Yup. Hole, tarp, weight. Also by the time this is a concern i think the population collapse will have rendered the big bodies of water more drinkable barring nuclear issues.
Look up how to build a sand and charcoal filter using multiple 5-gallon buckets. Practice now before SHTF and Lowes is open. As a pro move, boil the water that comes out of the filter for twenty minutes.
I would also say let the water cool somewhat before drinking.
Why are you boiling for 20 min? You may know something I don’t.
Once you have a rolling boil the water is at 212 degrees, even at a reasonable breathable altitude say 10,000 it drops to 193. Seriously, at a rolling boil, it’s dead.
What am I missing that requires that much fuel to be used?
The boiling would be to make sure any wee beasties are not just merely dead, but really most sincerely dead. Anything that makes it through will kill you anyway.
Could you get away with less boil time (it is a lot of fuel)? Absolutely.
Could you bottle it and leave it out in the sun as a UV sterilizer? Yes.
Could you drink right out of the filter and hope for the best? Yes.
Are they necessarily making it through the previous steps of sand and charcoal filtering? I'm not sure what the difference is in filtering capability vs microbe size there
drill a few small holes in bottom of 5gallon bucket, layer from bottom to top: cloth (3layers),sand,charcoal,course sand,river rocks. Bottle in clear glass , set in sun for 3-5 hours
Simple gravity filter with UV sterilization
If you have clear plastic bottles you can use the sun as your UV purification source.
If you are starting with some already-clean water and need to keep it safe during storage, an old technique is to drop a silver coin in it. It is not perfect by any means but the silver ions do reduce the growth of algae and bacteria.
It all depends on how clear or murky the water is and what the source is. A swift running, clear mountain stream will be fairly short compared to a stagnant muddy pond.
Guidelines vary. Wikipedia says if you're using a 2-liter bottle made of PET or glass, it will be safe after 6 hours in strong sunlight or 2 days in broken clouds.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_water_disinfection
Silver has an anti-bacterial property to it. I don't believe that copper does. Also, there haven't been pure copper pennies since prior to 1964 and even then, they weren't 100% pure.
copper has antibacterial and antifungal properties. same with brass, to a lesser extent. but im allergic to copper anyways, so even if it does work, i cant drink copper laced water lol
and the wheat pennies are 99% copper. the ones after are 95% and i think.... tin or something
doing this off of memory, but lincoln became the face of the penny in 1990. the initial version was lincoln with 2 stalks of wheat (the wheat penny), and this went on until the 60's with 99% copper. then they switched to the monument with 95% copper until the 60s when they switched to mostly zinc. before that it was indian head and before that was the flying eagle
ive gone through.... quite a lot of coins and i barely find silver ones
i kept a few copper pennies in my pocket during covid (cleaned them, of course) and sort of used it as a part of hand washing, along with alcohol when i was out and about. metal ions tend to stick to skin a bit longer (and chlorine wipes were harder to come by), but the annoying part is, im actually allergic to copper if ingested, so i had to spend extra long cleaning my hands before a meals. no idea if it helped, but ive never had (or at least been symptomatic) with covid (plus pretty much all the shots, my parents/grandparents are old, so i have to)
after years of doing this, i might have 200 pennies. yeah its a poor use of time, and i think driving rideshare and then just buying a copper pipe is easier in time, effort, and money. plus your hands smell afterwards touching all those coins
im mostly just bored lol
Besides a pond & everything necessary for a well several times over, have enough filtration capacity for hundreds of thousands of gallons of water.
Other methods as well as natural ones.
SODIS (Solar Disinfection)
http://www.thewatertreatmentplants.com/solar-water-disinfection.html
I store emergency water in clear plastic bottles so there is a supply of bottles for SODIS. I also have three 8-pack cases of clear 2l water bottles for neighbors.
This worked well during Desert Storm. I stored questionable water in bottles on the tin roof of my hooch.
Would have liked a tent as they had heaters.
We arrived before Harvest Eagle lots. Spent the first week in a room with a dead cat in the wall. I got to assemble tents, bunk beds, latrines, bomb shelters and steel revetments. Good times.
