Stuff You Should Know - Exactly what happens if we run out of water?

Episode Date: July 31, 2008

In 1995, World Bank vice president Ismail Serageldin declared that "the wars of the next century will be about water." Check out our HowStuffWorks article to learn what happens once we run out of water. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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agency would turn out to be a front for a drug pilot who would claim he did it all for this CIA. I'm Lauren Brad Pacheco. Join me for murder in Miami. Talk about walking into the devil's den. Listen to Murder in Miami on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hi and welcome to the podcast. It's Josh and Chuck here. Josh Clark and Charles Bryant. Just a couple of staff writers at HowStuffWorks.com. That's all we are. That is it, Chuck. Chuck, I imagine you're familiar with Darfur, right? Yeah, I am. I keep up with the news. Have you heard about basically the peace agreement falling apart lately? Yeah, I think you should tell people though. Okay. Well, basically, in 2006, the Sudanese government had a peace accord established with

this lone rebel faction. And there's a multitude of rebel factions fighting each other and the Sudanese government right now in Sudan. And basically, one rebel group, the Sudanese liberation movement, stepped forward and said, you know what? We'll come up with a ceasefire. Let's come up with an accord, a power sharing agreement, that kind of thing. And everything was going pretty well until apparently the Sudanese army bombed some villages that are under SLM control. Right. This happened like yesterday, basically. So now, all of a sudden, the SLM leaders accusing the president of Sudan of even further war crimes. The president, Al Bashir, I think, is his last name. He is basically about to be indicted by the Hague. And he's in big trouble. Crimes against humanity,

war crimes, the whole shebang. Yeah. So it sounds like things are falling apart as if they couldn't get any worse. Right. It's pretty heavy stuff. But did you know that one of the reasons why the conflict in Sudan has taken like 200,000 lives so far, started in 2003, it was in large part started over access to drinking water. Right. And that's not unusual. You know, safe drinking or clean drinking water in third world countries and around the world is getting more obsolete. And it's kind of a problem. It definitely is. As I understand it, 1.2 billion people don't have access to clean drinking water. Right. That's like 20% of the world population. I know. And sadly, I think 6,000 children every year die because they don't have access to safe drinking water. And that's a very

startling statistic. Yeah. And there's plenty of them. I mean, we could sit here and rattle them off. Basically all of what they add up to is that we're running out of water and we're beginning to see the effects of that. Africa seems to be kind of the at the cutting edge of all things horrible for some reason. Right. And right now, it looks like what we're seeing in Africa as far as water goes is what the developing world is going to see in 20 or 50 or 100 years. Largely because we don't value water. It's cheap. Right. It's cheap and people use it like it's free. Yeah. I mean, I think it takes like 12 gallons to sustain a human being every day. Right. 12 gallons of water and that includes everything. Right. Bathing and drinking water and cooking. Yes. Toilet cooking.

The whole shebang. Right. So you've got 12 gallons that you need to stay alive, right? Americans use, I think, 158 gallons a day on average. Right. Every single one of us on average uses that much. And true American spirit, we don't treat it with much respect right now. No. So I mean, what will happen if we start to run out of water there, Chucker? What happens when we in the developing world, I should say, run out of water? Well, there could potentially be, you know, wars fought over water. I know that the World Bank Vice President at one point said that the next wars in the next century will be fought over water. Yeah. He said that in like 1995 and we only had to wait like eight years, three years into the 21st century when Darfur breaks out.

Right. It was the first war fought over water in like 4,500 years. The last one was among Mesopotamians, I think. Right. So and what happened to them? Exactly. It's a cautionary tale if I've ever heard one. Right. I think part of the problem is that water is, you know, a lot of times the countries and even states share borders with bodies of water. So it's not the kind of thing you can really claim ownership of. So, you know, here in Georgia, we had a situation recently where we had, well, we're still in a drought, but we had a situation with Alabama and Florida and I think Tennessee even, where we're kind of all battling for the same water. Well, we drew Tennessee into it by suing to have the Georgia border go into the middle of the Tennessee River all of a sudden,

rather than at the banks. Right. Based on an old survey that they said was incorrect from the 1800s. Yeah. And it was, you know, no one really cared much until now and now we kind of need that water, but it's not a problem when there's neighboring states and everyone's good friends, we're trying to work it out diplomatically. Yeah, there's no war crimes going on yet. No, but it can be a problem in developing nations where, you know, they're not exactly the best of friends. Right. Exactly. And it's a little more dire of a circumstance and so you can have wars break out over water. Well, even beyond wars, I mean, there's a pretty, I imagine, a predictable model of what will begin to happen when you start to run out of water. The first thing

that would go would be crops, right? Because, I mean, we need food in much less supply than we need water. But, you know, water's the basic essential ingredient of everything. We need, we can go like two days without water, but like eight weeks without food, right? Yeah, about 60 days you can live without food as long as you have water, but three to five days without water and it's dehydration and death. Right. And ironically, though, we need water to raise that food. So even if we have drinking water, we're still going to need food eventually. So you run out of water, you run out of food. If you run out of food, right? All of a sudden, the farmers who were, you know, once raising these crops and livestock still need money to survive. They still

need money to get by and to be able to purchase whatever food's available, right? Right. So they start moving to the cities. Exactly. And then the city experiences this big population boom that strains the infrastructure. Right, the sewer system. Which eventually is broken and becomes polluted, which takes out even more of the water supply. Right. So it really is a trickle down effect and it's excused upon there, but it affects everything all the way on down and it's wide reaching. Yeah. So basically, this is kind of the nightmare scenario that we're facing. And one of the things that I questioned when I was looking into this for this article, exactly what happens if we run out of water was, okay, well, we've got climate change going on,

