What would happen if we ran out of water?

It's a guess but I think we'd die

>>8870132
Gonna take a shot in the dark here, everything would die. Quickly.

File: 1469830976539.jpg (30KB, 281x248px) Image search: [Google]

30KB, 281x248px

>>8870520
>>8870140
i'm asking what would humanity do exactly to try and prevent this inevitable doom?

i did some number crunching and it's up to a 50% chance or more that anything up to everything will die

How do you even run out of water?

File: 1428122775612.jpg (3MB, 3072x2304px) Image search: [Google]

3MB, 3072x2304px

>>8870132
What's the time scale we're looking at? What type of water are you referring to? Just surfacewater?

>>8871234
I assume OP means potable water, in which case there would be mass panic and hysteria followed by massive price hikes of preexisting water resources (i.e. bottled water or water processed via desalination plant or other methods) and huge civilian casualties. Desalination plants are expensive as fuck so there aren't a ton in existence right now. And that's just looking on the human consumption side of things. There are plenty of industries that will be proper fucked if they can't obtain water.

If he just means all water on the planet in all forms [groundwater/surfacewater/glaciers/icecaps], regardless of fitness for human consumption, then everything would just die a horrible death. There's water that exists in the atmosphere (~3% of total water on Earth IIRC), but it would be nowhere near enough and would only just fuck things up more if you tried to capture it.

>>8870611
Assuming we have our shit together, I guess we would try and find a way to make water, since finding a new source off planet is off the table. We would have about 3 days to find and make an answer, which is pretty impossible as of today. Even with all the best science in the world all working together with no animosity between nations, we're still fucked. There's just no time to think of an answer and make it practical in that short of a time frame. Chaos would erupt. Everyone would be dead in a weeks time.

File: 1397594928848.jpg (200KB, 427x640px) Image search: [Google]

200KB, 427x640px

>>8871234
I completely misread your question due to being tired, sorry about that, will try to answer before I completely fall asleep

>How do you run out of water?
You don't have to run out of all water, just water that's fit for human consumption (AKA potable) or can be processed until it's fit for human consumption (like saltwater/wastewater). This can happen due to a variety of reasons, mostly environmental (see: anywhere that's had a prolonged drought) but some manmade such as if your water's contaminated because a bunch of nuclear waste got dumped in it. As long as the volume of potable water you're able to produce is outpaced by the demand for it, you're heading for a slow death for a large percentage of the population.

Any questions you have about increasing the number of methods for reclaiming water or increasing the number of facilities that are capable of doing so with currently existing technology can be summed up, like most infrastructure projects, as: it takes a lot of time, it's too expensive, and no one wants to pay for it.

>>8871373
People wouldn't die that quickly if we're assuming bottled water hasn't all mysteriously vanished.

>>8871419
We use to drink our shitwater. We can drink it again.

>>8871457
If by shitwater you mean untreated wastewater, then sure, I guess you could do that. Huge amounts of people would die and even more would become cripplingly ill, but I guess if you don't care about water quality or safety standards and all the treatment plants within reasonable distance are broken, you could.

>>8871419
>People wouldn't die that quickly if we're assuming bottled water hasn't all mysteriously vanished.
I was under the assumption that bottled water contains water, and thus, would also be gone. If by 'water' you meant some specific subset of water you should've said so.

>>8871504
>If by 'water' you meant some specific subset of water you should've said so.
Refer to >>8871356, also >>8871419. As I mentioned previously, OP never specified what type of water he's talking about, so I had to take some creative liberties. >>8870611 indicates he wants some sort of grand narrative, which you can't have if everyone just dies of dehydration in a few days, which is what would happen if all forms of water (including bottled beverages) vanished overnight. His phrasing of "ran out" also indicates there's a greater time scale at play than if he'd said "disappeared."

I had envisioned what I considered a slightly more 'realistic' scenario in which fresh ground/surfacewater had dwindled to near nonexistence or were severely compromised in some way, leaving only surface saltwater, atmospheric water, and whatever resources had been previously stored.

Even if fresh surface/ground sources run out, there's still likely to be at least a little water that was bottled prior to the incident sitting in a warehouse somewhere. It's like how there's now a ban on manufacturing antibacterial soaps in the US. You're still going to be able to buy them for a while—possibly years—because they have them in stock. The sale isn't banned, they just can't make any more. Once the last one's gone, it's gone.

TL;DR If you want me to be more specific than I already have been, you'll have to ask OP to be more specific first.

>>8871474
>>8871457
Just do what people did in the middle ages: Brew extremely low ABV beer and drink that instead of the lethally contaminated water in the creek.

>>8871474
N A T U R A L S E L E C T I O N

>>8870132

We drink our own peepee

File: Red Dead Redemption.jpg (69KB, 564x807px) Image search: [Google]

69KB, 564x807px

>>8870132
Nice Touhou pun