Eating snow in survival situations.

M

MtnMan

Joined
Nov 28, 1999
Messages
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I know that there will always be times in our lives, like when we were kids that we just have to have a big bite of new fallen snow. But I think I heard somewhere that eating snow over a long time period of time say in a survival situation is not a good way to hydrate the body. Fact or Fiction.

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Improvise, adapt, and overcome. Words to live by.
 
It is best to melt snow before drinking it. when eating snow the body loses heat (which translates to energy/calories) to melt the snow that would otherwise not be lost. Thus to conserve valuable calories/energy...don't eat snow....melt it first.

to melt it you may consider using one of the following options:

1. by a fire
2. add it to a container partially full of water and aggitate.
3. Use the bodies radiant heat to melt it by placing it in a container and then between (key word) the layers of your clothing.

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Greg Davenport
http://www.ssurvival.com
Are You Ready For The Challenge?
Are You Ready To Learn The Art Of Wilderness Survival?

 
Hi Mtnmain,

If you eat the snow without first melting/warming it you won't survive that long, the heat necessairy to melt the snow draws valuable energy/heat from your body.

I saw a real nice way of melting snow when you didn't have a pot or pan.
The guy used a cheap mosquito headnet that he filled with snow and hung besides the fire on a stick with one of the lower corners pointing down. The heat of the fire melted the snow which he collected in his fold-away military cup.
Still you would have needed 1. a fire but that's one of the most important things anyhow if your stuck in the freezing cold and don't have a Iglo or snow hole to get in.
2. you need a headnet but I find that it can be used for loads of things besides keeping those little flying drills out of your neck/face (which won't be a problem in the winter. I always have one handy.

Cheers, Bagheera

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[This message has been edited by Bagheera (edited 01-19-2000).]
 
Like the others said, it will rob your body of vital warmth. There was a good exmaple of this demonstrated on an A&E special series called Survive. It showed a man and woman stuck in the wilderness with their little baby. The woman thinking that the child would die quickly without nursing kept eating snow, she was the only one to die. These were true stories.

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Lee

LIfe is too important to be taken seriously. Oscar Wilde
 
I eat snow and am still alive. As the others have noted, energy management is the crucial concept. I eat snow when I'm hot and beginning to sweat. Rather than take off some clothes, why not cool off a little by eating some snow? I wouldn't do it if I were shivering.

Gourmet hint - The white snow tastes the best.
smile.gif

 
I think it's all been said but one thing. If it is a sunny day, put the snow in a black trash bag and hang in the sun. You can melt a lot of snow in a short while.

Ron

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Learn Life Extension at:

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hmm...wasn't aware the body used that much energy melting the snow. interesting
 
Tuff:
Water takes one kilocalorie (A normal food calorie) to heat one liter one degree celsius. So drinking one liter of 0C water (32F) would burn 37 Calories. It takes almost 80 Calories to merely melt one liter of ice into 0C water, and then another 37 to raise that to body temp. In other words, a power bar (200 Calories, I think) would take 1.7 liters of ice to use up, while it would warm you for a full 5.4 liters of melted, 0C water. If you drink the 4+ quarts a day I do, it comes out to 320 calories a day, or the equivalent of over a pound of fat a week.

Water in general doesn't burn much in the line of calories, but when you are struggling to stay warm to start with, or find food, then the ice robs your body of important energy you need for other things.

Stryver, who should market this as a diet plan...

 
Loss of heat is one thing the other is loss of minerals because in most cases water melted from snow is comparable to distilled water. This is a cause for muscle cramps. Mineral tablets can be used to replace the loss. Basically the same problem exist in melt water on a clasier, once it gets in touch with earth it picks up them quite fast.

Do not drink it for too long
 
Originally posted by MtnMan:
But I think I heard somewhere that eating snow over a long time period of time say in a survival situation is not a good way to hydrate the body.
Click to expand...
Disregarding the energy requirement to melt it, the long term problem is you get too little salt. That's why some people in Scandinavia, those who habitually use melted snow for cooking with, put salt in their coffee. Or so I've heard.

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Urban Fredriksson
www.canit.se/%7Egriffon/
Latest udates Moki Blossom and Fällkniven S1


"Smooth and serrated blades cut in two entirely different fashions."
- The Teeth of the Tyrannosaurs, Scientific American, Sep 1999
 
Salt shouldn't be a problem unless you truly are living off the land for a long period of time. Any food or rations you take with you will supply plenty of salt and other minerals. Water in general doesn't supply you with enough minerals to have much effect, and if it did, people would notice and complain.

