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Australia: Woman Survives on Wine During Five Days Stranded in Australian Bush

posted by janrinok on Tuesday May 09, @12:14PM   Printer-friendly

upstart writes:

Australia: Woman survives on wine during five days stranded in Australian bush:

A 48-year-old woman survived five days stranded in the bush in Australia by eating sweets and drinking a single bottle of wine.

Lillian Ip set off on what was meant to be a short trip on Sunday, travelling through dense bush in Victoria state.

But she hit a dead-end after taking a wrong turn, and her vehicle became stuck in the mud.

Ms Ip - who doesn't drink - only had a bottle of wine in the car as she was planning to give it as a present.

After five nights stranded, she was discovered by emergency services on Friday as they flew overhead as part of a search.

"The first thing coming in my mind, I was thinking 'water and a cigarette,'" Ms Ip told 9News Australia. "Thank god the policewoman had a cigarette."

[...] "The only liquid Lillian, who doesn't drink, had with her was a bottle of wine she had bought as a gift for her mother so that got her through," Wodonga Police Station Sergeant Martin Torpey said.

"She used great common sense to stay with her car and not wander off into bushland, which assisted in police being able to find her."

Ms Ip was taken to hospital to be treated for dehydration, but has since returned home to Melbourne.

I'm just off to repack my survival bag.....

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  • (Score: 3, Interesting) by GloomMower on Tuesday May 09, @03:17PM (5 children)

    by GloomMower (17961) on Tuesday May 09, @03:17PM (#1305530)

    I thought alcoholic drinks above 4% alcohol by volume dehydrate more than hydrate. Most wine is 11-15% alcohol by volume. Was it more like a wine cooler? Somethings seems off in the reporting, glad she survived though.

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  • (Score: 5, Informative) by GloomMower on Tuesday May 09, @03:20PM

    by GloomMower (17961) on Tuesday May 09, @03:20PM (#1305532)

    I found this article saying it depends on how dehydrated you are, if you are hydrated then wine dehydrates you, but if you are already very dehydrated, it can hydrate you and keep you alive.
    https://www.sciencefocus.com/the-human-body/on-a-desert-island-would-it-be-better-to-drink-wine-or-go-thirsty/ [sciencefocus.com]

  • (Score: 2) by Opportunist on Tuesday May 09, @03:25PM

    by Opportunist (5545) on Tuesday May 09, @03:25PM (#1305534)

    Well, I'd guess it depends on how much water you still contain. I mean, if you're close to dying from dehydration, I wouldn't deem it impossible that even vodka would do the trick.

  • (Score: 4, Informative) by takyon on Tuesday May 09, @03:25PM

    by takyon (881) <takyonNO@SPAMsoylentnews.org> on Tuesday May 09, @03:25PM (#1305535) Journal

    https://www.sciencefocus.com/the-human-body/on-a-desert-island-would-it-be-better-to-drink-wine-or-go-thirsty/ [sciencefocus.com]

    Alcohol increases the amount you urinate because it suppresses the production of ADH. A sufficiently alcoholic drink can suppress ADH to the point where your kidneys actually excrete more water than the volume of the drink itself, and so there's a net dehydrating effect. But the concentration of alcohol required for this increases as you get thirstier. If you just drank wine on your desert island, you would initially lose more water than you gain from wine, but as your body became more dehydrated, it would produce more ADH to compensate and you'd eventually reach an equilibrium point.

    For the 13 per cent alcohol content of most wines, that equilibrium point would still leave you badly dehydrated (not to mention hopelessly drunk), but it should prevent you from dying of thirst. If a six-pack of beer (5 per cent alcohol) washed up next to the wine, that would be a better choice.

    --
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  • (Score: 4, Interesting) by driverless on Tuesday May 09, @04:23PM (1 child)

    by driverless (4770) on Tuesday May 09, @04:23PM (#1305545)

    Since alcohol evaporates a lot faster than water, she could have decreased the alcohol content by leaving the bottle open. In fact if it was corked, which admittedly is usually not the case any more, she wouldn't have had much choice but to leave it uncorked.

    • (Score: 2) by NateMich on Tuesday May 09, @09:14PM

      by NateMich (6662) on Tuesday May 09, @09:14PM (#1305601)

      Letting any of the liquid evaporate is probably a bad idea though, since you'd surely lose water in the wine as well.