Posts Tagged water filters
Safe drinking water
For most of the developed world, safe drinking water is something we take for granted. We turn on the faucet and nice clean water comes out. We have fresh water to brush out teeth, to take a shower, to wash our hair,,, and our other everyday needs.
Then along comes SHTF / TEOTWAWKI, and guess what, no more nice clean water.
Over the years I have read a lot of articles taking about the most important survival gear items. the list usually ranges from antibiotics to water filters. To me, and my personal opinion, the most important thing during a survival situation is safe drinking water.
Without safe drinking water, life as we know it can not exist.
Lets talk about 3, 4 or even 5 days after the city water gets turned off, people will be drinking out of rivers, creeks, ditches, streams, ponds, lakes,,,,, anywhere they can find water.
Most the most part, people will try to purify the water by boiling it, or using a water filter, or running the water through a shirt or cloth to remove the heavy particles,,,. I guess a major problem lies in urban dwellers who have limited access to fuel for fires to boil water.
Safe drinking water after teotwawki
Lets talk about safe drinking water during a long term SHTF / teotwawki situation. When it comes to water, there is a saying I like to use, “without safe drinking water, life as we know it can not exist.”
During a long term SHTF / teotwawki situation, people will be taking water from creeks, streams, rivers, ponds, lakes,, whatever they can find and trying to make it safe to drink. Its important to know the most common types of infections, and how to remove / kill the organisms.
In this article we will be looking at the most common waterborne infections, their cause, and how to prevent becoming infected.
Common waterborne infections
Campylobacter / Campylobacteriosis
Cholerae
Cryptosporidium / Cryptosporidiosis
Giardia / Giardiasis
Hepatitis A
Legionella / Legionellosis
Salmonella / Salmonellosis
Shigella
Typhoid Fever
Some cause short term discomfort, some cause death, some cause life long illnesses.
Related forum thread – Using a Berkey Water filter at the Bug Out Location
Cholera post disaster
Here in the good ‘ole USA, do to the massive amounts of chlorine that we put in our water, waterborne diseases are pretty rare. Sure there might be the occasional case of Cryptosporidium, but cases of Cholera, Polio, and Typhoid fever are pretty rare.
So what brought the topic of Cholera up? It was an article on CNN about how fast Cholera can be deadly. This is news to me, I would have never thought that Cholera could turn deadly in just a few hours. I thought that just about all waterborne infections took 3 – 10 days for the first signs to show up, then a few days for dehydration to take place, with death finally occurring. With my understanding of how Cholera progressed, death would occur 7 – 14 days after infection. But after reading that article from CNN, Cholera has earned a new level of respect and fear.
Drinking water in an urban survival situation
If the water went off tonight, what kind of plans do you have in place? As with everything else in my survival plans, water is broken down into 3 phases – short term, medium term, and long term solution.
Short Term – this is your bottled water. Most people have a couple of cases of bottled water laying around somewhere. On a trip to the grocery store most people might grab a case or two of bottled water to have around for guest or parties.
Some survivalist stockpile water in 35 or 55 gallon drums.
When the water goes out, the bottled and stockpiled water will go first. Its convenient, you just un-screw the top of the bottle and the water is ready to drink. Most people like to take the easy way out, and bottled water is about as easy as it gets.
Medium Term – this is your water filters. This may include your Berkey water filters or some kind of backpacking, lightweight water filter.
Royal Berkey water filter at the camp
Its not enough to have survival plans, those plans have to be tested from time to time in a variety of conditions. And then, the results of those test have to analyzed. From the results of those test, what do you need to improve the outcome?
Between July 30 – August 1 my family and I spent 3 days at the camp; while we were there, I decided to hook up the Royal Berkey water filter and give it a test. The Royal Berkey had been assembled, but never actually used. And like all survival gear, it needs to be tested before its actually needed.
Water is one of the basic survival needs- food, water and shelter. But having just “water” is not good enough, it needs to be “safe water.”
Awhile back I got a Royal Berkey water filter from Directive21.com – it was setup and a video was made about it. From there it was packed up and relocated to the camp, where it has stayed in storage for the past few months.
Water was taken from a nearby creek and poured into the reservoir. In about 15 minutes I could hear the first drips of the water hitting the bottom of the holding tank.
In about an hour, I was able to get a juice glass of water from the Royal Berkey.
Waterborne infections
While reading through a government report on waterborne infections, something interesting came out. Cryptosporidium accounted for about 65% of all waterborne infections. Here is the breakdown: Cryptosporidium accounted for 65% E. Coli accounted for 6.3% Campylobacter 6.1% Giardia 2.1% Shigella Sonnei – 8.5% Norovirus – 8.3% Now lets combine that with some more information. Here…
Survivalist Water Filter Options
Why should Survivalist worry about water filters? Because when the city water supply stops, the water in the local lakes and streams may not be safe to drink. Most survivalist have stockpiled water, and that is fine – there is nothing wrong with stockpiling water. But you need some kind of solution for after your stockpiles of water run out. A lot of people might say “I’ll just dig a well if I need water” – ok, lets get back to reality. Most of people are not going to dig a well overnight.
Here is short list of waterborne diseases and parasites:
Cryptosporidium
Cholera
E. Coli
Dysentery
Salmonellosis
Polio
Legionnaires’ disease
Berkey Water Filter Contest
When disaster strikes, will you and your family have plenty of safe drinking water? If your one of the lucky 8 winners, that problem might be taken care of (at least for a little while). Jeff “The Berkey Guy” (from Directive21.com “LPC Survival Ltd.”) is holding a contest where there will be 8 winners Here…
Berkey Light Water Filter Overview
Over the past few months I have been putting a lot of thought into the “safe drinking water after a disaster” topic. My personal solution is divided into 3 stages:
Short Term – this is your bottled water. Regardless if its 1 pint plastic bottles, or 55 gallon drums, this is your short term solution.
Mid Term – This is something like a berkey water filter system – where you can take water from a river, lake, pond, or steam, filter it and make it safe to drink.
Long Term – private well. You have your own private water supply of safe drinking water.
For this article we will be discussing the Berkey Light Water Filter, which was supplied by Red Barn Workshop.
Over the past few months I have been seeing people talk about the Berkey line of filters, now I understand what the hype is about. Overall, I am impressed with the unit, how simple it works and how simple the design is. The filters use gravity to pull the water through them. This means that no external pressure has to be applied – which is great for a survival situation. With any pressure system – something is required to supply the pressure, such as a pump, every pressure system has to have some kind of seal to hold the pressure in,,,, this all means there is more stuff to fail and break. One of the good things about the Berkey water filter system – the only moving part is the faucet.
Water Filter for a Bug Out Bag
There is an interesting thread over on the forum asking about a water filter for a bug out bag.
Some of the suggestions include:
Katadyn Hiker (and Hiker Pro)
Sawyer filters and purifiers
MSR Miniworks
Sawyer Inline Water Filter
Katadyn vario
In this video we talk about the Katadyn vario from Prepared.pro.
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