Just to mention, while feces can be pretty fertilizing if "prepared", urine is generally not. Most planets hate urine... Thats why IRL they have hugh problems with this trees at big festivals, since you know how men are. If too many do this against the same tree, it might even die.
Other uses
[edit] Ancient uses
* The ancient Romans used urine as a bleaching agent for cleaning clothes and teeth.
* In Scotland, it was used to wash wool to prevent shrinking.
[edit] Fertilizers
Urine contains large amounts of urea, an excellent source of nitrogen for plants. As such it is a useful accelerator for compost. Urea is much less toxic than ammonia and is formed by the indirect combination of the byproducts of deamination (2 NH3 molecules) and cellular respiration (1 CO2 molecule). Other components include various inorganic salts such as sodium chloride (sodium discharge is called natriuresis).
[edit] Gardening
Urine has applications in gardening and agriculture as a fertilizer. Gardeners often recommend a dilution of 10-20 parts water to one of urine for application to plants and flower beds during the growing season; undiluted urine can chemically burn the roots of some species. Urine typically contains more than 50% of the nitrogen and phosphorus and potassium content of whole sewage, and is widely considered as good as or better than commercially-available chemical fertilisers or stabilised sludge from sewage plants. Urine is also used in composting to increase the nitrogen content of the mulch, accelerating the composting process and increasing its final nutrient values.
[edit] Food-crop agriculture
Urine is also being actively considered as a fertilizer for use in food-crop agriculture in developed countries. Studies into its feasibility and safety usually indicate that it is an acceptable alternative to chemical fertilisers and stabilised sludge. However, the technology to implement its use on a large scale has not been developed, and is considered too expensive. There are also concerns over its safety regarding the potential for transmitting infectious disease and refluxing xenobiotic compounds (associated with toilet-cleaning products and prescribed drugs expelled in urine) in the human food chain. Proponents of adopting urine for this use usually claim the risks to be negligible or acceptable, and point out that sewage causes more environmental problems when it is treated and disposed of compared with when it is used as a resource. Critics generally agree that more research is needed into how the resource is to be collected, processed and handled.
A few people use urine as a crop fertilizer. These include organic farming cooperatives and eco-villages where special urine-diverting toilets with collecting tanks are installed. Many of these also employ concepts such as greywater irrigation and the composting of fecal matter. Many are the subject of ongoing feasibility studies sanctioned by governments and private organisations. These people generally reject safety concerns over its use on food crops provided that it is used with common sense. For example, application to fruit trees is considered safer than to bushes and especially root crops. It is also considered sensible to cease application at a safe interval before harvesting. However, the use of urine for this purpose is even rarer than its use on ornamental gardens.
In developing countries, the application of pure urine to crops is also rare. However, whole, untreated sewage, termed night soil, is often applied to crops and is considered essential. This practice has been applied, along with crop rotation schemes, for thousands of years.
In Japan and Nepal, urine can be used in small scale aquaculture.
[edit] Survival uses
See also: Urophagia
Shipwrecked or people otherwise adrift at sea for long periods often resort to drinking their urine when no rainwater is available, seawater being unsuitable. People stranded in deserts often also drank urine to prevent life-threatening dehydration. This desperate measure, however achieves little as urine is as dehydrating as saltwater.
During World War I, the Germans experimented with numerous poisonous gases for use during war. After the first German chlorine gas attacks, Allied troops were supplied with masks of cotton pads that had been soaked in urine. It was believed that the ammonia in the pad neutralized the chlorine. These pads were held over the face until the soldiers could escape from the poisonous fumes, although it is now known that chlorine gas reacts with urine to produce toxic fumes (see chlorine and Use of poison gas in World War I).
Urine has also been historically used as an antiseptic. In times of war, when other antiseptics were unavailable, urine, the darker the better, was utilized on open wounds as an antibacterial.[citation needed]
Urban myth states that urine works well against jellyfish stings, although it is at best ineffective and in some cases may make the injury worse.[5][6][7]
Sorry to burst your bubble, but urine is an excellent fertilizer, with the exception that you have to dilute it somewhat with water if you want to use it raw. I also think that raging drunks pissing down trees may have above-average urine in terms of chemicality(from both dehydration and alcohol content).
Worse yet, I now also know that it can be used to clean clothes and brush your teeth, the more chemical and more alcoholic the better i presume. It'll probably be great for, say scrubbing floors as well.
Seems like we'll use the cistern for watering the fields instead of the river flood.Also, if we implement this, i suggest we introduce untouchables.
http://www.bay12games.com/forum/index.php?topic=24932.15Also, peasants aren't IMO low enough, i think we need untouchables as well!
Dalits include leather-workers (called chamar), carcass handlers (called mahar), poor farmers and landless labourers, night soil scavengers (called bhangi), street handcrafting people, folk artists, street cleaners, sweepers (chura), washermen (dhobi), etc.
There, now just apply unhappy thought when having to meet one of these guys!
I realize that a good deal of the professions are already ingame.
There is probably a REASON why 'landless laborers' and 'poor farmers' were considered untouchables, given what fertilizer they use to flood the plains with. Not to mention 'washermen'
(big tub of urine and soap). Street cleaners, hmm.
In extremely old cities (mid-eleventh century and earlier), the concept of 'sewer' was further reduced to a simple trench in the middle of the street; any waste would be thrown into the street, where rainwater would (eventually) wash it away. If the population were extremely lucky.
Oh yeah, cleaning/sweeping streets were also poop-related!
Tanning and carcasshandling one can assume is because of the fact that hauling rotting bodies around and flaying them for leather in a race to beat the maggots to it, isn't very nice.
Folk artists and street handcrafters, though. I think those two are the only ones of the untouchable jobs that are not about performing neccecary but disgusting jobs for the community. They're basically gypsies i guess, and just social unwanteds by the community.
Just introduce a 'smell' or 'stink' mechanic, and you won't even have to flag these social outcasts!
By extension , their children and sposes could be cast out as well, and create an ideal growing ground for criminal dwarves.
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Topic: Feces and Urine (Read 36242 times)