Drinking/Eating snow (without melting).

[mnaah]

Hi,

I think it'd be a really good and realistic new feature to add the possibility to drink (or eat, however you want to consider it) snow directly (without need to melt it first) to avoid dehydration.

I realize this would make it practically impossible to die of dehydration, but that is how it should be, as no one would ever die of dehydration if surrounded by snow. Indeed I think the possibility of such a death existing now is unrealistic enough to be considered a glitch.

Introducing such a feature doesn't mean that getting water would have to be made irrelevant: Drinking snow could still be an infection risk (perhaps higher if not snowing -> old snow) and a sizable cold penalty for using snow could make it so that relying on snow only as your source of hydration would mean having to warm up too often to be practical.

On an other note, I it should also be possible to harvest unsafe water from the lake (though a fishing hole).

[Orwell 1984]

I suggest you to look up the topic on google, it can be done, but it is actually more dangerous than dehydration.

[Boston123]

No, it would actually "make" you die from dehydration, as well as putting you at severe risk from hypothermia.

This is because your body has to expend heat in order to melt the snow, requiring metabolism to function, and therefore expending both water and energy. Therefore, while you might gain some water from it, you are essentially losing more than you gain.

Want to melt snow for water? Put it in a bottle under your coat, between your layers of clothing. Your body heat will melt it over time.

[mnaah]

Hypothermia, yes anything cold can push you towards that and as I said a cold penalty would be accurate (maybe even a slight hunger penalty). But it is definitely not true that melting snow by body heat would consume more water than you get from the snow. It does not that huge an ammount of energy to melt water. If it were true, given that it takes the exact same amount of energy melt snow inside your jacket, you'd die of dehydration that way too (which, of course is not true).

And as I said I'm not saying it should be made easy enough to be a preferable source of water (because of cold and bacteria), but it should be possible. Any sensible people would do that if in the middle of snow and dying of dehydration.

[traceyle]

I like the idea of taking water from fishing hole without wasting time melting it. And eating snow may help you but will make you colder and have a chance poison depend on how much you drink.

[Scyzara]

I like the idea of taking water from fishing hole without wasting time melting it.

I agree to this, at least for the ML and PV fishing cabins. Not sure whether Coastal Highway has freshwater (the name rather seems to hint at saltwater, but I don't know for sure).

Btw, there are two things about water safety in TLD that I find extremely counter-intuitive. I would be very happy if somebody could explain them to me.

What confuses me is: Why is it possible to take potable (thus safe) water out of a toilet, while melted snow is considered unsave and has to be boiled first?

At least to my understanding, it is not unlikely that potentially dangerous bacteria (let's take E. coli and Enterococcus faecalis for example as they are among the germs that can often be found in toilets) can survive within a relatively warm house. So why exactly is it safe to drink toilet water? Did all people have nothing better to do than thoroughly disinfect their toilets after the geomagnetic storm? Or is it standart in Canada to put chlorine or other kinds of bacterizides into the drinking water? (I'm sorry if this a stupid question, I just don't understand it).^^

My second question is: Why is melted yet unboiled snow not save to drink?

I'm aware that certain pathogenic bacteria can survive extremely low temperatures, but let's try to be a bit realistic - it's hardly probable that vast numbers of them (in most cases, bacteria will only make you sick when a certain infection dose is exceeded) should suddenly appear in newly fallen snow.

Can somebody explain to me if there is any other reason why melted snow is not save to drink?^^ (I just assume Will and Anna are clever enough not to collect snow that is mixed with mud or animal feces).

TL, DR:

In my opinion, toilet water should not be considered to be safe to drink (unless all drinking water in Canada is bactericidal in general). Not sure whether melted snow is save or not, hopefully somebody can explain this to me.^^

[mnaah]

You never know if a wolf or a deer has gone number two on it, so I think it's feasible that you could get sick from snow that is not boiled. The chance of that happening is probably lower in real life than in the game, but I do not see that as any kind of a problem. Let's face it, overly realistic survival game would be just plain boring, so many thing are a little exaggerated in the game (wolfs don't attack you on sight, your clothes don't usually wear out so fast, canned goods don't perish within days but rathar years etc.).

So I do not see it as a problem with tuning the probabilities for entertainment value. At least you could be attacked by wildlife, you could get sick by drinking unboiled water etc.

But you could also eat/drink snow for water or take water from a lake, so I think it should be allowed in the game aswell. If you want to make it not worth it by a little exagerated penalties or something, I'm fine with that, but still I'd like to see the possibility

[traceyle]

Compare to real life i think poison is quite simple already if you consider the number of diseases like fever,... To fix one disease need a type of medicine. The game is already sum up all diseases into one poison food and only need antibiotic to cure it, quite simple, huh. And i agree that toilet water need to be boiled first, then that mean they should place some more water like about 2 liters around the house so we wont be dehydration, it s quite normaly to have some water around the house right?

[jackattack]

The toilet water isn't from the bowl, it's from the tank. The water in the tank comes directly from the same source as the water you get from any tap in the house (unless there is a separate water line for untreated water to toilets and showers) and flows from the tank to the bowl (to the sewer, or septic tank, or local outflow). The (potential) problem with water from a toilet tank would not be intestinal flora, it would be algae or slime mold that might grow as a result of the water not being cycled through regularly. (Or possibly the blue stuff.)

I think the issue with eating snow is that ingesting frozen water affects the body's core temperature, where putting a bottle of snow in your jacket does not. I agree that snow might not need to be boiled, but for game purposes I might have "harvesting snow" yield potable water when it is actually snowing, and non-potable water when it isn't. However, that means the game would have to keep track of when you got your snow, and how much.

I think we should be able to get water from fishing holes, but it would absolutely have to be boiled.

As it stands, we have one type of water that can be drunk straight from the source, and one type of water that has to be melted and boiled. "Clean snow" might add water that only has to be melted, and fishing holes might add water that only has to be boiled.

[toebar]

I think jackattack is right on here regarding toilet water, water from fishing holes, and eating snow (consensus, doable but not preferable--its in another thread also).

Regarding animal waste risk; I hope you would know if an animal had gone number one or two on the snow that you're about to melt and drink. Hint #1: avoid yellow snow. Hint #2: Avoid brown chunks (do you really think boiling this would improve the flavor?). lol , seriously, finding snow that has not been fouled by animal waste is truly not a real issue. Animal density is just not enough to create this problem.

Think of it this way--Consider how often it snows in game (Spoiler: A LOT). You're going to be taking the freshest snow off the top, so the chances of an animal fouling the snow and you not noticing before collecting it are very very slim.