http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xUFQ2ECfPOw (Dodgeball Clip)

So what happens if a natural disaster occurs or if you get kidnapped or if apes take over the world? What do you do about consuming food or water? Your trapped, alone, and in need of natural human necessities in order to survive. I know it sounds gross, but could you possibly drink your own urine in order to survive?

The average healthy human’s urine contains 95% water and 5% various collection of waste products such as nitrogen, potassium, and calcium (Wilson 1). Urine is also sterile. With that being said, if water makes up 95% of your urine it must be okay to drink right? You might want to think twice before you take your first forceful gulp of your beautiful lemonade-like concoction. Studies show that if you drink too much of your own urine, it could cause some serious issues (Wilson 1). According to Chris Wilson, constantly drinking your urine is bad because “…all the stuff that your kidneys had attempted to excrete comes right back into your stomach, and much of it ends up back in your kidneys.” After days and days of refueling your kidneys with waste products, your urine will become extremely concentrated with dangerous waste products (Wilson 1). So, by consuming these dangerous waste products, a human could develop similar symptoms to total kidney failure (Wilson 1). So maybe drinking your urine to survive is not a good idea after all…

…BUT WAIT. There have been multiple stories and scenarios where abandoned or trapped humans survived by drinking their own urine. One Asian man who was trapped under a piece of ceiling from an earthquake in the Sichuan providence survived for six days from drinking his own urine (Wilson 1). Another man, named Aron Ralston, drank his own urine when a boulder fell on him in a Utah canyon… and he survived as well (Wilson 1). Other men, such as Dan Woolley, have spent 65 hours trapped under the rubble and ashes of Hotel Montana in Haiti after an earthquake where he drank his urine and survived as well (Bradley 1). Finally, on October 16, 1922, a 37 year old man, his wife, his daughter, and his mother were all found trapped under rubble from an earthquake in Egypt (Lowe 1). Every single person was dead except for the 37 year old man (Lowe 1). Coincidentally, the 37 year old man was the only one in the group that drank his own urine to survive (Lowe 1). So maybe drinking your urine to survive is a good idea after all…

Although those stories make it seem rather obvious that drinking your urine can help you survive, we must think of the third confounding variables that could have swayed the outcomes. Maybe those individuals were healthier than the average human? Maybe those individuals were not drinking their urine for a long enough time period to get sick? Maybe the three women, who were found dead with the 37 year old man, died as soon as the rubble fell on them? Maybe those individuals just got lucky.

So what do you think? Would you drink your own urine to survive?