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Water Conservaton & Preservation

WIKIMEDIA COMMONS

In Dune, water is a precious resource on the verge of extinction. Throughout the book, consequences is a rigid and hard concept. Therefore preserving and conserving water is critical for survival to the Fremen people in Book I of Dune. The Fremen people have taken measures to ensure that any water, or moisture is preserved or reused. For example, the Fremen people have developed a suit called stillsuit and it is a very special suit, especially in the harsh climate of the Arrakis planet. The stillsuit will prevent the body from losing more than a tablespoon of their body’s moisture in a specified time period. Keep in mind the many activities a person does in a day to lose moisture, sweat, urine, exhaled air, organs, among other activities which averages to about 10-15 cups of water, per day. And this suit allows that moisture to be reused and loses no more than a tablespoon of body moisture per day. That is an amazing piece of technology that preserves and conserves the body’s liquid. Another practice by the Freemen culture to preserve and conserve water loss is salvaging the liquid from cadavers. While the image this produces is less than desirable, the point is being made of just how critical and precious water as a resource is on this planet. The premise around Herbert’s world of water shortage becomes very real and believable as you continue to read through Book I in the Dune.

Current events in the real word have demonstrated that water and good water quality is not guaranteed. But if someone were passionate about conserving our water there are some ways to get started. Remember it is easier to start small and build off of what works for you and still make a difference. One can take shorter showers as a four minute shower uses approximately 20-40 gallons, replace shower heads with water-saving low-flow shower heads which means less than 2.5 gallons is used per minute. Using a water-saving low-flow shower head for a four minute show would instead only use 10 gallons of water, making positive changes already!

While this is not quite a stillsuit recycling and reusing your body’s own moisture or straining corpses for leftover liquid, these are much more appealing and manageable ways to begin conserving our planet’s finite resource-water!