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Comment by singularity2001 | Hacker News Reader

singularity2001

you can survive over a month without food, but they must have found some water.

update: they are surrounded by water which gets contaminated by their excrements. not good.

They were stuck in a cave that was flooding. Plenty of water to go around. Probably not the cleanest but will do in an emergency.

Diarrhea will make you die a lot faster, your attitude is a bit blasè for water that is potentially contaminated with feces.

It's not like someone from the US who has only drank clean processed water

Why would there be feces? They aren't in sewers.

And even if there was a chance of diarrhoea, what would be your alternative?

In flood waters? Because there is a little bit of everything in flood waters.

Apparently there is water seeping into the space they are in. I'd drink that before I'd drink the inundation water.

But that's exactly what the GP said.. they are being flooded.

>Why would there be feces?

Because they have to go too.

They are being flooded, fresh water goes in.. most likely along the walls too.

Yes, I'd like to know where they found water clean enough to drink, or a way to make it clean. Floodwater runoff is probably not the best thing to ingest…

Can't find the link, but saw a video of someone of the rescue team explaining there is drinkable mineral water streaming off the walls in the cave.

Note everyone is used to having chlorinated and flouride(d) water so their bodies might have been used to relatively dirty water. Of course, I could wrong in their case...don't know their background

How prejudiced of you :) Most places in Thailand have access to purified water for drinking.

Here is an article from Cambodia, where they are some years behind: https://medium.com/make-a-difference/bringing-clean-water-to...

ha! They down-voted me apparently. To those that down-voted me: Not everyone can turn the tap on and get clean water. Even if Thailand has it today, they probably didn't have it yesterday. When you drink from dubious sources, unless you die as a child, you gain some sort of immunity. A techie from SF can get sick and even die, but a local can drink from the same source and nothing happens to him /her.

Thais mostly drink bottled water, which is clean. They aren't drinking river water or something. Most of Thailand lacks drinkable tap water. Food hygiene standards are more lax than in the West though.

>> Thais mostly drink bottled water, which is clean. They aren't drinking river water or something.Most of Thailand lacks drinkable tap water.

Thanks for the inside info. But do they brush their teeth with bottled water? Do they wash their dishes, tomatoes with bottled water or with "dirty" tap water?

I'm a techie from EU and have survived to tell the story of multiple tooth brushings with tap water in Thailand.

Sarcasm aside, I'm sure it varies from place to place, but in places I've been to in Thailand (and I live half there, half EU), tap water is fine for washing/brushing and if anything, too chlorinated (and thus not too drinkable). I still drink bottled water (or filtered water; many local friends have filters installed to their tap).

I think most people in Thailand do all of those things with tap water, but there may be exceptions in especially poor, isolated or rural areas. In Bangkok the debate has advanced to whether the water is actually drinkable now (in much of the city the answer is probably yes).

I’m from North Africa, and this is very true. If you haven’t grown up drinking the tap water there, it will make you very sick. But locals drink it without problem.

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