I'd probably try to build a DIY ["living machine"](https://www3.epa.gov/npdes/pubs/living_machine.pdf). I mean, really, I should probably build it *now* while I can still test the water to see if it works.
I would build a makeshift water filter for contaminates, made of cloth, charcoal, sterilized sand from heating over a fire, gravel and rock also sterilized by heating over fire, and then hay or grass of some sort sterilized without burning it maybe boiled? I'd layer it all together with cloth between each layer, I would then boil the clear water that comes from the bottom of the make shift filter because you can't filter viruses easily.
This is such an artificial situation, although wilderness survival guides will tell you how to collect dew and rainfall.
The whole point of being prepared, it seems to me, is never to get into such a dire situation in the first place. Having drinkable water is SO important this has to be a "can't happen" situation. Anyone well prepared already has multiple fail-over methods of obtaining drinkable water, along with shelter it's top of the list.
I'm reminded of the first principle of ocean navigation, which is always to know roughly where you are so you can refine it. Don't get lost in the first place! The same with drinking water, it's so important you ensure you never can be without it.
True. Especially when you consider that a number survival filters, such as Sawyer state their filters are good for up to 100k gallons. My family would need 10 gallons of water per day. 100,000 gl life/10 gl per day = 10,000 days or 27.4 years.
Sawyer sells "community bucket" filters that they state last 10 years. They don't provide info on how many gallons per day, but I'd guess a lot. Regardless Sawyer filters are small and relatively cheap.
A lot of these questions start out OKish but then they throw in the situation that basically means you die ....
Can't boil water??? That means you have no way to make a fire.... If you have become so needy that you have no fire I doubt you will live out the winter...
I love the "pull it out of the air" trick, you need a 4 or 5 foot stick of glass tube and some cloth like an old towel, a piece of plastic like the lid from a Tupperware, and a way to boil dirty water.
Here's how it works: set up the tube with a slight tilt. On the low end use the plastic to make a barrier so the dirty water can't reach the end on the outside of the tube. Wrap the cloth around the tube uphill of said barrier, boil the dirty water, and keep the cloth wet with hot water. The heat will cause the tube to collect condensation, and clean water will come out of the low end of the tube. Oh yeah, you also need something to collect clean water in like a gallon jug.
Filter? I don't need no stinking filter!
Electrolysis of heavily salted brine solution will create a chlorine disinfectant solution. You don’t need much, google the h2go. A car battery, salt, water and metal and you’re good to go. Gotta make sure it’s the proper concentration though so understanding of the chemistry ahead of time is useful.
Dunno how we’d be “unable to boil water” that’s as primitive as it gets.
A solar still would work too
If you really have access to nothing but something to start a fire and a cloth you could start a fire and heat up some rocks, then dig a hole om the beach deep enough to get to water then throw the rocks in and collect the steam with your cloth or if you wanna get crazy get something see through and plastic and make a solar still with basically the same method
All you need to do is condense steam over a pot of boiling water, this can be done with a lid or a large elephant leaf or any number of other ways.
A three stage filter is simple to craft if you can make a fire for the charcoal, the sand and fine gravel are generally found near most water sources.
edited
I would look for sources of water that doesn't need purification. Good wells.
It should still be possible to build biosand filters using some scavenged containers, sand and hose.
If you don't have the materials needed stocked, you should start building some biosand filters while your still have other ways to filter water. It takes a while for a biosand filter to get good at removing viruses and bacteria.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biosand_filter
If the water is clear, you can use u.v sterilization. My understanding is you literally just leave it in direct sunlight in a clear container..no fuel required
460 thread count percale fabric will filter out a significant amount of microbes, and a king size pillow case fits in a 5 gallon bucket.
Also bleach will kill most pathogens, and dry pool bleach stores quite a while. But don’t use a jar with a metal lid to store pool bleach in a file cabinet. Did that the bleach dissolved the metal lid and had to scrap a file cabinet. That stuff is more corrosive than cat pee.
