How Long Do You Need To Boil Water?

Re:How Long Do You Need To Boil Water? by jfoutz on Friday September 25, 2009 @03:49AM (#843103)

water can kill you a lot of ways.

boiling can't possibly kill everything,

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyperthermophile

and even if it could,

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arsenic_poisoning

can get you.

It's a statistics game. Bringing water to a boil will eliminate a huge fraction of the risks associated with consumption, but it's not proof of safety.

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Re:How Long Do You Need To Boil Water? by Flankk on Friday September 25, 2009 @05:24AM (#843167)

The first Wikipedia page is about fringe organisms which live in hot water and die in cold water.

Arsenic is in all unfiltered water. You'd have to dig a well to get a high enough level of arsenic to poison yourself.

It is extremely unlikely you'll get sick from drinking boiled water taken from a stream. Sure, nothing is proof of safety. You could distill pure water and then accidently inhale some of it and dry drown.

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Re:How Long Do You Need To Boil Water? by anamax on Friday September 25, 2009 @12:03PM (#843700)

> You'd have to dig a well to get a high enough level of arsenic to poison yourself.

Not so fast. Acute poisoning from above-ground sources may be unlikely, but chronic isn't unknown.

http://www.who.int/mediacentre/factsheets/fs210/en/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arsenic_contamination_of_ground...

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Re:How Long Do You Need To Boil Water? by davidw on Friday September 25, 2009 @05:58AM (#843195)

It's a lot more likely you'll die if you avoid drinking water.

What's this got to do with HN, in any case? 'Survival skills' for hackers is probably more akin to having to cook for yourself if the local pizza/mexican/chinese/whatever place is closed (to play on a stereotype; plenty of hackers are good cooks).

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Re:How Long Do You Need To Boil Water? by pbhjpbhj on Friday September 25, 2009 @07:39AM (#843270)

Hackers !== Code hackers

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Re:How Long Do You Need To Boil Water? by davidw on Friday September 25, 2009 @11:14AM (#843591)

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=770005

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Re:How Long Do You Need To Boil Water? by FooBarWidget on Friday September 25, 2009 @04:57AM (#843148)

I don't think extremophiles are a problem. Your body temperature isn't exactly extreme so those bacteria will die in your body.

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Re:How Long Do You Need To Boil Water? by pbhjpbhj on Friday September 25, 2009 @07:40AM (#843271)

.. and it's pretty unlikely your took your water from a hot vent or steaming geyser.

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Re:How Long Do You Need To Boil Water? by pavel_lishin on Friday September 25, 2009 @09:44AM (#843441)

Ugh, you're just like my family. "Why can't we just go camping in the woods, like normal people? Why do you always want to descend two miles below the surface of the pacific?"

Amateurs.

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Re:How Long Do You Need To Boil Water? by pbhjpbhj on Friday September 25, 2009 @09:51AM (#843450)

A weekend trip to the bottom of the pacific sounds lovely* but I think I'd take fresh water along rather than going to the hassle of desalinating. But camping is nice too ...

* Sounds like something a wife would say "sounds lovely dear but I booked us in to visit my mother, maybe next time".

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