Water. It is available in supermarkets and gas stations throughout North America for no more than pocket change. We rarely give the means for obtaining water a second thought. It’s always there whenever we need it, at the corner store or from our very own faucet. Yet in times of crisis, this most basic necessity of life can all too easily transform from an abundant commodity into a scare resource.
Water is one of your must critical and urgent needs during any emergency situation. Around 65% of your body is made up of water - you need it to process your body’s waste, regulate your temperature, and even simply to use your brain. You can only live for a few days without it; less if you find yourself in a hot area where your natural process of sweating causes your body to lose moisture more rapidly.
Lose a mere four percent of your body weight in water and you will begin to experience dehydration, with symptoms including fatigue, headaches, dizziness, and possibly even hallucinations. A person weighing 180 pounds working in a hot environment could sweat out 4 percent of their body weight in a mere two hours!
When faced with a crisis, finding water must be one of your first priorities. This guide will help you learn how to:
* filter water using basic materials and techniques for survival water filtration
* purify water using water purification survival techniques and products
* collect water from nature using basic materials and techniques
Potable Water vs. Non-Potable Water
It is important, if at all possible, to ensure that the water you drink is potable, or fit for drinking. Drinking non-potable water can result in contracting harmful diseases or parasites such as:
Cholera - causes intense diarrhea, vomiting, and cramps
Dysentery - inflamation of the bowels with diarrhea (possibly with blood or mucous), fever, etc.
Flukes - found in stagnant or polluted water, flukes can bore into your bloodstream and cause disease
Leeches - found in water bodies, leeches can hook to the inside of your throat and suck your blood, creating a nasty wound
Tyhpoid - inflammation and ulceration of the intestines accompanied by fever - it is often fatal
With these dangers to face, it is important that you take the proper steps highighted in this water purification, filtration, and collection guide to achieve as safe of drinking water as possible.
Water Filtration
During an emergency, you may come across water but discover that it is muddy, gritty, foul smelling, stagnant, or otherwise not drinkable. It’s a good idea to run your water through a basic filtration system anyway, but if any of these conditions are present then water filtration is definitely a necessity.
If you are planning for a trip or expedition, you may want to include water filtration products, along with a survival kit, such as:
H2On Demand Emergency Water Filtration Kit
Katadyn COMBI Portable Outdoor Water Filter
Katadyn Base Camp Hanging Water Filter
However, if you find yourself in a crisis without the luxury of such planning, you can create a crude water filtration system with some basic materials. You will need:
* A recepticle in which to contain filtration materials - an article of clothing or a bandana works well, but you could also use a plastic bag, a piece of bamboo, or even a hollow log
* large filtering material, such as gravel or crushed rock
* small filtering material, such as sand
* particle filter material, such as a piece of cloth, another bandana, or an article of clothing
* a recepticle to catch and store your filtered water, such as a plastic bag, a bottle, etc.
Place several inches or layers of filtering material into your filtering receptacle. Place the particle filter at the very bottom to prevent sand and other particples from filtering in to your water. Then start with the smallest materials next and work your way up. Refer to the figure below for some example crude filtration systems. Each layer of the system will filter out more and more contaminates and particles. Pour the dirty water into your filtration device from the top and catch it in a watertight receptacle as it filters out the bottom.
Your water will be filtered, but it still must be purified! See below for information on water purification
Water Purification
Rainwater collected in clean containers or in plants (see below for water collection tips) is usually safe to drink. However, any water you get from lakes, ponds, rivers, streams, swamps, springs, puddles, or otherwise should always be purified it at all possible. Water you have filtered using a filtration device (as shown above) should also be purified before drinking. To be safe, if you have the resources available, you should purify ALL water you find, regardless of the source. Even water found from working faucets could be contaminated during a serious emergency like a hurricane or earthquake.
The easiest way to purify water is with water purification tablets. These tablets can easily fit into most survival kits or any of your typical travel gear such as backpacks, duffel bags, or luggage.
If you do not have any water purification tablets available, but are able to heat water to a boil, you can purify the water by boiling it for one minute at sea level, adding one more minute for each additional 1,000 feet above sea level. Or, if you are not concerned about wasting your energy source, you can simply boil the water for 10 minutes regardless of your altitude.
Alternately, you can sanitize the water by adding five drops of 2% tincture of iodine to a canteen full of clear water or 10 drops to a canteen full of cloudy or cold water. You can also use some liquid chlorine-based bleaches. Check the label for 5.25% hypochlorite - this is needed to kill the bacteria. You can use 8 drops per gallon of clear water (1/2 teaspoon per 5 gallons) or double that (16 drops for one gallon, 1 teaspoon for 5 gallons) if the water is cloudy.
Water Collection
If you find yourself in an crisis close to home, such as a large earthquake, hurricane, etc., you can find emergency sources of water in your hot water tank and your toilet reservoir tank (the thing on the back of the toilet, not the bowl), provided there has been no chemical cleaning agent placed in the tank.
Regardless of where your emergency occurs, knowing how to collect water from nature may save your life.
If you anticipate being stranded for several days, be prepared in case it rains. Find whatever clean recepticles you can and don’t miss an opportunity to collect rainwater. Be creative! Nature provides many recepticles, such as empty coconut shells, concave rocks, etc.
At night, the temperature drops. This causes moisture in the air to condense and settle to the ground. You probably know this as “dew”. You can collect dew from grass by tying a T-shirt around your ankles and walking along the ground. The cloth from the shirt will pick up the moisture from the blades of grass, and you can then suck the water out of the shirt or wring it into a recepticle.
Plants only use about 10% of the water they take from the ground. The rest is lost through microscopic holes on the surface of their leaves, known as stomata. Wrap a clear or opaque plastic bag around the leaves of a plant. When the sunlight hits the leaves it will trigger evaporation. At night, when the air cools again, the evaporated water will condense and provide you with a bit of drinkable water inside the bag. This is known as a “solar still”.
Regardless of the emergency, it pays to know how to filter, purify and collect water. It can save your life and the life of your family. Print this guide and use it to plan your next trip or expedition, and send it to your friends and family. It could save their lives too!
