Exactly what happens if we run out of water?

In 1995, World Bank vice president Ismail Serageldin declared that "the wars of the next century will be about water." Check out our HowStuffWorks article to learn what happens once we run out of water.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
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(00:20):
and resolves online fraud safe Secure Visa. I'm welcome to
the podcast. It's Josh and Chuck here, Josh Clark and
Charles Bryant. Just a couple of staff writers at how
Stuff Works dot Com. That's all we are, that is it,
Chuck Um, Chuck. I imagine you're familiar with Dark four, right, Yeah,
I am. I keep up with them with the niche

(00:42):
you have. You have you heard about the basically the
peace agreement fallen apart lately? Yeah? I think you should
tell people though, Okay, Well, um, basically uh. In two
thousand and six, the the Sudanese government UM had a
piece of cord established with this lone rebel faction. And
there's a multitude of rebel factions fighting each other and
the Sudanese government right now in in Sudan, UM and uh. Basically,

(01:08):
one rebel group, the Sudanese Liberation Movement, step forward and said,
you know what, we'll come up the ceasefire. Let's come
up with an accord um or a power sharing agreement,
that kind of thing. And everything was going pretty well
until apparently the Sudanese army bombed some villages that are
under SLM control. This happened like yesterday basically. Um So,

(01:31):
now all of a sudden, the SLM leaders accusing the
President of Sudan of even further war crimes. The president
al Bashir I think is his last name. He is
basically about to be indicted by the Hague and um
he's in big, big trouble, crimes against humanity, war crimes,
the whole shebang. Um So, it sounds like things are
falling apart, as if they couldn't get any worse. It's

(01:53):
pretty heavy stuffed. But did you know that, um, that
one of the reasons why the conflict in Sudan's taking
like two hundred thousand lives so far started in two
thousand three. Um, it was in large part started over
access to um drinking water, right, and that's not unusual,
you know, safe drinking or clean drinking water in third
world countries and around the world is getting more obsolete,

(02:16):
and it's kind of a problem. It definitely is. Uh,
As I understand at one point two billion people don't
have access to um clean drinking water. That's like of
the world population, I know. And sadly, I think six
thousand children every year die because they don't have access
to safe drinking water. And that's that's a very startling statistic. Yeah,

(02:36):
then there's plenty of them. I mean, we could sit
here and rattle them off. Basically, all of what they
add up to is that we're running out of water
and we're beginning to see the effects of that. UM.
Africa seems to be kind of the uh, at the
cutting edge of all things horrible for some reason. UM.
And right now it looks like what we're seeing in

(02:57):
Africa as far as water goes, is what the developing
world's gonna see in twenty or fifty or a hundred
years UM. Largely because we don't value water. It's cheap, right,
it's cheap, and people use it like it's uh, like
it's free. Yeah, I mean I think it takes like
twelve gallons is to stay in a human being every
day twild gallons of water and then includes everything bathing

(03:20):
and drinking water and cooking, cooking, the whole, the whole shebang. Right. Um,
so you've got twelve gallons that you need to stay alive, right, Um,
Americans use I think a hundred and fifty eight gallons
a day on average. Every single one of us on
average uses that much. And true American spirit, it's uh,
we don't treat it with much respect right now? So

(03:41):
I mean, what, what what will happen if if we
start to run out of water? There? Chucker? What happens
when we in the developing world, I should say run
out of water? Well, there could potentially be you know,
worst fault over water. I know that. Uh. The World
Bank vice president at one point said that the next wars,
uh in the next will be fought over water. Yeah,

(04:02):
he said that in and we only had to wait
like eight years, three years into the twenty one century
when Dark four breaks out. It was the first war
fought over water in like years. The last one was
among Mesopotamians, I think so, and what happened to them exactly?
It's a cautionary tale if I've ever heard one, Right,

(04:22):
I think part of the problem is that water is uh,
you know, a lot of times the countries and even
states share borders with bodies of water, so it's not
the kind of thing you can really claim ownership of.
So you know, here in Georgia, we had a situation
recently where we had uh, well we're still in a drought,
but we have a situation with Alabama and Florida and
I think Tennessee even where we're kind of all battling

(04:44):
for the same water. Well, we drew Tennessee into it
by suing to have the Georgia border go into the
middle of the Tennessee River all of a sudden, rather
than at the banks, based on based on an old
survey that they said was incorrect from the hundred and
it was you know, no one really cared much until now,
and now we kind of need that water. But uh,

(05:05):
it's it's not a problem when there's neighboring states and
everyone's good friends, were trying to work it out diplomatically.
There's no war crimes going on yet, no, but it
can be a problem and and developing nations where you know,
they're not exactly the best of friends exactly, and it's
a little more dire of a circumstance, and so you
can't have wars break out over water. Well, even even
beyond wars. I mean there's a there's a pretty um

(05:27):
I imagine a predictable model of what will begin to
happen when you start to run out of water. The
first thing um that would go would be crops, right,
because I mean, we we need food and much less
supply than we need water. But you know, water is
the basic essential ingredient of everything we need. We can
go like two days without water, but like eight weeks

(05:49):
without food, right, Yeah, about sixty days. You can live
without food as long as you have water, But three
to five days without water, and it's dehydration and death
and um ironically though, we need water to raise that food.
So even if we have drinking water, we're still gonna
need food eventually. So you run out of water, you
run out of food. If you run out of food, right,

