• Paper plates
• Dutch oven with lid and a lid-lifting handle
• Cast-iron skillet
• Salt, pepper, and other spices
Field Food Kit
• A tote bin (or bins) filled with camping foods. These can be the usual soup, chili, canned meats, rice, beans, noodles, MREs, and freeze-dried food.
• PowerBars, Gatorade, and whatever else you prefer for quick field meals
Shelter and Camp Kit
• In a waterproof white-water-rafting bag:
~ full-size camping tent
~ all of the tent’s poles and stakes
~ rope
~ cloth ground tarp
~ two or three tarps of various sizes
• Extra rope
• Sewing kit
• Collapsing four-gallon water container
• Entrenching tool
• Miner’s (short-handle) axe
4
WATER The Key Resource
Water is the key resource for family-preparedness planning. Plentiful fresh water for drinking, cooking, washing, and gardening is the most critical resource for all societies. You can improvise a lot of things, but you can’t improvise water. (Well, actually, you can now buy a machine that will suck water out of the atmosphere, but it’s an expensive, high-maintenance power hog.)
The vast majority of the residents of First World countries are dependent on grid power to supply their water. When the grid goes down for more than a few days, water towers will quickly be drained and huge numbers of people will be forced to draw water from open sources. Thankfully, there are streams, rivers, lakes, and ponds within walking distance of most homes. Rainwater from roof downspouts can also be used, but for many, especially in areas with only seasonal precipitation, the logistics of hauling water will be a challenge.
Once you’ve found water, you will need to treat all that water, or face infection. Most families don’t own a water filter. Boiling water is an option, but only if you have natural-gas, propane, or wood cooking stoves, since electric ranges don’t work without grid power. Even folks with well water will face difficulties, unless you have a backup generator or a fully capable alternative energy system.
This chapter will cover water sources and how to filter and treat water so that it is potable.
Plan Ahead
It is important that every prepared family make plans in advance for exactly how they will handle their water supply in the event of a long-term grid-down situation. Buy the gear. Test it extensively. Also locate primary, secondary, and even tertiary sources of water in your area.
If you are unfortunate enough to live in a region that lacks open water sources that are available in every month of the year and within walking distance, then you ought to seriously consider relocating to a region with more plentiful water.
As space permits, apartment dwellers should store lightly chlorinated water in used two-liter plastic bottles. I recommend using two-liter bottles because they are relatively lightweight (easily transportable) and compact (can be stored under beds), and remarkably sturdy. They are even earthquake-proof. Once that supply is expended, it is crucial that you have previously located a nearby open water source such as a lake or reservoir, and that you have both containers to haul water and water-purification and filtration equipment, as discussed later in this chapter.
Sources of Water
Springwater
Gravity-fed springwater is the ideal water supply for a rural retreat. There is no need for power, installation expense is relatively low, it’s low maintenance, and there is little risk of frozen pipes. But unfortunately very few properties are blessed with a spring that is situated to provide gravity flow to a house. When I advise my consulting clients, I urge them to make gravity-fed springwater a top priority when they are evaluating properties for relocation.
Well Water
Grid-powered well pumps are problematic, since most wells use just a small pressure tank. Whenever there is a power failure, the water pressure drops to nil in just a short time. Photovoltaically pumped well water is a good solution, albeit with a fairly high installation cost. With a large cistern that is positioned to supply gravity flow to your house (typically thirty-five to sixty feet of “head”), you can skip putting a battery bank in your system. When the sun shines, it pumps, and when the sun sets, it stops. Simple. A float switch on the cistern will insure that you prevent needless wear and tear on your pump.
Water from Downspouts
I find it amazing that so many people allow copious rainwater from their roof downspouts to go to waste in the midst of a civic water crisis. They just don’t have the survival mind-set. At the very least, they could be using rainwater for clothes washing, bathing, and toilet flushing. With a water filter, they could also use rainwater for drinking and cooking.
You should of course never reuse something like a fuel tank or a toxic-chemical tank for a water barrel. See Chapter 5 for instructions on finding food-grade plastic buckets.
The three questions that the readers of SurvivalBlog most often ask me about rainwater, well water, and springwater are:
Is well or springwater safe to drink?
Generally, yes. And because it is not fluoridated, it is probably much healthier than public-utility-provided “city” water.
Do I have to worry about pesticides, methyl tertiary butyl ether (MTBE), or heavy-metal contaminants in well or springwater?
Yes, and you should have the water tested before you buy a property that has a well. Any certified lab will test for these contaminants, as well as bacteria. Do a Web search for your state’s Department of Environmental Quality (DEQ) or its equivalent. The DEQ Web site should list some approved/ certified commercial laboratories that do water testing. In some states, spring- and well-water testing is also handled by state universities. The good news is that you will have to do this only once, unless you hear about some drastic change in local water conditions.
Do I need to chlorinate my well or springwater?
