How long can you go without food and water?

I'm gonna vomit. Three of the four food groups right cover right, So, yeah, you've got corn in the chips, You've got tomato onion, God knows what else is cilantro in cilantro? I'm sure is that a food group? So you've got all this stuff in the salts and the chips and and then whatever's in the coke, right, um, And all of it came to me and into my stomach because I am a member of the wealthiest nation on the planet. Okay, Yeah, do you want me to get to the bottom of this? Yeah, I 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 brake room and ate it. Okay, 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, it doesn't necessarily find its way to underdeveloped nations. Okay. So you're familiar with the carrying capacity, right, Okay, Um, well then

I'll explain to everybody else. Uh. 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. Uh, something can sustain so like hunting, hunting and gathering. I think could sustain something like several hundred million people up to maybe two billion, I'm not sure. Uh. And right as we were on the verge of hitting that mark, we came up with agriculture out of the blue. Agriculture

can buy estimates, Uh, carry ten billion people. Okay, we're coming up on that mark pretty quickly. Yeah. I think we're supposed to hit ten billion in like or something like that, and we may go it may go shorter, um, depending on you know, if there's any kind of catastrophes or major food crises or climate change. It could go longer if we'd be if our technology advances sufficiently, like you know, we come up with soilent green or something like that, right, grow from food in outer space. That's

that's where we we eat humans. Okay, that the science fiction film you're talking about, soilent Green. Yeah, okay, So so we may go more or less ten billion, but ten billions usually the mark And um. This has kind of been on the mind of some people for a while, right, Um, especially in the in the mid to late sixties, there was a food shortage and there were all sorts of predictions coming out that you know, we were about to

be screwed, we're in big trouble. Um. And there is a book called um Famine nineteen seventy five with an exclamation point or anything. Yeah, And it was an academic book and it used an exclamation point in the title UM. And basically in it, the author um suggests that we

need to triage essentially who gets food. So the countries that are contributing the most to the rest of the world through advancement and you know, um whatever, uh, 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 nineteen seven, 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 the eu n's World Hunger Map, uh, the 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, unemployment rates, all sorts of mortality rates obviously, um, 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 two thousand seven, right, food just dried up everywhere. Why because fuel prices went through the roof. We got expensive to produce and transport food, and so all of a sudden it didn't go the way it used to. You know, care International there like an aid group, the Food Aid Group, and they have a food Aid section. They actually stopped

handing out surplus food. They can't get it anymore. Yeah. So food is pretty much a wealthy luxury, sadly enough. And we're kind of hitting that famine nine seventy scenario one way or another. Wow. I never thought of it that way. Yeah, And it is tough to think about it. And I mentioned all this because we're talking about how long can you live without food or water? Right? Right?

So I guess my 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 or fresh water, at least from from researching this, it's a horrible, horrible way to die. Yeah, I may i may um, I may reevaluate my dropping out of the sky in an airplane is the worst way to die. 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. Odly enough, and uh, supposedly you can go and these are rough estimates, you know, there's 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. So that

that's the rule of threes. Um. 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. Um. You know, you can look at political prisoners that have gone on hunger strikes. Yeah, the IRA in the early eighties a lot longer than three weeks.

Well they did, and you can and you know, Gandhi fasted for exactly three weeks, but he was in his seventies at the time, 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. So I guess that gets this into what happened is when you start to run out of food, bringing up the fat part, because your body what it does is it processes uh, fat, carbohydrates, and proteins as the stored energy, right, because it keep surviving. That's energy you need your cells need for you know, to 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, uh, your body is

going to burn up carbohydrates. That's the first thing that's going to burn up, which is which is good because carves make you fat, sure, and then uh, 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, if that's what you're alluding to, I said you and 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 is kind of consumed itself in a way, 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. It sounds pretty rotten either way. Yeah, that's that's very rotten. Your metabolism comes into play obviously, which is how your body converts food into energy. So if you have a real slow metabolism, you're gonna burn your food a slower so you'll last longer you have which which will also cause you to you know, have carry 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 that's that's probably the case. So that's explains why you would live a little bit longer if you're starting. Climate plays plays a role. If you're in the freezing cold or in the burning heat, neither one of those are aren't any good because you're gonna die faster basically,