(06:10):
all of a sudden, the farmers who were you know,
once raising these crops and livestock, uh, still need money
to survive. They still need money to get by and
to be able to purchase whatever food is available, right,
so they start moving to the cities, and then the
city experiences this big population boom that strange the infrastructure
system for which eventually is broken and becomes polluted, which

(06:34):
takes out even more of the water supply. So it
really is a trickle down effect, and it's excuse upon there,
but it affects everything all the way on down and
and it's wide reaching. Yeah. So basically this is a
kind of the nightmare scenario that we're facing. Um. And
one of the things that I questioned when I was
looking into this for this article, exactly what happens if

(06:55):
we run out of water? UM? Was Okay, well, we've
got climate change going on right now. Clearly there's some
climate skeptics also an article on how stuff works dot com.
But um, for the most part, most people can see
quite clearly that you know, some eighteen thousand year old
glaciers around the world that have sustained humans for as
long as humans have lived near them are suddenly losing

(07:16):
six of their mass and like the last twenty years, right,
So why don't we just drink all that? It sounds
like a good idea to me. It is. The problem
is is we rely on these glaciers, which support billions
of people in like Asia, UM, South America, Central America UM.
They rely on them for their drinking supplied to kind

(07:36):
of melt in a predictable rate each year and then
be replenished by snow. Well, if it's too warm to
support like a snow peak or a glacier any longer
it's not being replenished, it becomes part of the rain
cycle and eventually becomes salinated water. And we have water
water everywhere, right, so most of the Earth's water is

(07:59):
either shan or locked in ice right now for the
time being. It will eventually be mostly ocean, right right,
which we can't drink we can't or can we Well,
I know that if you drink plain salt water it
will dehydrate you even more. But I think you might
be talking about removing the salt from the water. Yeah, desalination, right,
and that's actually in in progress right now. There's some

(08:21):
desalination plants around the world that are that are providing
fresh water from saltwater. But it's like super super expensive
technology right now. Yeah, that's one of the problems. I know.
Another one of the cool ideas that they're working on.
Bioengineers are trying to produce crops that need less water
or that can live through artificial irrigation, which I know

(08:42):
a lot of people against us think it's kind of
creepy to eat this bioengineered food, But um, it might
be a good solution if it will save us water.
I think everybody will just kind of you know, tongue
exactly right. And you know, um, agriculture as it stands
is uh, basically one of the biggest users, actually the
biggest user of water. I think it uses seventy of

(09:05):
the global water consumption goes to agriculture. The problem is
is our irrigation technology is just so terrible. We lose
like of that water. It's not it's not a very
efficient system. Problem. That would definitely help as well in
addition to creating those hybridized crops that kind of thing. Yeah,
I know, drip irrigation is I think, uh effective or

(09:27):
efficient the wave of the future in my opinion, I
think you're right. So check. Do you know anything about
carrying capacities? I know a little bit, but I think
you might be the man in this round. I did
study anthropology at the dear Old University of Georgia, and
that's why I first learned about. Carrying capacity is basically
the total number of people that any any kind of

(09:47):
um anything can sustain, especially with food, water, that kind
of thing. Before we overtext the planet to the limit,
So we used to run around as hunter gatherers. Right,
some of us still it, right, that's true, but for
the at one time, all of us did, and we're
that can sustain like twenty million people. Then all of
a sudden we come up with agriculture ten twelve thousand

(10:10):
years ago, and all of a sudden, we can sustain
twelve billion people with that, right, Right, that switch from
hunter hunting, hunting and gathering to agriculture give some people
hope that technology is going to be able to stay
ahead of this curve and that we will never actually
reach the caring capacity, will have moved on to something else,

(10:30):
and you know, the day will be saved and we
will create statues for scientists. Right, That's what I'm hoping for. Yeah,
me too, Chuck, because the alternative is kind of kind
of scary, yeah and thirsty. Yeah. Well, I'm gonna drink
my out of date fresca and really enjoy it for once. Um, thanks, Chuck.
If you want to learn more about water and exactly

(10:52):
what will happen uh if we run out of it?
Type in exactly what happens if we run out of
water on how stuff works dot com and stick around
for Chuck's recipe for a water free breakfast smovie right
after this. It's good stuff you should know is brought
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How's that for peace of mind? Safe secure Visa? So Chuck,

(11:34):
give up your secret. Tell us this a great recipe.
It's really good, Josh, and good for you. What I
do is I prep ahead of time and make them
kind of throughout the week. So I'll get a bunch
of strawberries and some of my raspberries and blueberries, and
I'll chop them. We'll chop up the strawberries and I'll
freeze it. And that's one of the keys that everything's
gonna be frozen. I hadn't heard that one before. Oh yeah,

(11:55):
it's good. That's why my smoothies are terrible. I guess right. Well,
it keeps you from having to add ice with all
the just frozen. So you put all that in a
blender or a food processor with a banana, and then
you add some orange juice, and then you add the
secret ingredient is vanilla protein powder, which you get at
your health health food store. I can eat that stuff
dry right out of the canister, and I know it's good.

(12:16):
So you blend that all up. It gets nice and thick,
and you've got a delicious breakfast smoothie on your hand.
That's fantastic show. Now you can find all sorts of
great recipes, not necessarily Chuck's water free breakfast smoothie recipe,
but it's some other really great ones on the food
channel on how stuff works dot com for more on
this and thousands of other topics. Because it how stuff

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