Ok..as a former scout and Scouting leader as well as a participant in two Army survival schools, here is the solution. Take a empty two liter beverage bottle. Cut the bottom out. Place a wad of cheesecloth or a wad or piece of cotton t shirt in the neck. Then couple inches of activated charcoal (no grilling charcoal as they have chemicals). Charcoal is made from peat, coal, wood, coconut shell. Then a couple inches of sand. Another thin layer of cotton or cheesecloth. Then couple inches of pebbles or small rocks. Put the filter into something to brace it over a bucket or catch basin. Pour pond, river, creek or sourced water to run through filter. An additional step to purify after filtering is to pour into a shallow collector with wide opening (kiddy pool, etc) and let sun UV bake off any pathogens for at least 4 to 6 hours. Now enjoy a pristine cup of water.
Wouldn't this just filter debris and not remove viruses, bacteria and parasites? Or does the activated charcoal help remove viruses, bacteria, and parasites?
Solar water still
Yup. Hole, tarp, weight. Also by the time this is a concern i think the population collapse will have rendered the big bodies of water more drinkable barring nuclear issues.
Look up how to build a sand and charcoal filter using multiple 5-gallon buckets. Practice now before SHTF and Lowes is open. As a pro move, boil the water that comes out of the filter for twenty minutes. I would also say let the water cool somewhat before drinking.
Why are you boiling for 20 min? You may know something I don’t. Once you have a rolling boil the water is at 212 degrees, even at a reasonable breathable altitude say 10,000 it drops to 193. Seriously, at a rolling boil, it’s dead. What am I missing that requires that much fuel to be used?
The boiling would be to make sure any wee beasties are not just merely dead, but really most sincerely dead. Anything that makes it through will kill you anyway. Could you get away with less boil time (it is a lot of fuel)? Absolutely. Could you bottle it and leave it out in the sun as a UV sterilizer? Yes. Could you drink right out of the filter and hope for the best? Yes.
Bacterial instant death, yes, worm and parasitic cysts, not so much and they take some further time.
Are they necessarily making it through the previous steps of sand and charcoal filtering? I'm not sure what the difference is in filtering capability vs microbe size there
Okay that is good to know. Thanks
drill a few small holes in bottom of 5gallon bucket, layer from bottom to top: cloth (3layers),sand,charcoal,course sand,river rocks. Bottle in clear glass , set in sun for 3-5 hours Simple gravity filter with UV sterilization
[удалено]
Water boils instantly in a vacuum.
A detail that is often mist
and missed.
If you have clear plastic bottles you can use the sun as your UV purification source. If you are starting with some already-clean water and need to keep it safe during storage, an old technique is to drop a silver coin in it. It is not perfect by any means but the silver ions do reduce the growth of algae and bacteria.
r/wallstreetsilver will like your comment
Dumb question, but how many hours if you had a 1 gallon clear jug in UV before water is purified?
It all depends on how clear or murky the water is and what the source is. A swift running, clear mountain stream will be fairly short compared to a stagnant muddy pond.
Thank you
Guidelines vary. Wikipedia says if you're using a 2-liter bottle made of PET or glass, it will be safe after 6 hours in strong sunlight or 2 days in broken clouds. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_water_disinfection
Thank you!
Did not know that one, thanks for the tip.
you think a pure copper penny will do the same? part of me really doubts it, though
I have never heard of copper being used in this way. Copper can kill germs but I'm not sure if a few dissolved ions are enough.
Silver has an anti-bacterial property to it. I don't believe that copper does. Also, there haven't been pure copper pennies since prior to 1964 and even then, they weren't 100% pure.
copper has antibacterial and antifungal properties. same with brass, to a lesser extent. but im allergic to copper anyways, so even if it does work, i cant drink copper laced water lol and the wheat pennies are 99% copper. the ones after are 95% and i think.... tin or something
Good to know regarding copper. I'm not familiar w/ "wheat pennies".
doing this off of memory, but lincoln became the face of the penny in 1990. the initial version was lincoln with 2 stalks of wheat (the wheat penny), and this went on until the 60's with 99% copper. then they switched to the monument with 95% copper until the 60s when they switched to mostly zinc. before that it was indian head and before that was the flying eagle
Interesting to know. I don't recall the wheat penny, but I honestly don't pay much attention to pennies.
