Stuff You Should Know - How long can you go without food and water?

Episode Date: February 10, 2009

When it comes to survival, food and water are pretty much non-negotiable. How long can you go without them? What happens to your body when you cross that threshold? Lend your ear to this HowStuffWorks podcast to find out. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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They just have way better names for what they call, like what we would call a jackmove or being robbed. They call civil acid. Be sure to listen to the war on drugs on the iHeart Radio App, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. Brought to you by the reinvented 2012 Camry. It's ready. Are you? Welcome to Stuff You Should Know from house.works.com. Hey and welcome to the podcast. I am Josh. There's Chuck. This is Stuff You Should Know. Welcome. How you doing? Bienvenue.

So Chuck, I just drank a Coke and I also ate some chips and salsa. Nice. And it was all on an empty stomach, so I feel like I'm going to vomit. Three of the four food groups are covered. Right. So yeah, you've got corn in the chips. You've got tomato, onion, god knows what else. Cilantro. Cilantro, sure. Is that a food group? Yeah. So you've got all the stuff in the salsa and the chips and then whatever's in the Coke, right? Sure. And all of it came to me and into my stomach because I am a member of the wealthiest nation on the planet. Okay. Well, yeah. Do you want me to get to the bottom of this? Yeah, kind of don't know where you're going. Well, ironically, I should say I didn't even

pay for this. I found it in the break room and ate it. Right. But I live in America and America's got the money to pay for food. So food naturally finds its way to countries like the United States, Western European countries, developed nations. Right. Right. It doesn't necessarily find its way to underdeveloped nations. Okay. Okay. So you're familiar with the carrying capacity, right? Yes. Okay. Well, then I'll explain it to everybody else. It's an anthropological term and I think it may also have to do with economics, but basically a carrying capacity is the total number of humans something can sustain. So like hunting and gathering, I think could sustain something like several hundred million people

up to maybe two billion, I'm not sure. Okay. And right as we were on the verge of hitting that mark, we came up with agriculture out of the blue. Gotcha. Agriculture can by estimates carry 10 billion people. Wow. Okay. We're coming up on that mark pretty quick. Oh, really? Yeah. I think we're supposed to hit 10 billion in like 2050 or something like that. Okay. And we may go, it may go shorter depending on, you know, if there's any kind of catastrophes or right, your food crises or climate change. Sure. It could go longer if we'd be, if our technology advances sufficiently, like, you know, we come up with Soylent Green or something like that. Right. Grow food in outer space. That's where we eat humans. Well, sure. Okay. The science

fiction film you're talking about. Sure. Right. Soylent Green. Yeah. Okay. So we may go more or less 10 billion, but 10 billion is usually the mark. And this has kind of been on the mind of some people for a while, right? Especially in the mid to late 60s, there was a food shortage and there were all sorts of predictions coming out that, you know, we were about to be screwed. We were in big trouble. And there is a book called Famine 1975 with an exclamation point and everything. Yeah. And it was an academic book and they used an exclamation point in the title. Wow. And basically, in it, the author suggests that we need to triage, essentially, who gets food. Right. So the countries that are contributing the most to the rest of the world through advancement and, you

know, whatever. Wealth. Right. They should get the most food. And basically, the other countries should be left to starve to death. It was pretty grim. It was written in 1967. And obviously, no one took that up and ran with it. Of course not. It's pretty creepy. But it seems like price mechanism kind of has come to fulfill that same prediction. You think? Yeah. Because if you look at it, if you look at the UN's World Hunger Map, the areas that are the hungriest are the areas that are the least developed. They have the least amount of food. And as if that weren't enough, it's all a vicious cycle. The more hungry you are, the higher your literacy rates are. Right. Unemployment rates, all sorts of mortality rates, obviously. So you can't really break your way out

