Super-extreme fasting with Prahlad Jani (70+ years without water or food) | Hacker News Reader

Super-extreme fasting with Prahlad Jani (70+ years without water or food)

dangerousminds.net

5 pointslobo-tuerto15 comments

True story: back in the early 80's there was a guy on the west coast with a bit of a cult following (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inedia#Wiley_Brooks) who also claimed to be a breatharian. Supposedly he would only drink a little herb tea, but only when he had to come into the city. A friend of mine went to see him speak, was totally entranced and started following the beginning breatharian regimen (which revolved around only eating yellow food. Yes,yellow. Don't ask me why.) Anyway, to make a long story short, the whole thing blew up when his disgruntled ex-girlfriend blew the whistle on him and said that he actually loved to eat fried chicken. He was also spotted leaving a 7-11 with a hot dog.

My prior for this claim being true is ~0. (IE - the evidence that he can go years without food or water should have to be extremely compelling to come close to convincing you.)

I think that's why the India's Defence Research Development Organisation is looking into it.

What is the number of days a "normal" human can survive without food or water? If I recall correctly it was 3 or 4. Although it may vary depending on the environment and activity conditions.

frankly, the probability of fraud by the researchers or reporters strikes me as many orders of magnitude higher than the probability that he can fast indefinitely without dying.

Yeah, it would take a lot of trustworthy eyewitnesses, video evidence, etc to convince me of this claim. Having some measure of mental control over your heartbeat or body temperature is interesting; having your cells function long-term without calories to burn and without creating waste products that need to be removed by water....

Well, that's quite a claim. I'd count it more likely that he's a cyborg from the future.

Most people can go a pretty long time without actual food, so long as they have water and a few key vitamins to help the body metabolize its own fat stores and proteins. People only last a few days without any water.

Water + vitamin fasting is sustainable for weeks or months, if I recall correctly. I don't remember the specifics, but I think B12 is the most important.

I think the most likely explanation is The Flying Spaghetti Monster is surreptitiously slipping him meatballs when nobody's looking.

I would like to make a feature request. When I click "flag" I would like to be able to add a comment as to why I flagged the article, for catharsis. For instance, for this article I would like to be able to write "this is so fucking stupid" without it polluting the general comment stream. I don't even care if the comment shows up anywhere... just the act of typing it would counterbalance the blood pressure spike I get from reading dumb fucking headlines like this.

That is the claim the subject is making.

Right now, he is being observed and has been without any water nor food for 6 days in a row. Would be interesting and maybe life changing to see what comes out of this.

Either the results will be rigged, or he will keel over, or the experiment will end for some reason.

The video in the article shows him in various postures, but never moving. I wonder why this is so.

The video mentions (4'18") that the same team studied another guy, mechanical engineer Mr Manek, who survives only on boiled water: "They conclusively proved that Mr Manek did indeed survive on nothing but water and cosmic energy". I wonder how they did the cosmic energy bit?

"... Mr Manek did indeed survive on nothing but water and cosmic energy"

Is he the dragon warrior?

Is he a Steorn salesman by any chance?

Thermodynamics isn't just a good idea people, it's the law.

Please get James Randi's people involved.

I am vegetarian. Can live several year in a row without meat. Most of my friends can not survive two days - the begin to have cravings. Am I miracle?

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