In most cases, no. It is possible that your well might get contaminated by a flood, or seasonally contaminated with coliform bacteria from rainwater runoff. The best solution is to use a UV sterilizer year-round so that you don’t have to worry about it. Alternatively, if you know that there has been a contamination, you could add a calculated quantity of plain hypochlorite liquid bleach solution down your well shaft, but if there is continual bacterial contamination of your well or spring, then, again, the best solution is to use a UV sterilizer year-round.
Treating Water
Water from open sources must always be treated before use. Typical chlorine concentrations will kill bacteria but not all viruses, so I recommend a three-step approach to treating water from open sources (however, keep in mind no filter system is 100 percent effective at removing herbicides and pesticides. For that, you would need either a distillation or a reverse-osmosis system, which are far more complex and have large power requirements):
Pre-filtering. This removes particulate matter. Pouring water though a couple of thicknesses of T-shirts or tightly woven bath towels works fine. The water that comes through will still look like tea, but at least you will have removed the crud and larger particles. By pre-filtering, you will also extend the life of your water filter, because you’ll avoid clogging the microscopic pores in the filter media.
Chlorinating. This can be accomplished following the chlorine-concentration guidelines discussed on page 72.
Filtering. I recommend the large Katadyn or British Berkefeld filters. Some filter elements available for Katadyn and British Berkefeld filters can even remove chlorine. Complete filter systems and spare filter elements are available from Ready MadeResources.com, SafecastleRoyal.com, and other Internet vendors.
Ultraviolet Treatment
Ultraviolet (UV) treatment is an interesting innovation that was first embraced by fish farmers and koi-pond enthusiasts. The UV technology is quite promising for anyone
with a shallow well or spring that has an unacceptable bacteria count, which typically happens during a flood or seasonally with heavy rains that increase surface water that can get into a well or spring. The UV method of treatment is growing in popularity in the United States and Canada, because there is no need for chemicals. Ultraviolet light rays—just like those from the sun that produce sunburn, only stronger—alter the DNA of bacteria, viruses, molds, and parasites so that they cannot reproduce. They are not killed, but are merely rendered sterile. Thus, they safely pass through your digestive tract, but are unable to reproduce—which is otherwise the cause of intestinal illness.
The compact UV sterilizer that I recommend for field use is sold under the brand name SteriPEN. For year-round use at home, I recommend the Crystal Quest Ultraviolet Water Sterilizer. Note that these are normally powered with an AC power cube. If and when you set up an alternate home-power system with a battery bank, the power cube can be removed, and the UV wand can be powered directly with DC power.
Compact Water Filters
I am often asked about compact water filters for backpacking, hunting trips, and Get Out of Dodge/Bugout situations. For this, Katadyn makes an excellent compact water filter/pump called a Pocket filter. The volume of water that the Pocket can process is limited, but it is perfect for its intended purpose. Another option is the recently introduced Hydro Photon SteriPEN—a compact, battery-powered UV sterilizer. This is a miniature version of a home water UV sterilizer. Very clever! SteriPENs are available from Safecastle, Ready Made Resources, and several other Internet vendors. I recommend stocking up.
Water-Pasteurization Indicators and Heating Water
Water-pasteurization indicators (WAPIs) are now commonly used in the Third World to save fuel and time when treating drinking water. Water that is heated to 149 degrees for a short time is free from living microbes. Water does not have to be “boiled for ten minutes,” as some have erroneously suggested in the past. A WAPI is a simple, small, and low-cost tube with a special soy wax that indicates when water has reached a safe pasteurization temperature.
Alternatively, you can heat your water, using a dairy thermometer to be sure the water reaches 149 degrees. You can also use a kitchen or roasting thermometer, but since they are notoriously inaccurate, add ten degrees, just to be on the safe side.
Pool Shock: The Low-Cost Lifesaver
Pool-shock chlorination tablets can be bought in a five-gallon pail—enough to treat many thousands of gallons of water. Calcium hypochlorite (sold as pool shock) may be used to make your own bleach solution. Here is the information in a nutshell:
Use one heaping teaspoon of granular calcium hypochlorite (approximately .25 ounce) for each 2 gallons of water; dissolve in a plastic or glass container. (Don’t use a metal container, or it may react with the hypochlorite.) This will produce a strong “stock chlorine” solution of approximately 500 milligrams per liter, since the calcium hypochlorite has available chlorine equal to 70 percent of its weight. To disinfect water, add the chlorine solution in the ratio of 1 part chlorine solution to each 100 parts water to be treated. This is roughly equal to adding 1 pint (16 ounces) of stock chlorine to each 12.5 gallons of water to be disinfected.
Note: You must be absolutely certain to get the variety of pool shock that contains only calcium chlorite. The other types of chlorine, tri-chlor and di-chlor, are not suitable for this. Make sure that there are no antifungal or clarifier additives! Also, be advised that calcium hypochlorite is a powerful oxidizer, and should be stored in a dry container, sealed from moisture. It can also catch fire violently if put in contact with brake fluid and similar substances, so be careful.