of it unless somebody helps you. And the price mechanism theory, my theory, is supported by the recent food crisis we saw in 2007. Right? Okay. Yeah. Food just dried up everywhere. Why? Because fuel prices went through the roof. It got expensive to produce and transport food. Right. And so all of a sudden, it didn't go the way it used to. You know, Care International? No. Care. They're like an aid group. Okay. They have a food aid section. They actually stopped handing out surplus food. They can't get it anymore. Really? Yeah. So food is pretty much a wealthy luxury, sadly enough. It's interesting. And we're kind of hitting that famine 1975 scenario one way or another. Wow. I never thought of it that way. Yeah. And it is tough to think about it. And I mention all

this because we're talking about how long can you live without food or water, right? Right. Right. So I guess my goal was to kind of put a human face on this, like, what happens when you live in Bangladesh or, you know, Chad or somewhere and you are starving to death and even worse, you can't get any access to water. Yeah, or fresh water at least. From researching this, it's a horrible, horrible way to die. Yeah. I may reevaluate my dropping out of the sky in an airplane is the worst way to die. Right. Starving to death or dehydration might do it for you. Right. Yeah. So let's, I mean, how long can you go without food, say? Well, there's a general rule of threes. If you're talking about survival experts, they call it the rule of threes, oddly

enough. Let's hear. And supposedly you can go, and these are rough estimates, you know, we'll talk about the variances later, but you can go three minutes without air before you die, three hours without shelter if you're in a really harsh environment, three days without water, in three weeks without food, three hours without shelter. And if you're, you know, stuck in the freezing cold somewhere, that kind of thing. Sure. So that's the rule of threes. There's all sorts of play within that though. So if you're talking about food, how long you go food, three weeks, is actually kind of on target. You know, you can look at political prisoners that have gone on hunger strikes. Yeah. The IRA in the early 80s. Oh yeah. But they made a lot longer than three

weeks, right? Well, they did. And you can. And, you know, Gandhi fasted for exactly three weeks, but he was in his 70s at the time. Right. So he wasn't in, you know, premium condition, which obviously if you're in the most fit and the most healthy, you can go a little bit longer than, you know, someone who's grossly out of shape. Although having an abundance of fat actually would help you survive too. Right. So I guess that gets us into what happens when you start to run out of food, bringing up the fat part, because your body, what it does is it processes fat carbohydrates and proteins as the stored energy, right? Because that's surviving. That's energy you need, your cells need for, you know, to perform the functions

that they do. Right. Right. And so if you're talking about those three things and you're starting the process of starving to death, your body is going to burn up carbohydrates. That's the first thing it's going to burn up. Right. Which is, which is good because carbs make you fat. Sure. And then, then it starts to burn up your fat, stored fat. Even better than burning up carbs. Right. And if you have extra stored fat, that's why you might get less a little bit longer. I think you're, I would make it for a while. I think we'd beat the average. I have a few extra pounds. Yeah. I'm sure if that's what you're alluding to. I said you and I. Okay. And then after that, the proteins start to get burned. And that's bad news because

using up proteins is basically your body itself. Your body kind of consumes itself in a way. Right. So it's creepy. That's like the, maybe the structure, cellular structure, like you're just eating your own muscles or something like that. I don't know. Sounds pretty rotten either way. Yeah. That's, it's very rotten. Your metabolism comes into play, obviously. Right. Which is how your body converts food into energy. So if you have a real slow metabolism, you're going to burn your food slower. So you'll last longer. You have, which, which will also cause you to, you know, have carry a little extra weight if you have a slow metabolism. Right. But also you would be breaking down the carbohydrate

slower and then the fat slower and then the proteins more slowly, right? Yeah, Josh, I think this, that's probably the case. Okay. So that explains why you would live a little bit longer if you were starting. Right. In 1980, cocaine was captivating and corrupting Miami. Miami had become the murder capital of the United States. They were making millions of dollars. I would categorize it as the Wild Wild West. Unleashing a wave of violence. My God, talking about walking into the devil's den. The car sales, they just killed everybody that was home. They started pulling out pictures of Clay Williams body taken out in the Everglades. A world orbiting around a mysterious man with a controversial claim. This drug pilot by the name of Lamar Chester.