right? Now, clearly there's some climate skeptics. Right. Also an article on howstuffworks.com. But for the most part, most people can see quite clearly that, you know, some 18,000-year-old glaciers around the world that have sustained humans for as long as humans have lived near them are suddenly losing 60% of their mass in like the last 20 years, right? Right. So why don't we just drink all that? Well, sounds like a good idea to me. It is. The problem is, is we rely on these glaciers, which support billions of people in like Asia, South America, Central America. They rely on them for their drinks supplied to kind of melt in a predictable rate each year and then be replenished by snow. Right. Well, if it's too warm to support like a snow peak or a

glacier any longer, it's not being replenished. It becomes part of the rain cycle and eventually becomes salinated water. Right. And we have water water everywhere, right? Exactly. So most of the Earth's water is either ocean or locked in ice right now for the time being. It'll eventually be mostly ocean, right? Right, which we can't drink. We can't or can we? Well, I know that if you drink plain salt water, it'll dehydrate you even more. But I think you might be talking about removing the salt from the water. Yeah, desalination. Right. And that's actually in in progress right now. There's some desalination plants around the world that are that are providing fresh water from salt water, but it's like super, super expensive technology right now.

Yeah, that's one of the problems. I know another one of the cool ideas that they're working on bioengineers are trying to produce crops that need less water or that can live through artificial irrigation, which I know a lot of people against this think it's kind of creepy to eat this bioengineered food. But it might be a good solution. If it'll save us water, I think everybody will just kind of, you know, get on board. Tongue exactly, right? And you know, agriculture as it stands is basically one of the biggest users. Actually, the biggest user of water. I think it uses 70% of the global water consumption goes to agriculture. Right. The problem is, is our irrigation technology is just so terrible. We lose like 42% of that water. Yeah, it's not a very efficient

system, which is that's the big problem. That would definitely help as well. In addition to creating those hybridized crops, that kind of thing. Yeah, I know drip irrigation is I think 90% effective or efficient. It's the wave of the future, in my opinion. I think you're right. So Chuck, do you know anything about carrying capacities? I know a little bit, but I think you might be the man in this round. Well, I did study anthropology at Dear Old University of Georgia, and that's what I first learned about. Carrying capacity is basically the total number of people that any kind of anything can sustain, especially with food, water, that kind of thing, before we overtext the planet to the limit. So we used to run around as hunter-gatherers, right? Some of us

still do. Right. That's true. But for the one time, all of us did. And we're, that can sustain like 20 million people, then all of a sudden we come up with agriculture 10-12,000 years ago, and all of a sudden we can sustain 12 billion people with that, right? Right. That switch from hunting and gathering to agriculture gives some people hope that technology is going to be able to stay ahead of this curve, and that we will never actually reach the carrying capacity. We'll have moved on to something else, and the day will be saved, and we will create statues for scientists. Right. That's what I'm hoping for. Yeah, me too, Chuck, because the alternative is kind of scary. Yeah, and thirsty. Yeah. Well, I'm going to drink my out-of-date fresca and really enjoy it for once. Thanks, Chuck.

If you want to learn more about water and exactly what will happen if we run out of it, type in exactly what happens if we run out of water on howstuffworks.com and stick around for Chuck's recipe for a water-free breakfast smoothie right after this. It's good. Stuff you should know is brought to you by Visa. We all have things to think about. Like say, what's the best site to buy a new leather jacket, or whether to buy the three or six megapixel camera. But thankfully, we don't need to think about online fraud, because for every purchase you make, Visa keeps an eye out for fraud with real-time fraud monitoring. And by making sure you're not liable for any unauthorized purchases, house that for peace of mind. Safe, secure, Visa. So, Chuck, give up your secret.

Tell us this a great recipe. It's really good, Josh, and good for you. Good. What I do is, I prep ahead of time and make them kind of throughout the week. So, I'll get a bunch of strawberries and some raspberries and blueberries, and I'll chop them up, well, chop up the strawberries, and I'll freeze it. And that's one of the keys, that everything's got to be frozen. I hadn't heard that one before. Oh, yeah, it's good. That's why my smoothies are terrible, I guess. Right. Well, it keeps you from having to add ice with if all the fruit is frozen. So, you put all that in a blender or a food processor with a banana, and then you add some orange juice, and then you add the secret ingredient is vanilla protein powder, which you get at your

health food store. I can eat that stuff dry right out of the canister. I know, it's good. So, you blend that all up. It gets nice and thick, and you've got a delicious breakfast smoothie on your hands. That's fantastic, Chuck. Now, you can find all sorts of great recipes, not necessarily Chuck's water-free breakfast smoothie recipe, but some other really great ones on the food channel on HowStuffWorks.com. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit HowStuffWorks.com. Let us know what you think. Send an email to podcast at HowStuffWorks.com. Brought to you by the Reinvented 2012 Camry. It's ready. Are you? In 1980, cocaine was captivating and corrupting Miami. The cartels, they just killed everybody

that was home. Setting an aspiring private investigator on a collision course with corruption and multiple murders. The detective agency would turn out to be a front for a drug pilot, would claim he did it all for this CIA. I'm Lauren Bright Pacheco. Join me for murder in Miami. Talk about walking into the devil's den. Listen to Murder in Miami on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. In 1968, five black girls were picked up by police after running away from a reform school in Mt. Megs, Alabama. I'm writer and reporter Josie Deffie Rice. And in a new podcast, I investigate the abuse that thousands of black children suffered at the Alabama Industrial School for Negro children and how those five girls changed everything.

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