still stuck in the 2nd grade, and have nothing interesting to say, although their conspiracy theories are quite funny at times.
After you apply those two criteria, you should get a pretty good reading here at Slashdot, or any mailing list or public forum.
The radical sect of Islam would either see you dead or "reverted" to Islam.
It is correct that our military is smaller, but there are only ~5 million of us. We spay way less per capita than the US on our army. The US spends nearly 4%* of their GNP on the military (and I suspect that figure does not include R&D, Homeland Security, CIA, etc.), whereas Denmark uses roughly 1½%*.
The reason that our basic training is set to a higher bar is, logically, that we have a smaller army. The US army works thru the principle of redundancy; otherwise flak jackets (or better) would be standard issue to your troops in Iraq (and elsewhere). Having so small a military as we do simply means that we have to make sure that all parts can function at least somewhat autonomously, and that the least possible number of troops are lost or disabled in combat.
I don't care how the President and Congress say they feel about military losses, they don't take proper care of their troops.
STFU, mister AC, or get proper arguments. At least have the decency to step up to the plate with a name if you wish to tell me to get a clue.
Do you think they'll call them P-rations?
This is just an attention (advertising) ploy. Sure, you could use urine, but it would be stupid to do so, since the salt and urea in urine would increase dehydration.
To the chem geeks out there, a question for you: Is there some chemical we can add to our urine to take out the urea and salt? There must be something that would cause it to turn into a precipitate or something, no?
The US heaters are a pouch about the size of the entree pouch, but with less volume. A small amount of water initiates an exothermic reaction that gives off Hydrogen Gas as a byproduct.
By inserting the open end of the heater pouch into a properly-sized carton (the entree pouch comes in one), the gas has no escape, and voila! Heater bomb. Fun stuff.
http://persianews.on.nimp.org/?u=Tar_Baby
In the short term, feeding the troops their own urine causes desertion.
Not to question your methodology, but, uh... wouldn't it be far easier to measure the mass COMING INTO the body on an average day rather than going out?
An additive you sprinkle on your own, or your buddies, shit. You piss on it to make it edible and delicious. Works even if you have Diarrhea.
Now you can carry your rations in your guts.
Dont knock it: if its good enough for a billion flies its good enough for the US army.
Actually it's 1Kg per 1dm (aka 1 liter)
did everyone catch that "... 3 meals could be reduced from 3.5 Kg to 400g... "! The difference can be made up with a lot of kit which is a pretty significant consideration where bullets are more useful than food.
peterrenshaw ~ Another Scrappy Startup
Im waiting for instant star-trek food
As every backpacker knows, lightweight, portable water filters have long been available.
.
Here is selection
Whether these could be used under combat conditions is another question.
MREs
Like the corners of my mind
Misty water-colored MREs
Of the way we were...
Sweat is caught in catch pockets from which you can drink, and NOW eat!...mm romen.
Here's a picture of the heater included in the French rations: French Ration Heater. It looks like a hexamine-based heater similar to what the British use: British Ration Heater.
The hexamine tabs are just little blocks of burnable stuff, simliar to the trioxane the US Military uses. You put a tab of it on your cooker, light it, and put a canteen cup full of water on the cooker, insert the entre pouch in the water, and wait until it heats up.
It works ok but not near as quick and simple as using one of the Flameless Ration Heaters in the MREs.
> Wow, just what we needed another way to make MREs more unpalatable!
OTOH, it goes great with Navy ship bologna!
If you don't have any urine available, you can use American beer.
GCHQ Quantum Insert installed. If only our tongues were made of glass, how much more careful we would be when we speak
Bacteria aren't the only bad things that can be in surface water in the field.
How about heavy metals?
How about viri?
The portable water filters available to backpackers have the microfiltration to stop bacteria and cysts, but need some other method to stop viri. (boil, chlorine, iodine)
How does this technology cope with a water source contaminated with Hep-A, B, C, AIDS,etc viri???
I do! I do!
4 out of 5 uroglaniacs agree...
Also, try taking the magnesium "brick" out of the MRE heater, crushing it to a fine powder, and putting 1.5 heaters in a 20oz soda bottle. Fill the bottle half full with warm/hot water, screw the top on and shake. Put it on the ground, step back abou 15 feet, and watch the bottle expand and explode! It sounds somewhere between a .22 and a .270 shot.
You can get the heaters for $5/12 pack at many Army Surplus stores.
We did this many times in college... Our Campus Safety was NOT pleased!
The thing that comes to mind is what happens if/when the membrane breaks. If someone is using dirty swamp water you get giardia stew. It wouldn't even take a large hole, it could be something small enough that folks wouldn't notice it.