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extreme heat or cold, you wouldn't make it to the point where you actually starve to death. You would die from the elements before that because it would weaken your body. Tomato, tomato at that point. Right. Sure. Yeah. You're probably just whatever hastens death. I imagine at that point, it's okay. So there's different stages and there's different symptoms for the stages of starvation, right? So at first, I can identify with these like weakness, confusion, chronic diarrhea. Got it all the time. Right. I barely ever eat, right? Yeah. Don't you find that significant that your body starts ejecting stuff while you're starving? You would think it'd be hoarding it, right? Yeah, I guess it makes sense. But that seems to be a common theme that you have diarrhea,

which is just bad, because that will also lead to dehydration, which will get true in a minute, right? Exactly. And then advanced starvation, you're really bad off. You're convulsing. Right. You can have muscle spasms, irregular heartbeat, hallucinations, and then ultimately, you can die of shock, correct? Right. Well, your organs will just start shutting down basically. One by one? Yeah. You know, your body's a machine and they always say that and that food is the fuel. And so without it, you're literally just going to start breaking down bit by bit. You said Gandhi fasted for 21 days and he probably did it more than once, I imagine. Yeah, I think so. But when we were talking about the IRA earlier,

one of them made it 71 days. I think so. I don't remember the number exactly, but yeah. I think the last one made it 71 days and there were a group of 10 of them. Right. They were in prison in Great Britain and they started a hunger strike because they were being pretty much tortured. At the time, everybody hated the IRA and thatcher, Margaret Thatcher, who was prime minister at the time, would not budge. Right. Even though it became very public in the world. Yeah. And she kept repeating that these people are criminals and they're committing suicide and she had zero compassion for them. But from what I understand, it actually started to kind of turn the tide of public opinion slightly more in favor of the IRA than it had been before

because up to that point, they were just heartless bombers, you know? True. And actually it was 73 days. 73 days. Thomas McElwee, he lasted the longest at 73 days. And he lasted what, a week or so longer than the second? Yeah, a full week. Wow. Well, choosing to starve to death is one thing. That's pretty harsh. Yeah. And you've got to be pretty committed to your cause to do that. Sure. There's absolutely no way whatsoever you're going to last 71 days without water. Right. No, you never see anyone go on a dehydration strike. No, because even the IRA guys were taking small amounts of water, which is what allowed them to live that long. Exactly. You have to. It'd be a very short protest if you were doing a water strike. Agreed. And you would not get much accomplished.

Agreed. So what kind of time length are we talking? Well, go back to the threes. Three days, you could potentially live without water. Again, environment and what kind of shape you're in play or role. If you're obviously in the desert, you can start to be dehydrated within the hour. And you hear about, you know, these awful stories about like a baby being locked in a car that can die from dehydration just a couple of hours in a car. I think even shorter than that. I think, like, maybe an hour. Yeah. Yeah. And it's, um, I guess this is a point where we should say that this is not something anyone should test. You know, this is no laughing matter. The legal department loves you, Chuck. Yeah. I need to say these things because you do not want to test your body to see

how long you can go without water. You can go on fast and people do the cleanses and things. As you know, I've done my cleanse, the master cleanse before and, um, is that the lemonade cleanse? Yeah. Yeah. With the cayenne pepper, lemon and gray bean maple syrup. I've done that before too. All it did was kick up like chickenpox in me. Really? Oh, I was so sick after like four days. Yeah. Yeah. I couldn't hang. I pooped my pants. I'll bet you did. Once. That cayenne pepper moves through you, doesn't it? Yeah. It's, um, very, uh, it leads, lends itself to an accidental scenario. That is a sign of starvation. So it is. Yeah. So yeah, you can't live without water for very long. Um, you lose water when you sweat, when you urinate, um, water in your feces. Uh,

you lose water when you breathe through evaporation. So your body's constantly losing water. Yeah. Even like you said, when you breathe, I found that surprising until I really thought about it. I'm like, of course it's why you can see your breath. It's water vapor, right? Right. And you know, there's a lot of water. 65% of our body, I believe, is water and, uh, we need water. It, it carries, it runs through the blood to carry oxygen everywhere. Right. It acts as, uh, cushions for your joints and soft tissue and helps your food digest, helps you absorb food energy. There's actually this precarious balance going on, Chuck. There's this, uh, I guess kind of dance between water and solutes in your body. Okay. A waltz? Sure. Sometimes a foxtrot, depending

