• Question: What would you be more likely to survive in a flood or a drought? You have to spend 2 days in each.

    Asked by to Ben, Emily, Hattie, Jemma, Veronica on 20 Jun 2014. This question was also asked by .
    • Photo: Jemma Rowlandson

      Jemma Rowlandson answered on 20 Jun 2014:

      Hi Maggie!

      Wow! A very inventive but tough question. Neither are good but I’d have to say a flood. Without water your body starts to get very ill pretty quickly, even after one day. By day 2 of a drought you would not be doing very well at all. You would be much weaker so anything like finding shelter, food or running away from danger would become much more difficult.

      Providing you survive whatever caused the flood I think you would be able to cope better. Once you find high land you could then find food and shelter. The big problem with a flood would be disease, I expect that would spread pretty quickly. If it’s only for two days though then it probably will not affect you as much, and you would (hopefully) be able to get medical attention quite quickly once the flood waters go down.

    • Photo: Emily Hayward

      Emily Hayward answered on 23 Jun 2014:

      Great question maggiev6!

      For 2 days you could probably survive in either without anything too bad happening, although you’d exect to be happier and healthier after 2 days in a flood. Our bodies are made up of 55-60% water therfore if we dont drink any then we’ll notice it after a few days, especially as droughts tend to be caused due to hot weather, and therefore bodies loose more water through sweating to keep cool. With floods the biggest risk is the water being contaminated and dirty – thats likely to be te biggest cause of harm, so if you have something to treat the water and make it drinkable and safe you could survive a while. For the first few days of a flood the water is likely to be reasonably ok, but then it will get more contaminated with sewage and things like that…..but there are ways to treat it, just think of large boats on the sea (its kinda like one giant flood!) – often they dont have enough space to carry lots of fresh water therefore they can treat the seawater and remove the saltyness and contaminents to make it clean.

    • Photo: Veronica Celorrio

      Veronica Celorrio answered on 23 Jun 2014:

      As I come from a dry country….I will say I would rather spend two days in a drought. I am not really keen on raining as you would expect from a Spanish person…I have getting wet! But I can deal with drought and heat for a while…

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