How Long Can You Go without Air, Water Or Food?

Food, water and air are the three most important things we need in order to survive (well, a fourth would be Wi-Fi). In order to survive, we replenish these things whenever we can, but what if you couldn't replace them? How long could you go without them? And what would happen to you? [Intro] First, let's start with oxygen, because that's what the body needs the most immediately. The average human can hold their breath for 30-60 seconds, but can hold their breath for around 6 minutes before blacking out. Since you black out in this amount of time, it's impossible to kill yourself by holding your breath, since breathing is mostly involuntary. From there, it's only a couple more minutes before your death, if you don't have any access to oxygen. But the 6 minutes thing is for holding your breath, which, if you're sane, you would fill your lungs to their full capacity before trying. If you were deprived of oxygen by being in a place with little to no accessible oxygen, it would be much quicker. On the top of Mt. Everest, you would only have 2-3 minutes to live, and in space, you would have only 60-90 seconds. And no, you would not explode, it would just be extremely painful and agonizing for the first 15 seconds because that's when you're still conscious. When it comes to thirst, the average human will only last 4 or 5 days. During that time, your urine becomes darker to conserve water, you urinate less, and the brain doesn't function properly. Humans are 65% water, and we lose about 2.5 liters of it every day. The record for the longest time gone without water was set in 1979 by an Austrian teen who survived for 18 days. This is definitely not a record you should try to break. The only reason he went so long without water is because the police forgot that they left him in a holding cell! And, finally, we go to food, which you can go longer without. Much longer. In fact, the average human can survive for a month without food, as long as they keep their metabolism low. Starvation is a three-step process. In the first part, for the first six hours or so after the last meal, the body uses the glucose from that meal. In this stage, you generally feel well-fed and just go on with your day. The second stage, which last for a couple weeks, is the fat burning stage, where all the extra fat someone acquires goes to an actual use. And in the third stage, the body starts absorbing the energy from your muscles through a process known as "catabolysis". The body even goes after heart muscle to try to get as much energy as it can take. In fact, people starving to death often die from cardiac arrest from the heart being unable to support itself. So, with all this, be thankful that you have access to food and clean water if you do. Thank you for watching this video. This week, I would like to shout out another channel I really like; Nathan and Rose. They run a scientific channel in much the same form as the Vlogbrothers, talking about scientific subjects like global warming through vlogs, and addressing the audience as "Nathan" or "Rose". I met them at VidCon, and they're very nice people, and I definitely recommend you check them out. If you want to subscribe to this channel, you can click the yellow subscribe button on screen, or the red subscribe button below screen. Thanks for watching, and remember to appreciate what you have.