on the state of affairs. What's going on? Um, and so solutes can be things like calcium, sodium, electrolytes, things, things that you need, but you don't need an overabundance of them in relation to the amount of water. Exactly. You don't want a high concentration or a low concentration. And this is part of the homeostasis that, that, um, state of balance in, in your body's processes. Uh-huh. Part of that is, um, an isotonic state, which is a balance in the solution of solutes and water. Right. Got you. Got me? I got you. Okay. You got me. You're with me so far. I'm with you. So basically there's, there's two places, um, these solutions can be in your body, on the cellular level. They can be outside the cell, right, which is extracellular,

or they can be inside the cell, which is intercellular, but, and you want to have an equal and isotonic balance and equal solution inside and outside. That makes sense. Right. And if you, if one's thrown off, say, uh, there's a high concentration, which means there's a lot of solutes and not too much water, um, on the extracellular spaces, uh, the water is going to go from inside the cell to outside. It's, it's trying to strike a balance. Right. If you're not replenishing water and the water's being shifted around like this, that's when you're in trouble. Okay. That makes sense. Okay. Now, when you start losing water, you get thrown out of balance. Okay. When you get thrown out of balance, uh, basically dehydration, all sorts of terrible

things can happen to yourselves. Right. So let's say there is a buildup of sodium. You've seen what sodium does to your lips. Right. If you eat, have you ever had Burger King's chicken fries? No. Okay. Well, what are those? If you, if you, they were in ill-conceived and short-lived, um, they were french fries, but they were made of chicken. So they weren't, they were, it was chicken, a chicken nugget elongated into the shape of a french fries. And those things, you just, you took a bite and your lips were immediately chapped. Like you've been skiing for eight days. Really? Yeah. Oh my God. It was rough. So there's, um, there's too much sodium can dry out cells, right? It can wither them. So if you have too much sodium in your cells and not enough water,

they can shrink and become destroyed. And also outside of the cells as well, you have all sorts of processes going on. So if there's too much water inside the cells and not enough outside, the solution is too concentrated outside, then you have all sorts of connections, um, little vessels and things that can rupture, right? Yeah. Okay. So this is what's going on with dehydration. Actually, both of those can happen. Wow. So one of the processes that, that can take place and kill you very easily is cerebral edema. Yeah. That just sounds like a killer. It's not good. Uh, basically what happens is the, um, the, uh, an osmotic gradient occurs. So it's out of balance and the water is sucked into the cell, which sounds kind of weird because,

you know, you're dehydrated, right? But so it's taking any available water it can. Right. Um, and if that happens too much to sell, can rupture. And if that happens in your brain, your brain swells. Gotcha. And you're in big trouble. Sure. Uh, because once a cell is damaged like that, it can't be repaired. Gotcha. Gotcha. Yeah. The exact opposite can happen too. Your brain can, uh, if the balance is off, you have too much sodium, not enough water, uh, which seems much more intuitive in dehydration. Uh, the, the brain can shrink actually. You remember Terry Shiavo, right? The, the patient that was on life support and got so much media attention. I remember her. Right. Um, she, uh, actually when, when she finally died, you know, she died of

dehydration after 13 days. Right. They took her off life support. She was in a persistent vegetative state, which we've talked about before. Um, and she was basically just functioning on her brainstem. When they did the autopsy after she died of dehydration 13 days later, it was half the size, half of its normal size. Her brain was. It had just shrunk because of a lack of water. That's interesting. It is interesting and horrifying. It is. Fortunately from everything I've read, every medical professional said there's no way she can feel pain. Right. She's not in a state of consciousness where she can experience pain, right? Which is good because that would have been a really painful way to die. I would imagine dying of thirst or a dehydration starvation