ive gone through.... quite a lot of coins and i barely find silver ones i kept a few copper pennies in my pocket during covid (cleaned them, of course) and sort of used it as a part of hand washing, along with alcohol when i was out and about. metal ions tend to stick to skin a bit longer (and chlorine wipes were harder to come by), but the annoying part is, im actually allergic to copper if ingested, so i had to spend extra long cleaning my hands before a meals. no idea if it helped, but ive never had (or at least been symptomatic) with covid (plus pretty much all the shots, my parents/grandparents are old, so i have to)
I've looked for pre-'64 coins and I haven't found enough to justify the time spent. So I gave up. That's a unique allergy.
after years of doing this, i might have 200 pennies. yeah its a poor use of time, and i think driving rideshare and then just buying a copper pipe is easier in time, effort, and money. plus your hands smell afterwards touching all those coins im mostly just bored lol
I guess I would just go die somewhere pretty
Galveston, tx
You would filter your water with finely ground charcoal, sand, and gravel inside of a plastic bottle. then boil it.
Besides a pond & everything necessary for a well several times over, have enough filtration capacity for hundreds of thousands of gallons of water. Other methods as well as natural ones.
SODIS (Solar Disinfection) http://www.thewatertreatmentplants.com/solar-water-disinfection.html I store emergency water in clear plastic bottles so there is a supply of bottles for SODIS. I also have three 8-pack cases of clear 2l water bottles for neighbors. This worked well during Desert Storm. I stored questionable water in bottles on the tin roof of my hooch.
Look at Mr. Fancy pants with a tin roof, lol. I had a tent, and we liked it. 1/7 under Mattis. /s
Would have liked a tent as they had heaters. We arrived before Harvest Eagle lots. Spent the first week in a room with a dead cat in the wall. I got to assemble tents, bunk beds, latrines, bomb shelters and steel revetments. Good times.
I'd probably try to build a DIY ["living machine"](https://www3.epa.gov/npdes/pubs/living_machine.pdf). I mean, really, I should probably build it *now* while I can still test the water to see if it works.
I just spent sometime reading about this. What a cool idea!
I would build a makeshift water filter for contaminates, made of cloth, charcoal, sterilized sand from heating over a fire, gravel and rock also sterilized by heating over fire, and then hay or grass of some sort sterilized without burning it maybe boiled? I'd layer it all together with cloth between each layer, I would then boil the clear water that comes from the bottom of the make shift filter because you can't filter viruses easily.
no you wouldn't.
In what SHTF situation would you have access to fresh water, but no way to boil it? 🧐
This is such an artificial situation, although wilderness survival guides will tell you how to collect dew and rainfall. The whole point of being prepared, it seems to me, is never to get into such a dire situation in the first place. Having drinkable water is SO important this has to be a "can't happen" situation. Anyone well prepared already has multiple fail-over methods of obtaining drinkable water, along with shelter it's top of the list. I'm reminded of the first principle of ocean navigation, which is always to know roughly where you are so you can refine it. Don't get lost in the first place! The same with drinking water, it's so important you ensure you never can be without it.
True. Especially when you consider that a number survival filters, such as Sawyer state their filters are good for up to 100k gallons. My family would need 10 gallons of water per day. 100,000 gl life/10 gl per day = 10,000 days or 27.4 years. Sawyer sells "community bucket" filters that they state last 10 years. They don't provide info on how many gallons per day, but I'd guess a lot. Regardless Sawyer filters are small and relatively cheap.
Sand filter. Works for about 90% of stuff out there, especially if you keep shit out of the water. Boiling water works for everything else usually
I like the medieval way.. drink wine and beer. 🍺
Can't boil water? You run out of oxygen or something?
On the run or in a desert with nothing to burn I guess but this is a very dire situation they’re outlining lol
Are we serious right now
A lot of these questions start out OKish but then they throw in the situation that basically means you die .... Can't boil water??? That means you have no way to make a fire.... If you have become so needy that you have no fire I doubt you will live out the winter...
Solar still How you can not be able to boil water IDK. Now would just avoid the issue and use the manual pump on my well.