which actually in this case may be better. Uh Well, chances are if you're in extreme heat or cold, you wouldn't make it to the point where you actually starved to death. You would die from the elements before that because it would weaken your body, you know, and tomato tomato at that point, right, sure, yeah, you're probably just you know, whatever hastens death, I imagine at that point

it's okay. So, um, I mean there's different stages, and there's different symptoms for the stages of starvation, right um, So at first, you know, and you can I can identify with these like weakness, confusion, chronic diarrhea, got it all the time, I barely ever eat, right. Um. Don't you find that significant that you you your body starts ejecting stuff while you're starving. You would think you'd be

hoarding it, right, Yeah, I guess it makes sense. But that's that seems to be a common theme that that you, um, you you have diarrhea, which is just bad because that will also lead to dehydration, which we'll get treated in a minute, right exactly. Um, and then advanced starvation. You're you're really bad off. You're convulsive. Um, you can have muscle spasms, a regular heartbeat, m hallucinations. Uh, 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, food is the fuel, and so without it, you're literally just gonna start breaking down bit by bit. You said, Gandhi fasted for twenty one days, and he probably did it more than once, I imagine. Um. But when we were talking about the IRA earlier, they one of them made it seventy one days, I think, so, I don't remember the number exactly, but I think the

last one made it seventy one days. And um, there were a group of ten of them, right they were in prison in Great Britain, and they started a hunger struck because they were being um, pretty much tortured. At the time, everybody hated the IRA, and Thatcher, Margaret Thatcher was Prime Minister at the time, would would not budge. She went doing very public and yeah the world and um she she she kept repeating that these people are criminals and they're committing suicide and she had zero compassion

for him. But from what I understand, it actually started to kind of turn the tide of public opinion slightly more in favor of the I R A UM than than it had been before, because up to that point they were just heartless bombers, you know. So, and actually seventy three days. Thomas mcawie he lasted the longest at seventy three days, and he lasted what a week or

so longer than the second Yeah, full week. Well, choosing to starve to death is one thing that's pretty harsh, and you've got to be pretty committed to your cause to do that. There's absolutely no way whatsoever you're gonna last seventy one days without water right now. You never see anyone go on on a dehydration strike, no, because even the I ra a guys, um, we're taking small amounts of water, which is what allowed them to live

that long. Exactly, you have to would be a very short protest if you were doing a water strike, agreed, and you would not get much accomplished. So what what kind of time length they are we talking? I'll go back to the threes three days you could potentially live without water. Um. Again, environment and what kind of shape you're in play a role. If you're obviously in the desert, you can start to be the hydrated 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 the car. I think you've been showing them that. I think like maybe an hour. Yeah, yeah, and it's um, I guess this is the point where we should say that this is not something anyone should test. You know, this is

no laughing matter. 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 go without water. You can go on fast and people do the cleanses and things, as you know. I've done my cleans the Master cleanse before and um, is that the lemonade cleans Yeah, yeah, with the cayan pepper lemon and gray bean maple syrup. I've done that before. To all it did was kick up like chicken pox and me, oh,

I was so sick after like four days. Yeah, yeah, I couldn't hank I pooped my pants. I'll bet you did. Once per moves through you, isn't it. Yeah, it's very h It leads lends itself to an accidental scenarios that is a sign of starvation. So it is 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. You lose water when you breathe through evaporation.

So your body is 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, that's why you can see your breath. It's water vapor right right, And you know there's a lot of water. Our body, I believe is water, and uh, we need water. It carries it runs through the blood to carry oxygen everywhere. It acts as 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. A waltz sure sometimes is a fox trot depending on the state of um. And so solutes can be things like calcium, sodium, electro lights, think things that you need, but um, you don't need an over abundance of them in relation to the amount of water. You

don't want to high concentration or low concentration. And this is part of the homeostasis that that um state of balance in your body's processes. Part of that is UM an isotonic state, which is a balance in the solution of solutes and water. Got got me? Okay, you got me, You're with me so far with 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, 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. Right, and if you if one's thrown off, say there's a high concentration, which means there's a lot of salutes and not too much water. UM on the extracellular spaces. Uh, the water is going to go from inside the cell outside. It's it's trying to strike a balance. If you're not replenishing water and the water is being shifted around like this,

