Urine Is the Key to Human Survival, Claim Scientists Literally Taking the Piss

Gee whiz, humans love water. We love to drink it, swim in it, dump ice-cold buckets of it on our heads, and have wet t-shirt contests with it. But that’s not all. We need it for toilet paper, hamburgers, and sexy underwear. Why, it takes 450 gallons just to produce a single bar of chocolate, 36 gallons for a cup of coffee, and 20 gallons for a pint of beer. With all this consumption leading to global water shortages, scientists are turning inward for answers: And urine luck.

Pee is the golden currency of the future. Because of the four trillion cubic meters of fresh water we humans consume every year, over 70 percent is spent on agriculture. And nothing grows your peanuts like the sweet, nitrogen-rich solution of the mortals.

We kid you not. What scientists have recently discovered (and grandmas have known for centuries) is that the same major nutrients found in fertilizer can also be found in urine. By diverting it into crop feed we can kill two birds with one urine-soaked stone by reducing chemical fertilizer runoff and human waste contamination at the same time. (What a relief.)

However, we’re going to need some piss and vinegar to hold our pee habits, for, despite pilot programs around the world currently working out the kinks of urine fertilizer, the pee revolution is far from hitting the mainstream. Because new-fangled toilets that store hot urine for agricultural transport sounds pretty gross. But faced with a future without coffee or chocolate, we say pass the cup.

So next time a cop busts you for pissing on a bush, tell him you’re doing it to save the human race. One leak at a time.

Cover Photo: Dmitry Gladkov (Getty Images)
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