is not a pleasant way to go. If you're, you know, obviously not in a vegetative state. Right. Sure. Yeah. Well, you know, though, you've experienced something similar before. I know you have, uh, when you've had a hangover, right? You know, this throbbing headaches that you have dehydration and your brain is literally shrinking, right? Right. Um, you're, you're, you're dried out basically. Um, you dehydrate when you, when you drink heavily. Um, and your body actually shuffles water around itself, right? To make up for where it's low, right? And one, one great store of water in your body is in your brain. So what's happening is water is being drawn from your brain and sent to other parts of your bodies to rehydrate them, which seems like a terrible

mechanism, right? And what's going on is your brain actually doesn't have any, um, any, any nerve endings. There's no way to feel pain in your brain. Right. But the membrane that connects your brain to your skull, it's called the dura. Right. It does have pain receptors. So that's where the headache comes from. It's being stretched and that's where you get the headache, which is why you need to replenish yourself with water. Well, yeah, they say, you know, uh, if you're drinking alcohol in large amounts for, you know, New Year's Eve, let's say, to, uh, toward the end of the night and you start slamming water or alternate the alcoholic beverage with a cup of water. I've always heard that too. I find it really difficult to do. Well, yeah, that's cause you have to put

down the glass of scotch in order to do it. So what else you got? You got anything else? Uh, I've got nothing else. You know, don't, don't try this at home. Uh, if you're in a survival scenario, though, you're going to want to get on the water to sweet. That's first order of business, unless you're obviously caught in freezing ice storm somewhere, then you're going to want to get your shelter really fast. Right. Also, you, you've got plenty of water right around you. Right. You need to melt it. True. Yeah, you have to melt it. That's a good point. You don't want to eat snow or chew on ice that will actually dehydrate you further. Well, it really, I know that the, the best way to drink water is at room temperature. That's when your body absorbs the most from it,

right? Yeah. But I didn't know you can't eat snow. Well, it's, uh, it, what it does is it drops your core body temperature so much that you're doing more harm than good. Gotcha. Gotcha. Well, again, don't try going without food or water. If you don't have to drink eight to 10 cups a day, I know it varies from different doctors, but I think by and large, if women drink, you know, roughly 90 ounces of water a day and men drink about 120 ounces a day, then you should be doing pretty well. You definitely want to dehydrate. Gotcha. And when your mom said that, uh, you should eat all your food because they're starving kids in China. She wasn't that far off. So consider that. And, uh, Chuck, what do we got? Uh, you know, I think we should, uh, give some props to some

of our podcasting mates here. I know that we have a lot of great fans and so does, you know, some of the other podcasts we do, but we have a great auto podcast, if you're into that called high speed stuff. And we have a music one that's been launched recently. It's very cool. Can't decide. Yeah. It's stuff from the B side. It takes an interesting angle on different, uh, various music subjects as cool. I like it. And of course, uh, stuff you missed in history class. Great one. Yeah. And, uh, what else? Uh, brain stuff from our company founder, Marshall Brain. Good brain. And then, uh, we can't forget, uh, Strickland and tech stuff. He would badger us for the next few weeks. So tech stuff, you're into gadgets and technology. Then there you're

guys. Well, you can find all those on the house stuff works page of iTunes. And if you want to learn more about, um, how long you can go without food or water, you can type those words into our handy search bar at house stuff works.com. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit house stuff works.com. Let us know what you think. Send an email to podcast at house stuff works.com brought to you by the reinvented 2012 Camry. It's ready. Are you the war on drugs is the excuse our government uses to get away with absolutely insane stuff stuff that'll piss you off the cops. Are they just like looting? Have they just like pillaging? They just have way better names for what they call like what we would call a jack move or being robbed. They call civil

acid work. Be sure to listen to the war on drugs on the I heart radio app, apple podcast, or wherever you get your podcast. Attention, bachelor nation, he's back. The host of some of America's most dramatic TV moments returns with the most dramatic podcast ever with Chris Harrison. During two decades in reality TV, Chris saw it all. And now he's telling all it's going to be difficult at times. It'll be funny. We'll push the envelope. We have a lot to talk about. Listen to the most dramatic podcast ever with Chris Harrison on the I heart radio app, apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.