sci.energy

wrote in message
news:8136-46EC2769-187@storefull-3256.bay. ...
> Suppose you was adrift in a wooden boat and you needed to make some
> seawater/saltwater safe to drink.(think Les Stroud in Survivorman) How
> would you do it? Could some wood from the boat be burned and then scrape
> the charcoal from the burnt wood and use the charcoal to filter the
> seawater/saltwater into a can to make it safe to drink?

Charcoal filters wont' remove dissolved salts. So that wouldn't be much
use.

There is a minority that believe drinking seawater early, before you get
dehydrated can be done with little ill effects. But there's a lot of
'common knowledge' out there about how drinking seawater can be deadly.

Many instances of survival recount tales of catching rainwater in make-shift
catchments out of sail cloth, clothing, what-have-you.

daestrom