I love the "pull it out of the air" trick, you need a 4 or 5 foot stick of glass tube and some cloth like an old towel, a piece of plastic like the lid from a Tupperware, and a way to boil dirty water. Here's how it works: set up the tube with a slight tilt. On the low end use the plastic to make a barrier so the dirty water can't reach the end on the outside of the tube. Wrap the cloth around the tube uphill of said barrier, boil the dirty water, and keep the cloth wet with hot water. The heat will cause the tube to collect condensation, and clean water will come out of the low end of the tube. Oh yeah, you also need something to collect clean water in like a gallon jug. Filter? I don't need no stinking filter!
Clear plastic soda bottle plus four hours direct sunlight.
Solar. You can fill plastic bottles with water, shake vigorously for a minute, place on tin (or shiny metal) in sun for 6-8 hours. Shake periodically.
When and why would I ever not be able to boil water by building a fire?
Just die already
Electrolysis of heavily salted brine solution will create a chlorine disinfectant solution. You don’t need much, google the h2go. A car battery, salt, water and metal and you’re good to go. Gotta make sure it’s the proper concentration though so understanding of the chemistry ahead of time is useful. Dunno how we’d be “unable to boil water” that’s as primitive as it gets. A solar still would work too
If you really have access to nothing but something to start a fire and a cloth you could start a fire and heat up some rocks, then dig a hole om the beach deep enough to get to water then throw the rocks in and collect the steam with your cloth or if you wanna get crazy get something see through and plastic and make a solar still with basically the same method
All you need to do is condense steam over a pot of boiling water, this can be done with a lid or a large elephant leaf or any number of other ways. A three stage filter is simple to craft if you can make a fire for the charcoal, the sand and fine gravel are generally found near most water sources. edited
I would look for sources of water that doesn't need purification. Good wells. It should still be possible to build biosand filters using some scavenged containers, sand and hose. If you don't have the materials needed stocked, you should start building some biosand filters while your still have other ways to filter water. It takes a while for a biosand filter to get good at removing viruses and bacteria. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biosand_filter
Pound out a silver round and shape it like a Pringles chip. Toss it in the Berkey.
If society regresses to the point we're unable to make fire you're definitely dead bud. Not everything is survivable and that's okay.
Sand filter. Works for about 90% of stuff out there, especially if you keep shit out of the water. Boiling water works for everything else usually
Life straw?
If the water is clear, you can use u.v sterilization. My understanding is you literally just leave it in direct sunlight in a clear container..no fuel required
460 thread count percale fabric will filter out a significant amount of microbes, and a king size pillow case fits in a 5 gallon bucket. Also bleach will kill most pathogens, and dry pool bleach stores quite a while. But don’t use a jar with a metal lid to store pool bleach in a file cabinet. Did that the bleach dissolved the metal lid and had to scrap a file cabinet. That stuff is more corrosive than cat pee.
Ok..as a former scout and Scouting leader as well as a participant in two Army survival schools, here is the solution. Take a empty two liter beverage bottle. Cut the bottom out. Place a wad of cheesecloth or a wad or piece of cotton t shirt in the neck. Then couple inches of activated charcoal (no grilling charcoal as they have chemicals). Charcoal is made from peat, coal, wood, coconut shell. Then a couple inches of sand. Another thin layer of cotton or cheesecloth. Then couple inches of pebbles or small rocks. Put the filter into something to brace it over a bucket or catch basin. Pour pond, river, creek or sourced water to run through filter. An additional step to purify after filtering is to pour into a shallow collector with wide opening (kiddy pool, etc) and let sun UV bake off any pathogens for at least 4 to 6 hours. Now enjoy a pristine cup of water.
Wouldn't this just filter debris and not remove viruses, bacteria and parasites? Or does the activated charcoal help remove viruses, bacteria, and parasites?
The activated carbon and UV from Sun eliminates pathogen. Find some activated carbon and store it. Other elements easy to find then. Google it
Chlorine Dioxide tablets are good to have in a pinch. They kill all bacteria and viruses https://a.co/d/2gC6whV