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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.
Wow, just what we needed another way to make MREs more unpalatable!
I suppose you really could say the food was piss poor.
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
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.
So are they going to call them MRPs (Meals Ready to Pee on)?
Trolls lurk everywhere. Mod them down.
It isn't useless technology - an army marches on its belly. And RTFA - they don't actually piss IN their food, they piss ON the PACKAGE the food is in, and a membrane similar to that in a reverse osmosis unit extracts the water from the liquid used to re-hydrate.
What they ought to do NOW is put the technology in the public domain, and donate a couple of million pouches to the Red Cross. I wonder how reusable the membranes are, and whether they could be used to create clean water once the ration was consumed?
"Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity." - Hanlon's Razor
A: Pea soup!
Q: This beer tastes like warm piss. ... desert
A: That's not beer, that's
Q: This food tastes like shit.
A: Sorry, we ran out of piss.
Q: Why are you so pissy lately? ...
A: You are what you eat, so
Q: Get over here. We need you to help make supper.
A: Sorry, I "gave" at the office.
Q: Who pissed in your cornflakes this morning?
A: Everyone.
Here, lets talk in some geek terms.
You know how the more fuel a rocket has, the more fuel it needs, due to the additional weight of that fuel? Understand how most of the fuel is ultimately spent in complete waste, as it's just carrying itself?
Kind of the same with water. Water is HEAVY -- seven pounds a gallon. We blow quite a bit of it just dragging it around -- and don't worry, it provides all of no calories; it's useful as a catalyst and a cooler, but not as a fuel. Almost all the water we consume is just excreted back out, pretty clean too (urine is one of the purer substances to leave the body). It's be pretty useful to be able to fully filter the stuff and reintroduce it to our food. Perfectly efficient, no, but would you rather lug around 50 pounds of water?
--Dan
Foreign Soldier 2: A whole case? Bring it over. Trust me, these guys will drink anything. You won't believe what I saw them eat for supper.
And then there's this:
"Hey soldier, we need some fresh coffee. You mind filling 'er up?
... Thanks
Hey, the Colonel wants some cream. Here's a Penthouse. Do your duty, son...
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
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
Also known as R. Kelly's Choice!
Urine the army now!
Could you explain this "tooth to tail ratio"?
Sure. The tooth is the part that bites, and the tail is the part that drags behind. The tooth of a military force is the combat force, the actual fighting soldiers and their equipment. They're the people who actually push the enemy around and force the conclusion of the conflict. The logistical tail is the rest of the force, which exists to support the tooth and make sure it has everything it needs to fight effectively. Modern, mechanized military forces require incredible amounts of support. Ammunition, fuel, food, spare parts, intelligence, mail, etc., it takes a lot to keep them fully supplied, but they're also very fast and very hard-hitting when they're well-supplied.
However, while the tail is so crucial to the effectiveness of the tooth, it's also a liability itself. If the tooth is concentrated on taking the fight to the enemy, it can't focus on protecting the tail, which may leave the tail vulnerable to attack. Successful attacks on the supply lines leave the combat soldiers without supplies, dramatically reducing their effectiveness. The longer the tail, the easier it is to cut. Also, while well-supplied modern forces are highly mobile, the logistics chain is not, and the larger the tail, the more sluggishly it moves. This leads to situations where the combat forces can easily outrun their own supplies, effectively cutting themselves off. Last, all of the people and equipment who make up the tail cost just about as much money as the combat forces, but don't directly contribute to shoving the enemy around. The tail appears to offer no "bang" but costs a lot of bucks so for a given budget, a combat force that requires a smaller logistical tail is a larger, more powerful force.
The tooth to tail ratio, then, is a measure of how much of the force is dedicated to fighting vs support.
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