With some planning, you should be able to distribute water-purification supplies as charity. Make some photocopies of directions for using hypochlorite tablets. If you distribute plastic ziplock bags of hypochlorite tablets (roughly six ounces per bag) along with direction sheets, you could save hundreds of lives in a public-health emergency such as a flood, or any other situation that disrupts utility water-distribution systems.
A Budget Water Filter: Constructing a Big Berky Clone
Every family should own a water filter. The problem is that high-volume ceramic filters such as the Big Berky are quite expensive. One considerably less expensive option is to make your own filter. In my experience, the field-expedient sand and clay filters touted by wilderness and bushcraft survival experts are effective only for use as a prefilter. Their output still has a brown-tinged pond-water look to it, and since the filter media is so coarse, they do not remove all harmful bacteria, so their output still has to be treated either chemically or by heating to 149 degrees Fahrenheit.
You can buy Berkefeld white ceramic-filter elements by themselves from a number of vendors including Ready Made Resources and Lehman’s. With these elements, you can build your own bargain-basement “Berky clone.” This consists of a pair of food-grade plastic buckets stacked one above the other. The top bucket has one or more holes drilled into it, to accept the Berky spare-filter elements. Each element by itself costs around forty dollars. To get decent volume production from your filter, I recommend that you buy at least two elements. In my experience, getting a set of four filter elements is best, unless you are very patient.
Materials:
• 4 food-grade HDPE food-storage buckets (3- to 6-gallon capacity), with lids
• 1 to 4 Berkefeld white ceramic-filter elements
Construction:
• Drill one to four half-inch-diameter holes near the bottom center of the upper bucket (the same number of holes as you have filter elements). Space the holes at least two inches apart and no closer than one-and-a-half inches from the edge of the bucket. With clean hands (to avoid contaminating the filter pores), insert the filters into the holes, screwing down their nuts on the bottom of the bucket. The nuts are plastic, so do not overtighten them, but they must be tight enough to compress the O-ring seal, or the seal may leak—and this would be a contaminating leak. The filters must point upward into the upper bucket, to avoid damage and to allow for periodical cleaning.
• Using a jigsaw, cut a seven-and-a-half-inch-diameter hole in the center of the lid of the lower bucket.
• A third bucket is used to carry water. The fourth bucket is used as a prefilter. This has a piece of tightly woven cloth that is wired or taped over the top. Since the cloth will be saturated and will drip over the edge, the pre-filtering step is best done outdoors or in a large laundry sink. If treating river, stream, or pond water, be sure to use a prefilter. Just using a couple of thicknesses of T-shirt material will greatly extend the useful life of your secondary filter element(s).
Use:
• Set the bucket with the hole in the lid on a low, stable surface. Stack the bucket with the filter element(s) on top of it. Gently pour pre-filtered water into the upper bucket, until the bucket is nearly full. Note: Be very careful not to spill any water down the exterior of the upper bucket, or you will contaminate the water in the bucket beneath. This is a slow filtering process, so be patient. Even with four filter elements, it will take a considerable time to filter six gallons.
Well “Torpedo” or “Bullet” Bucket Construction Plans
If you live on a property with well water but don’t own a backup generator, or if you anticipate a situation that will outlast your stored fuel for your generator, then you should learn how to construct a well torpedo. This is a PVC tube with a flapper valve at the bottom, which, when sent down the well shaft, hits the water and causes the tube to fill and then sink. When you pull on the rope, the flapper valve closes, sealing in the water for you to pull up the well shaft.
For any readers who aren’t familiar with them, narrow-shaft well buckets—also sometimes called “bullet buckets” or “torpedo buckets”—are designed for manually drawing water from modern small-diameter wells that are more than twenty feet deep. Shallow wells (less than twenty-foot depth) are much more efficiently accessed with a hand pump, such as a tra
ditional pitcher-type cistern pump (available from Lehmans.com) or a home-fabricated PVC design by Keith Hendricks, as shown at the Perma Pak Web site (snipurl.com/honqb). Deeper wells require a sucker-rod actuated pump.
Have a deep well but you can’t afford a manual pump or you don’t foresee anything but short-term emergency need to draw water? A bucket will do. The following method works, but you will first have to pull out the pump, wiring, and its draw pipe before you can use an emergency bucket. Most modern wells have four- or six-inch-diameter casings. Well buckets can be made from PVC pipe and some fittings available at nearly any hardware store. The only hard-to-find item is the foot valve. Use a four- or five-foot length of three-inch-diameter white PVC pipe if your well has a four-inch casing, or four-inch-diameter pipe if your well has a six-inch casing.
Assembling the Bucket:
How to Survive the End of the World as We Know It Page 7
