Tonight on the six o'clock news there was a story of a man who went out gold detecting and became lost. Today, five days later he was found alive and in fairly good condition.
This guy had walked away from his car. (not a good idea)
and says he survived by eating termites and other insects. There was no mention in the story about water, thought did say it was a dry desert area; he must have had reasonably good water supply to last five days while walking.

Another bug eater. Blast, you paying attention? BBQ'd termites!

Glad he made it...

Here's the story:

http://www.iht.com/articles/ap/2008/07/30/asia/AS-Australia-Lost-in-Outback.php

The Sock

No mention of water. I wonder, how much moisture do you get from termites???

The article memtioned that he saw Search Planes one day and tried to signal them by waving. Fire-making supplies or a signal mirror may have really helped in his signaling effort.

Tough guy to last 5 days with very little resources.

Mike

Eating dehydrates you faster. I doubt he ate much especially if he had no water. He could have gone without food for 5 days easily.

Though termites do go a long way food wise. There's mearly double the calories per gram in termites than in a good steak...and more protein too. A quick google search came up with a figure of about 550 calories for 100g of termites...pretty good though that's a LOT of termites!

I don't recall how protein ranks on the 'water used to digest' scale but I'm sure it's better than carbs.

Most fresh meat is at least 50% water. You need water to digest it, and I couldn't find any figures I'd trust on whether it is a net gain or loss. The original article implies it was a net gain, but I wouldn't rely on that either.

However, an article in The Telegraph says:

So maybe there was rainwater from the storm? And it sounds cold rather than hot.

The deserts in Australia are well know to be notoriously hot; at night the temps plummet and where the day may have been 35-40c, the night temp can go as low as 0c or lower.

But if there was a storm, doesn't that mean storm clouds that would block the sun?