Water is awesome

This blog isn't really a survival blog. There are plenty of much better survival sources out there - like The Survival Podcast for one. This blog is about depending on yourself. Not expecting someone to save you but using your brain to come up with a self saving solution.

So today I wanted to address one part of "The Law of 3".
You can survive for 3 min without air.
You can survive for 3 days without water.
You can survive for 3 weeks without food.

It's not a perfect law but neither are most laws.

Water is awesome.

Water is a ubiquitous chemical substance that is composed of hydrogen and oxygen and is vital for all known forms of life. - Wikipedia

When water is used to grow food there are 4 common sources.

1. Rain water - Also known as the 'gold standard' by gardening circles. It is the best for plants.
2. Pond water - If the pond is healthy. It can contain a lot of bacteria that breaks down in the soil and feeds the plants.
3. Well water - Is usually pretty good but might have mineral/bacterial imbalances.
4. Public water - Really isn't all that good. A lot of chemicals, pesticides and medical by product. You can tell the quality of your tap water by how fast it kills sensitive plants.

Real Berkey

But when it comes down to water survival - most water sources need to be made drinkable for safety. What is the point of drinking water if it gives you diarrhoea and dehydrates you to death?

Fake Berkey

The best water filters are Berkey. They cost about $200+ for the complete system or you can just buy the filters and rig it with some 5 gallon buckets. That will still cost you around $100. BUT you will have good water for a long time.
INSTRUCTIONS

Alternatively... There is another cheap way to filter water that I learned about from Potters For Peace. No Harry Potter jokes please.
These guys work in 3rd world countries where $100 filters are a little out of their price range. Instead they have designed an ingenious way for the locals to use local resources and filter their own water without having to sell their souls to the World Bank.

They are called Ceramic Water Filters or Rabbit Filters.
You take a clay pot. Put it in a plastic container. Pour water into the clay pot and it filters the water into the plastic container.

They have instructions on how to build one are here...
INSTRUCTIONS
It's an open source project.


But lets face it. If you are out and about and don't have any filter or clay pots what are you going to do? Boil it. You can use a plastic bottle to boil water that's safe from bacteria, viruses and parasites to drink.
INSTRUCTIONS
As a warning though, boiling water in a plastic bottle is not the best. This is an all-else-fails option. Boiling water releases chemicals in the bottle into the water but if it's that or diarrhoea...

A safer way is to use SODIS. It relays on sunlight and plastic bottles still. Instead of boiling the water for 5 min. You leave the water in the sunlight for 6-12 hours.
It relies on the suns UV light to kill the bacteria, parasites and viruses.
INSTRUCTIONS

Another option is to build a BioFilter using sand, gravel, charcoal and some plastic garbage buckets; filter the water then boil it. They made one on the show 'The Colony' and I found a video...

The colony is a neat show by Discovery Channel.

Sand is easier to come across naturally but Charcoal... Well if you know how it's easy to come across too.
INSTRUCTIONS

These are all just a few of the ways to primitively filter water.
If you want to know more about one of these specific ways by all means study more on it. Google has a lot of resources and detailed instructions.
There are a lot of other topics on water I'd like to talk about but this post is long enough I think. ;)

I own a MSR Miniworks EX and a filter straw. I use these when I go camping so if I ever can't get water from my well I can drink straight from the ditch.
These are great filters.

As a legal safety net (stupid legal stuff) I don't advise anything - at all. But if you don't have any other choice but to try something you read here it's at your own expense. ;)