Desert Survival

I must stress having plenty of spares and enough water for everyone in case of a
breakdown in the
back country. With today's modern transportation, it's quite a simple thing to g
et stranded 45 miles from nowhere and no water. Make sure you've got a few gallo
ns of it before you go.
1) Control loss of body fluids. Urinate as little as possible. Save it for when
it can be recycled through a solar still. Don't depend on them to provide your p
arty with water. In optimim conditions, a solar still can provide a pint or two
of water a day, not adequate by any means to keep one alive.) Diarhhea in a temp
erate climate can quickly lead to death by dehydration. Avoid
alcohol, which contributes to dehydration, and any diuretics such as coffee and
caffeinated sodas.
2) Avoid Sweating. Control your level of perspiration as much as possible. This
means avoiding the sun. Stay in the shade. Save shelter construction, water coll
ection, and all other tasks for night time if possible. Construct a bed that kee
ps you off the ground and allows air to circulate under you if possible. Do not
lie on the ground. Try to keep fully clothed as clothing holds the sweat in so i
t will evaporate slower, cooling the body and decreasing perspiration. You may f
eel
cooler without a shirt, but will perspire more and also risk a debilitating and
dehydrating painful sunburn. It gets cold in the desert at night, sometimes, unc
omfortably cold. During
the day, I'd try to sack out on something that circulates air underneath me, but
at night, I'd look for insulation. Some of this depends on the time of year and
good ole common sense. Use what you have.)
3) Avoid Smoking. Smoking tobacco will dry the throat and add to your thirst.
4) Suck on a pebble. It's an "old Indian trick" but it works. Sucking on a pebbl
e helps produce saliva, keeping your mouth moist and diminishing the sensation o
f thirst.
5) Avoid Salt Water. Should you find yourself on a coastline do not drink the se
a water. Recycle it through a solar still. Have several solar stills. One is not
nearly enough.
6) Do not drink Urine. This would obviously be a last resort, but it will only c
ause you more problems as your kidneys attempt to process waste products you are
re-introducing to the body. The more dehydrated you are the more toxic your uri
ne will be. Recycle it through a solar
still. Drinking alcohol, salt water, blood, and urine will only increase the eff
ects of dehydration. Water that is more than 50% salt will increase dehydration
while that which is less than 50% contaminated will increase the body's relative
water content.
7) Eat Sparingly. Digestion requires water. Proteins require more water than com
plex carbohydrates, starches, and sugars. Raw fruits and vegetation contain grea
ter water content than many processed foods. Avoid salty foods. I've often seen
middle eastern people eating melons, especially watermelon, in the desert settin
g. This idea has alot of merit to it.
Watermelon has a pronounced diuretic effect. Perhaps the Middle Easterners have
a genetic or acquired resistance to it.
The "avoid salty foods" does lessen your may reduce thirst, but are continuously
losing essential salts [electrolytes] in sweat, so don't avoid salt so much tha

t tip over into salt-depletion heat

exhaustion. [Very similar symptoms to water depletion. Get very thirsty, but no
amount of water will quench the thirst and will even make it worse.
8) Breathe through your nose and limit talking.
9) Avoid rationing. If you attempt to ration water at the rate of one or two qua
rts a day you will not avoid dehydration any longer than if you drank a full gal
lon. Although you might psychlogically alleviate thirst, in high temperatures yo
ur body will still dehydrate at a
constant rate. Perspiration should be rationed. (Which means to ration physical
activity)
50% salt solution by weight would be roughly 500 grams sodium chloride per litre
[1000 ml] water, which is close enough to 1000 grams of water. Water won't diss
olve this much salt. A saturated solution of sodium chloride [ "salt"] in water
would be 265 grams salt in 1000 grams of water, or 26.5% solution. Any more adde
d salt would sit on the bottom, undissolved. And certainly wouldn't want to drin
k a 26.5% solution, Unless had taken a poison and wanted to induce instant vomit
ing.
Decades ago the advice was to "ration" water to small sips. No real advantage in
doing this in most cases. As dehydration increases, the ability to think clea
rly decreases. Better to try to stay reasonably alert than try to ration water a
nd stumble past water sources in a daze.
Depending on heat and humidity, "rationing physical activity" can mean "no activ
ity in any possible shade".
"Though the material that gives seawater its salty flavor is composed of many su
bstances, sodium chloride, or common salt, is by far the predominant compound. O
n the assumption that 1 gallon (about 4 litres) of seawater contains 0.231 pound
(about 105 grams) of salt and that rock salt on the average is 2.17 times as de
nse as water, it has been estimated that if the oceans of the world were complet
ely dried up they would yield at least 4.5 million cubic miles of rock salt, or
about 14.5 times the bulk of the entire continent of Europe above the high-water
mark. Seawater contains on the average about 3 percent salt, although the actua
l concentration varies from about 1 percent (in the polar seas) to 5 percent. En
closed waters such as the Mediterranean and Red seas contain a higher proportion
of salt than does the open ocean at the same latitude. Irrespective of the sour
ce of the seawater, salt obtained by the evaporation of seawater has the followi
ng composition:
sodium chloride 77.76 percent,
magnesium chloride 10.88 percent,
magnesium sulfate 4.74 percent,
calcium sulfate 3.60 percent,
potassium chloride 2.46 percent,
magnesium bromide 0.22 percent,
calcium carbonate 0.34 percent."
Suppose the sea water had a lower salt concentration from a large inflowing rive
r, tropical storm, etc. At what level of salt would it be worthwhile drinking? I
would hate to guess, personally. Both the magnesium chloride and magnesium sulf
ate are used as cathartic effects and are used as purgatives. [extreme laxatives
] Which means if you drank much of it you would get extreme diarrhoea which woul
d empty the stomach and intestines of both food and fluid, leaving you worse off
. Sea water would be fine for solar stills, though.
You need more than one or two. If warm and sunny enough to make the stills work
well, the survivor will probably be dehydrating faster than the stills produce w

ater. Thin plastic is OK for solar stills, is lightweight and cheap, has other
uses.
Dehydration the loss of water from the body; it is almost invariably associated
with some loss of salt (sodium chloride) as well. The treatment of any form of d
ehydration, therefore, requires not only the replacement of the water lost from
the body but also the restoration of the normal
concentration of salt within the body fluid.
Dehydration may be caused by restriction of water intake or by excessive water l
oss. The commonest cause of dehydration is failure to drink liquids. The depriva
tion of water is far more serious than the deprivation of food. The average pers
on loses approximately 2.5 percent of total body water per day (about 1,200 mill
iliters [1.25 quarts]) in urine, in expired air, by insensible perspiration, and
from the gastrointestinal tract. If, in addition to this loss, the
loss through perspiration is greatly increased--as is demonstrated in the case o
f the shipwrecked sailor in tropical seas or the traveler lost in the desert--wi
thin only a few hours the dehydration may result in shock and death. When swallo
wing is difficult in extremely ill persons, or when people cannot respond to a s
ense of thirst because of age or illness or dulling of consciousness, the failu
re to compensate for the daily loss of body water will rapidly result in dehydra
tion and its consequences. "
IMHO, this is info is far more accurate than the over-optimistic advice in some
survival books and manuals, especially the military ones. It is quite possible t
o die within hours if try to walk around in the sun. Perhaps this is due to fact
that insolation is higher in southern hemisphere than northern. [less populatio
n, lower pollution, much more heat from sun reaching ground per unit area] Leave
a steel crowbar on the ground here for 20 minutes in summer and can be too hot
to pick up with bare hands.