that's when you're in trouble. That makes sense. Okay, Now, when you start losing water, you get thrown out of balance. When you get thrown out of balance, basically dehydration, all sorts of terrible things can happen. To your cells. Right, So let's say there is a build up of sodium. You've seen what sodium does your lips if you eat. Have you ever had Burger King's chicken fries? No? Okay, well what if you? If you they were an 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 and those things you just you took a bite and your lips were immediately checked like you've been skiing for eight days. Yeah, oh my god. It's 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 process He's 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, a little vessels and things that can rupture. Right, Okay, so this is what's going on with dehydration. Actually, both of those can happen. So One of the processes that that can take place and kill you very easily is cerebral adema. Right, that just sounds

like a killer. It's not good. Basically, what happens is the U the uh 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, but so it's taking any available water. It can um and if that happens too much to sell can rupture, and if it happens in your brain, your brain swells and you're in big trouble because once a cell is

damaged like that, it can't be repaired. The exact opposite can happen to your brain can if the balance is off you have too much sodium not enough water, which seems much more intuitive, and dehydration, uh, the the brain can shrink. Actually. Do you remember Terri Shiavo, right, the patient that was on life support and I got too much media attention. I remember her? Right? Um? She actually when when she finally died, you know, she died of dehydration.

After thirteen days 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 brain stem. When they did the autopsy after she died of dehydration thirteen days later, it was half the size, half of its normal size. Her brain was it just shrunk because of a lack of water. It's interesting, It is interesting

and horrifying. It is Unfortunately, from everything I've read, every medical professional said, there's no way she can feel pained. She's not in a state of consciousness where she can experience pain, which is good because that would have been a really painful way to die. I would imagine dying of thirst or dehydration starvation is not a pleasant way to go if you're obviously not in a vegetatus. Right. Yeah, well, you know though you've experienced something similar before. I know

you have when you've had a hangover. You know those throbbing headaches that you have. 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, And one one great store of water in your body is in

your brain. So what's happening is water is being on from your brain and sent to other parts of your bodies to rehydrate them, which seems like a terrible mechanism, right, But what's going on is your brain actually doesn't have any um, any any nervingtings. There's no way to feel pain in your brain. But the membrane that connects your brain to your skull, it's called the dura, it does have pain receptors. So that's where the 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 you need to start slamming water or alternate the alcoholic beverage with a couple of I've always heard that too. I find it really difficult to do. Well, yeah, that's because you have to put down the glass of scotch in order to do it. So what else you got?

You got anything else? I've got nothing else? You know, don't don't try this at home if you're in a survival scenario though you're gonna want to get on the water too. It's sweet. That's first order of business, unless you're obviously caught in freezing ice storm somewhere, and then you're gonna one to get your shelter really fast. Right. Also, you you've got plenty of water right around. 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 best way to drink water is that room temperature. That's when your body absorbs the most from it, right, But I didn't know you can't eat snow. Well, it's uh. What it does is it drops your core body temperature so much that

you're doing more harm than good. Got you, got you well again, don't try going without food or water if you don't have to drink eight to tin cups a day. I know it varies from different doctors, but I think by and large, if women drink, you know, roughly ninety ounces of water day and men drink about a hundred and twenty ounces a day, then you should be doing

pretty well. You definitely want to hydrate got you and when your mom said that 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 give some props to some of our podcasting mates here. I know that we have a lot of great fans and so of you know some of the other podcasts we do.

But we have a great auto podcasts if you're into that, called high Speed Stuff, and we have a music one that's been launched recently. It's very cool kind of side. Yeah, it's stuff from the B side takes an interesting angle on different various music subjects. Is school. I like it? And of course stuff you missed him? History class? Great? Yeah?

And uh what else? Brain stuff from our company founder Marshall Brain the brain and then we can't forget Strickland and tech stuff he would badger us for the next few weeks. Sold. So tech stuff. If you're into gadgets and technology, then they're your guts. But you can find all those on the how 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 how

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