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Gary

wrote:
> ... one thing puzzles me. Any detailed account of the Mayflower voyage says that even the children had to drink beer after a while. Wouldn't everyone have been close to dying of thirst as a result, by the time they landed? (Alcohol is very diuretic, for those who don't know.)

Even though beer is definitely diuretic, it's mostly water and
your body still gets water each day. You eliminate it fast but
the body does get some of the water first so that's better than
nothing. Not so healthy but you could probably go for quite a
long time using only beer for hydration.

Not only that, all that watered down pee can be consumed one more
time without any bad results. Just drink it right away...after
that first pass, it will be mostly water and little or no
alcohol. Ask Bear Grills about that. heheh I watched one of his
survival shows where he found a fresh pile of elephant poop and
squeezed the water out of it to drink. It was a survival tip.

And one more thing I've learned about survival at sea - if water
supply is low, you can actually add a small percent of seawater
to fresh water to extend your supply. I forget how much...maybe
up to 30% seawater added to fresh water and you can still survive
much longer without severe organ damage in extreme conditions.
Mainly kidneys that fail first I think if you drink pure
seawater.

YMMV!