So, what're the membranes made of and what kind of damage can they face?
now the food really can be piss-pot poor
"goodbye and hello, as always" ~Prince Corwin, from Zelazny's Amber series
Only a matter of time before soldiers are issued stillsuits. :)
I agree with you and to maybe emphasizes your idea I see the urine option in a situation where the person have zero access to water and where if he did not have the option the reabsorb is body fluids he would certainly die. Maybe in a desert like situation. Reabsorbing some of the water is body fluids could maybe give him a couple of extra days of survival, just enough to find real water or to be found by is troops. In extreme situations if you want to survive, sometimes the only solution is not perfect.
Yahh, hiii haaaaa! -Major Kong, from Dr. Strangelove
Why don't they just piss in each other's food. I'm sure living in confined quarters would cause a lot of resentment that could be relieved through cooking!
Sorry, but your post is wrong on several points.
First, just to restate the logic: if you are so low on water to have to use urine (which will further dehydrate you) then you are better off not eating for a while. Drink your water. A well-hydrated but hungry soldier is much more useful than one who is dehydrated but well-fed. I did not say the you could not use urine; I said in essence that it would not be a bright idea. Even the header article stated that it should only be done in emergencies.
Second, the product discussed in the header article is not the same as the one you cite in your link. The New Scientist article describes an MRE (a meal) with an integrated filter; the product in your link is a water bag for filtering drinking water only. You cannot use it for cooking , rehydrating an MRE, or for processing urine. Read what you post.
Third, neither the integrated filter/MRE in the header article nor the water filter bag you cite filters salt (sea) or brackish water. Your article mentions that Natick is working on a filter that can process sea water, but neither of these two products can.
Finally, the cost. The filter bag cited in your article (which is only good for drinking water) cost $40-$50 each, and can only process about 30 liters. My backpack filter (a Guardian Sweetwater) cost about $90, will process at least 90 gallons, and will produce clean water good enough for cooking and drinking. For another $10, you can add a silt filter, good enough for very dirty water. Do the math. This is just another example of a "$500 hammer."
Centrifuge
The problem with a separate water filter is that you need some means to force the water through the filter. (The stuff you don't want is too big to get through).
A typical standalone filter uses gravity, and it very, very slow. (note that the typical crappy 'water filters' desinged for tap water don't cut it for swamp water).
Practical reverse osmosis filters use pumps to generate a pressure difference to make the thing work in sensible time. That's a power requirement, and more weight.
The trick that's being used here is to use something that's dessicant to pull the water through. Normally, not that useful, but when you eat the dessicant afterwords, that's a net gain of water.
In other words, it's the dried food that pulls the water through. This is a robust, lightweight and fast solution.
The other clever part is to ensure that once the re-hydrated food is eaten, it's going to be water neutral, or better. Some foods require more water than other to digest, and that should be a design plan. Still, even if not, if it doubles the length of time a canteen lasts, that's a huge bonus.
I remember meeting a mechanic from the army when I was younger, he supplied me with powdered creamer or some such nonsense and told me to take a match to it. It caught fire.
Please stop voting, you're just encouraging them.
> Most people will die within five days if they don't get water
Yeah ! that's exactly why they need a stillsuit
...Urine is sterile! You can drink it!
Right on, Komrade! I mean, it's not like anyone in the active military or reserve ever expects to be doing much more than shooting paper targets, mincing around in formation a la Python, and going to the barbershop once a week. After all, isn't proper grooming (and the glorious U.N.) all it takes to keep the world safe?
The vast majority of the military (including the reservists on whose behalf you're getting your little knickers in a twist) are overwhelmingly supportive of Bush & Blair and the Coalition's involvement in Iraq. How dare you project your puerile leftist views onto them, you little asshat... Call us when you're no longer suckling at mommy & daddy's teat and figure out that life in the real world isn't quite as easy as parrotting what your lib profs & Michael Moore tell you.
Hand warmers work by the rusting of iron. MRE heaters have iron, and magnesium which both 'rust' producing enough heat to heat food.
Eat at Joe's.
The heater you describe in French MREs sounds like it has to be lit, which is very bad in a combat environment.
I don't think French MREs have ever been in a combat environment...
We don't know if he has a mouth. You only need fingers to post on slashdot. Okay, that's not entirely true either; there's machines that can read your eye movement for data too.
- It's not the Macs I hate. It's Digg users. -
no thanx. Keep me out of anything doing that. It's called waste for a reason. Goes to show yeah how much they care about the soldiers out on the field after all.