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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.
Yes, and by using the clean water you have for drinking instead of for rehydrating field rations, it lasts that much longer, and therefore, you do too.
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.
*cough* It's being sold to the military. Who said anything about being "cheap?"
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.
But if you reconsume the filtered water you've already consumed once...
I'll let you do the math.
Realize that the water in the rehydrated food will rehydrate you, assuming you then eat the food. Granted, you recycle and thus conserve water by drinking your own piss, but it's not like water used to rehydrate is wasted. If recycling waste water is really the goal, I'd think good portable filters would be a better idea.
The enemies of Democracy are
Would you mind explaining to me, Private Genius, how there's a net difference in water intake between those two scenarios?
:)
Not at all.
This allows you to reclaim water that otherwise you would have disposed of. So, if you have 2 canteens' worth of potable water and a puddle, you can drink those canteens, and then reclaim however much you need to rehydrate your meal from the puddle. This gets you 2 canteens plus part of a puddle's worth of hydration. If you don't have this, you only get 2 canteens' worth.
Alternatively you can reuse those two canteens' worth by using your urine to rehydrate your food, getting double-use out of at least some of that water.
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
As sad as it may be, there are already many resonably affordable solutions available for cleaning water, including some very creative ones that run off solar power. The problem is not the technology - its that even if you charged a fraction of a cent per filter, the parts of the world that need them the most would still be unable to afford them. Additionally, the infrastructure required to distribute them is simply not there in many places, so the cost of the actual (cheap) water purification devices ends up being dwarfed by the cost of delivery and instructing on their proper use.
Wouldn't sweat and tears work if there was enough to rehydrate the pouch? They're both made of salt water. What about saliva?
Not only that, but you reduce the amount of weight you're carrying in rations, which could then be replaced with additional water equal to the lost food weight.
Does anyone else but the US call their combat rations MREs? But I digress. The taste of rations is definitely a matter of opinion. I traded for a few French rations and found them too rich for my taste. BTW, the French and Belgians were anxious to trade for MREs. It seems variety is the real scourge of combat rations. Eat enough of them and you'll crave anything else that provides variety.
The fact that you have to actually use flame to heat the Franch rations (don't know if this is still true) is a serious mitigating factor in real tactical situations. It means that you wind up eating the damned thing cold. MREs are lighter and can be stripped down more easily, heated in your cargo pocket while you're on the move, and are more practical in general for grunts.
But then I've never been a huge fan of French food anyway, so take my comparison for what it's worth. If only I could have met some Italians and traded with them. Anyone know how their combat rations taste?
Read the EFF's Fair Use FAQ
Frank Herbert figured out what needed to be done, but didn't have the technology to actually make one. (Dune was first published in 1963) The Army can't do still suits due to weight and the sheer size, remember that they were in essence body suits.
Pete Carr Owner Chatmag.com
i love the fact that our govt expects soldiers to use military items which are known to have significant health risks in the near and long term. its one thing to put our soldiers into situations where the enemy may cause harm to the soldiers, but when our government(military) promotes (mandates) the use of items, equipment, chemicals, etc which are known to cause long term harm to the soldiers, i think we have to question the morals of those who are in charge of this country. and no i am not referring to just these potentially new rations--the military has a chronic record of exposing out troops to known dangers.
Troll, Troll, go away and flame again some other day
I think the urine thing is over-emphasized by the press. The idea with such packages is that you can scoop up swamp water if you want. Urine could be used in an absolutely dire emergency, and if I was stranded somewhere and the only fluids I have are the last few ounces in my canteen and my urine... heck yeah, *zip.*
Then again, if the water situation is really that desperate, wouldn't eating hinder your chances of survival, not help them?
How much damage would there be, anyway? Any more than, say, regularly drinking whiskey?
But the whole thing brings to mind a guy I know who sold water filters in the early 90's. He'd demonstrate their effectiveness by pouring coffee through them. Not that anyone would *want to*, but they could. Same deal here.
Blackadder III wore this trope out ten years ago.
Guess what, starvation causes long and short term health problems too.
Even in the short term I think I would have some issues asking someone to pee on my food so I could eat it.
It's right in the quote you used: "...in the long term it would cause kidney damage." If you're in a situation long enough that you're going to have to pee in a food pouch enough times to be considered long term and thus toxic, you're in a lot more trouble because by that time you've run out of any water source other than the kind you can make.
Given the current situation most deployed soldiers face- roadside bombs, bullets, kidnappings with beheadings, and the other ways they can be stabbed, shot and blown up, how deadly do you think one or two or even three pissings is going to be? The company that made the membranes said not to use urine unless you have to. But to read your post, it's like that is the standing order on these things: Piss in them if you want to eat. And it's not so.
It's all good in a hypothetical: "I think I'd rather steal food from natives than eat US Amry-supplied kidney damaging "food"." Seriously? You've got the balls to steal food from some guy who's only goal is to kill you, but you can't suck it up as a LAST RESORT to piss in a pouch? Please. If it came down to being that dire of a situation, just eat the food and let it "rehydrate" in your stomach.
Good luck surviving any kind of situation which might cause you to step outside the norm.
R(k)
Then you're a shitty Marine.
Yes, and they also try to keep them alive. Consider this:
"The Chinese had thrown thousands of men against it, but the company held like a rock. The unit was cut off from its battalion, isolated deep in enemy territory; battered and bruised it held on, and when ammo and food ran out, the troupers lived off the land and used captured weapons. They built a barrier wall of tree branches, like the men at Valley Forge; the Chinamen came and the Chinamen went and the valient unit did not give an inch, until finally a U.S. tank force broke through and extricated it."
That was Lt. Doug Anderson's company in Korea. He was put up for the Medal of Honor, but didn't get it. If you think the men in that battle preferred eating grass to a ration that becomes edible with muddy water or urine, you should read a little military history.
Question the morals of those in charge, but thank every scientist who gives the grunts a way to get a meal better than "centipedes in chili sauce" when things go pear-shaped.
(the quote was from "About Face" by Lt Col Hackworth.)
"I think I'd rather steal food from natives than eat US Amry-supplied kidney damaging "food"
I'd rather eat whatever isn't lilikely to be poisoned.
"Derp de derp."
they train them to use vehicles and weapons to engage and kill the enemy, and also to take fire and be killed. once you're over that, eating your own piss is a walk in the park.
While I'm not really disputing that governments put their troops in danger in many ways, I think you may be misinterpreting the article a bit.
The story is not asserting that eating pissy chicken once will cause health problems over the long term. It's saying that eating pissy chicken over the long term will cause health problems. Resorting to it a few times when it's the only alternative to starvation will not have any long term consequences.
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.
I think you're overstating it. You can go without water for a few days, you can go without food for a few weeks (provided you have water!).
Otherwise people would be dying of dehydration in their sleep :-)
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?