Slashdot Mirror
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.
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 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
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.
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
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.
in the long term it would cause kidney damage.
Who would have thought that your kidneys couldn't handle a feedback loop.
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.
Note to ACs: I usually delete AC replies without reading them. If you want to talk to me, log in.