I'd always heard the salt in the coffee as a custom of the Navy, though where from, I don't know. In small quantities, I do not dislike the tase, salt acts as a flavor enhancer anyways, but larger quantities I could care less for...


Stryver
 
The problem apparently is not a lack of salt (sodium chloride) it is the effect on balance of them. Drinking distilled water isn't recommended and this is close. Anyway a few days of melted water and you can feel the effect on your lips (cracking, not pleasent) and muscle cramps tend to follow. I have not had any problems with water from brooks (fairly easily found even in wintertime).

I still would not do it for long
 
TLM:
Cracking lips and other classic signs of dehydration should not rear their heads because of mineral definciency after a mere two or three days unless you ahve also not been eating. Almost any food we as humans think of bringing has more than enough salt and other minerals to keep us going for a very long time. If you drank pure distilled water for three days straight, it _may_ make a difference, but it would probably not be a salt (NaCl) problem unless you were marathon running for those three days. More likely is that you weren't drinking enough from what few frozen streams you found. Remember, you should have 2 - 4 liters a day, depending on activity, and not counting what you drink at meals. And this number can easily be raised in hot climates or highly physically demanding situations. My max water consumption is 24 quarts in a 14 hour day. I've tried to duplicate it, and can't drink water fast enough. That was at San Antonio, in the summer, and entailed the 'confidence' course and the litter training course, as well as a few runs throughout the day... I pray I never duplicate that aspect of it...

Stryver
 
If snow was your only form of fluid, wouldn't you die of dehydration if you didn't eat it long before you would starve because of the caloric reduction or suffer critical problems from the mineral loss?

-Cliff

[This message has been edited by Cliff Stamp (edited 01-24-2000).]
 
I definitely agree that better to drink melt water than not to drink if that is the only option. I have been trekking here in Finland for the last 35 years and what I said is based on personal experience, people could react differently. Then again I have never had the problem for example with muscle cramps when drinking non-melt water. And by the way, finding running water is not that difficult even in winter here, I do have the feeling it might be more difficult in Alaska because of the lower temps atleast in the interior. Mineralwise melt water is close enough to distilled and when moving even in wintertime you can sweat quite a lot and cause the cation imbalance that way. Then again I have no research data on this, maybe someone knows if it has been done. I have no idea if the older arctic explorers did or did not do anything on the matter, a vague memory tells me that I have read something about it, have to check.

Careful in the cold out there.
 
Cliff:
It may or may not. It would be a heat management question. That full liter of ice burns enough energy to drop a full grown man's body temp by almost a degree and a half celsius. Probably more, since it would hit the stomach, and begin there, and not care too much about whatever temp the extremities are at. I don't know about you, but dropping my core temp from 98.6F to less than 96F would have a substantial effect on me.

I realize I am being dramatic here. Eating snow would be a valid way of obtaining moisture if there were no other. But you would have to be aware of your own temperature, and eat the snow slowly to avoid cooling yourself dangerously. Remember also that it frequently takes ten inches or more of snow to produce one inch of water, and that you will have to eat a very large amount of loose snow to meet your water requirements.


Tuff:
I will look into mineral contents of distilled, tap and creek water, and into medical effects of lack of minerals/electrolytes.


Stryver
 
Stryver,

That's true about the quantity of snow. I actually prefer to eat icicles when they are available. It is a more efficient way of consuming frozen water. I just crunch them up and swallow them. (I hope my dentist doesn't read this!)

Then they melt in my stomach as opposed to my mouth. The interior of my mouth gets uncomfortable if I try to eat a large quantity of snow.

Icicles or ice are a lot less work when melting water in a pot also.

Cliff, It's not a matter of starving due to the caloric output necessary to melt ice. It is a matter of avoiding hypothermia.


[This message has been edited by Howard Wallace (edited 01-25-2000).]
 
Howard, the hypothermia point is an interesting one and I can see how having to heat the water could descrease your body temperature if that coupled with your rate of heat loss due to the surounding enviroment was above your bodies ability to produce heat. That is a fairly extreme situation though you are talking no shelter, extreme restriction of movement, no source of external heat and a very low temperature.

-Cliff
 
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