The records for longest survival without food are both grim and confusing, depending on the precise circumstances and the trustworthiness of the witnesses. A frequently cited benchmark is Kieran Doherty, an Irish Republican Army prisoner at the infamous Maze Prison near Belfast, who refused food for 73 days in 1981 before dying.4 If you bend the rules a bit to allow vitamins in addition to water, then you’ll be able to continue accessing your body’s fat stores for much longer. A 1973 journal article by a Scottish doctor reports the case of A.B., a twenty-seven-year-old man who weighed 456
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