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A comment on When did people stop being drunk all the time?. Parent comment

Re:When did people stop being drunk all the time? by saiya-jin on Wednesday July 26, 2023 @04:30AM (#36874663)
It needs to be pretty strong to sterilize, way above strong red wine. Also the stronger it is the more it dehydrates you. So if you need to compensate sterile alcohol being drunk with unsafe water in some form, you still lose overall.

So no you can't satisfy your long term hydration needs by drinking anything strong enough to be safe by its alcohol content alone.

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Re:When did people stop being drunk all the time? by DanielHB on Wednesday July 26, 2023 @04:58AM (#36874826)
I cholera was the main problem and I think even a low % of alcohol would kill the bacteria
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Re:When did people stop being drunk all the time? by lucideer on Wednesday July 26, 2023 @05:11AM (#36874917)
It wasn't just about the alcohol content, in the case of beer for example it was also about the brewing process involving sterilisation before that was widely being done to water, as well as the antiseptic properties of hops.
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Re:When did people stop being drunk all the time? by usrusr on Wednesday July 26, 2023 @05:52AM (#36875161)
Look at it not from the angle of killing everything, but from the angle of how fast will trace amounts of life multiply in that environment. Absence of trace amounts wasn't really a thing before canning, which was at the stage of promising military prototypes during the Napoleonic Wars.
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Re:When did people stop being drunk all the time? by _zoltan_ on Wednesday July 26, 2023 @07:47AM (#36876111)
on our travel in SEA we always did bring with us some Hungarian palinka (50%+) and drank some after every meal. We have managed to avoid stomach issues.
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