Frank Herbert’s Dune is one of the most beloved sci-fi novels of all time, so there’s certainly a hefty amount of anticipation surrounding the upcoming film adaptation of legendary book. The first stills from the film were released earlier this week, and they revealed both the film's characters and their stillsuits, which are essential for surviving the harsh desert world of Arrakis. However, despite how practical stillsuits are, they're also extremely gross.

While Dune does embrace a lot of technology that was common in science-fiction by 1965, Herbert spent a lot of time figuring out how people would function on Arrakis. To answer how people could survive on such a barren, unforgiving planet, Herbert had Arrakis' denizens be extremely resourceful and utilize their own bodies. This is where stillsuits come in.

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Created by the Fremen, a tribe of humans that call Arrakis home, stillsuits cover one's entire body and essentially repuroses process and filter moisture and salt, which aids in keeping people from losing their water while cooling the body. Liet Kynes, a planetologist in the book, explains the stillsuits to the Duke Leo Atreides, saying, “With a Fremen suit in good working order, you won't lose more than a thimbleful of moisture a day.”

Private companies made their own variations of the stillsuit, but the ones crafted by the Fremen were considered of higher quality, as they were equipped to preserve moisture in the desert. The suits are made in accordance with Freman traditions and ideals, as the group stresses that each individual’s body water belongs to the tribe as a whole, and that it’s everyone’s responsibility to preserve as much of their own as possible. Not only does this technology allow for survival, but adheres to this principle of avoiding being wasteful towards the body, or nature.

However, not all of the stillsuit's water comes just from perspiration. Instead, there are pockets on stillsuits that process feces and urine. Although this is kind of gross, this is a survivalist tactic that's used in extreme situations. Plus, due to the filtration system in the them, the stillsuits make it so that one isn't technically just drinking straight urine, even if that's what the water once was.

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While we don’t know if the upcoming Dune film will get into as much scatological detail regarding the stillsuit as the novel did , we can absolutely expect a variation of it for the movie. Dune has been a perennial sci-fi favorite for a number of reasons, and its detailed world certainly isn’t the least of the reasons why.

Directed by Denis Villeneuve from a script he co-wrote with Eric Roth and Jon Spaihts, Legendary Pictures' Dune stars Timothée Chalamet, Rebecca Ferguson, Oscar Isaac, Stellan Skarsgård, Javier Bardem, Charlotte Rampling, Dave Bautista, David Dastmalchian, Zendaya, Jason Momoa, Stephen Henderson and Josh Brolin. The film arrives in theaters Dec. 18.

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