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Yes

37 (61.7%)

No

6 (10%)

No, but a person's skin will absorb too much water and eventually turn into mush, thus exposing his organs and causing him to bleed to death due to lack of coverage

17 (28.3%)

Total Members Voted: 59

[kaijyuu]

Yep. No osmosis happening to any significant degree.

[Loud Whispers]

Unless we're talking about a potato.

[DwarfMeister]

Doesn't food contain water? I mean... Dry food is going to have a HELL of a time getting through those tubes...

[Neonivek]

Oddly enough this topic functions on some very old defunct science.

A long time ago scientists discovered that the skin actually breathes. This brought forth a theory that if the skin was entirely deprived of air that someone would sufficate even if they were breathing.

Of course we know this is false now.

Now one of the reasons you wouldn't want your body to process water from the skin is because most of the water your body would be subject to would be undrinkable and dangerous.

Doesn't food contain water? I mean... Dry food is going to have a HELL of a time getting through those tubes

It is possible that the food is soaked in a liquid that is not digested by the body or I guess in my personal theory some sort of Saline solution.

[10ebbor10]

So, we're in agreement that without some other source of water (scary face mask, IV, etc), being submerged is not sufficient to prevent fatal dehydration?

Yup. It might take a bit more time then 3 days to die though. No water is being absorbed by the skin (not enough to be usefull anyway), so it all depends on the amount of water you recieve, and the amount that leaves your body.

[lemon10]

Now one of the reasons you wouldn't want your body to process water from the skin is because most of the water your body would be subject to would be undrinkable and dangerous.

I presume that the body would use some sort of osmosis filtering system (how it would work since the pressures would be a bit off for it I have no clue) if it was able to take water in from the skin, so the purity of the water wouldn't be a very big concern.
Of course it can't anyways, so my point is irrelevant.

[DwarfMeister]

I have never heard a story of a pirate stranded on a desert island or run out of water on his pirate ship surviving by dangling his legs in the water. 

So I voted Yes.

I would think that the sun reflecting off the water, along with the geothermal heat would just bake him.

[DwarfMeister]

I have never heard a story of a pirate stranded on a desert island or run out of water on his pirate ship surviving by dangling his legs in the water. 

So I voted Yes.

I would think that the sun reflecting off the water, along with the geothermal heat would just bake him.

[DwarfMeister]

doublepost?

I voted yes, because the human digestive system has a large surface area that is designed to let water (among other things) in, and the skin doesn't have that specialised equipment.

'Net connection makes me think that I only clicked once sometimes. My bad.

[DJ]

Well now that that's settle, is it actually possible to save yourself from dehydration with seawater enemas, or is Bear Grylls full of it?

[Ochita]

Well now that that's settle, is it actually possible to save yourself from dehydration with seawater enemas, or is Bear Grylls full of it?

Sea-water contains a fair amount of solutes, so the osmotic pressure gradient is going to be quite a bit lower, so water isn't going to be absorbed as much/at all. So yeah Bear Grylls is most likely full of it.

[ChairmanPoo]

Chances are you'll be dehydrating yourself-just as if you had drunk it

[zombie urist]

Well now that that's settle, is it actually possible to save yourself from dehydration with seawater enemas, or is Bear Grylls full of it?

Sea-water contains a fair amount of solutes, so the osmotic pressure gradient is going to be quite a bit lower, so water isn't going to be absorbed as much/at all. So yeah Bear Grylls is most likely full of it.

There are ways to filter out the salts which allow you to drink sea water.

[Frumple]

Yyeeessss... but none that are actually part of human biology, at least t'my knowledge and a degree it'd save you from dehydration. A saltwater enema probably isn't going to do much regarding filtration and hydration. Unless the lower intestine or whatever has an odd trick for when seawater manages to bypass the rest of the digestive system. Which would be interesting if true. Why bother with the fairly notable research we're doing into desalination if shoving a water hose attached to a saltwater pump up yer arse works, too?

[Starver]

There are ways to filter out the salts which allow you to drink sea water.

Filter out?  No.  The salts are dissolved, not hanging in suspension.  There are chemical ways of recombining the soluble salts into unsoluble sediments, which could then be removed, but that's far too much like a chemical-plant, for my liking, and depends on using finite (if available!) resources.

What I'd do is (to be heavily modified, depending on what I've got at hand) stand a small bowl in a larger bowl of sea-water, both placed in a small hole in the ground, with a (transparent or black - each work better than white, but for different reasons) plastic sheet over that that is anchored by stones/similar at the edges (passed over and round-under, by the sheet) with a stone/similar holding the centre down over the smaller bowl (perhaps also with something white between sheet and stone, above that small bowl, perhaps with some water in the dip), and let the sun get to work.

The large-bowl's water will evaporate, a significant amount will re-condense on the sheet and trickle to its downwards-pointing apex, to drip into the central bowl.  The optional central covering reduces how much re-evaporation occurs (most of which should just re-re-condense), while the water (need not be fresh) in the hollow should increase the condensation rate beneath the bits of the sheet that it covers.


There's so many ways of doing this, though, and it doesn't need to be efficient if it's giving a sufficient supply for your needs.  Despite the complexity of my above description, however, what I gave is a pretty simple method to construct and leave unattended.  (Assuming you're not getting wild animals rooting around, strong winds or someone on your territory liable to disturb your setup.)  Putting together a proper boiling-point distilling-type kit is probably a better option for quantity if you have the materials and fuel.


(Also, depending on what the water-supply is, and how well you set the equipment up, it might still benefit from adding purification tablets, but at least it'll be much lower in salts.  And of course different survivalist-types might have their own solutions, I'm just giving you what I've used (not in anger!) and found to work.  Albeit slowly in the kind of sunlight conditions it was tried out in. )