Water

Some survival issues are really hard, and some are very easy. If you are on well water and you are worried that you will not be able to drink once the grids goes down for good, you are correct. But there is a good chance that an inexpensive “Pitcher Pump” will solve your problem.

I like to share my failures with you all along with my successes, and I have to to tell you, water, the most important resource of all, is a tough thing to collect and store successfully. I set up my own collection system over a year ago, when I first started this column in March of 2014, and water was my very first actual article. For me, the most bang for the buck was to buy some used IBC totes, which I showed you in that article. Then I had gutters installed on my house, with the downspouts directly feeding into the tanks. The result was a lot of water, but a year and a half later, it’s not as simple. I also tried an alternate water collection system, as I’ll explain, and that is still giving me fits.

You know the funniest thing? When someone posts a comment on one of these articles that starts with “You can just..”. One hundred percent of the time it is someone who read a tip on a survival board or something and they are here to parrot an idea that may or may not be true. But what I have found in working on this column, every single time, is that while knowledge may be power, experience is survival. My experience with distilling water was not easy using fuel and means that would be available in a post collapse world. Oh my goodness it is slow going, about 1/2 gallon an hour using the distiller yous see here. “You can just…” distill dirty water was a comment that I got very early on in this series, and it just isn’t as easy as you would think it would be. Check out the pictures below, using a 3 gallon still from the Ebay seller linked above, and my Rocket Stove. I did get good, clean, drinkable water from yellow sulphur water, but it was not fun.

Water is the most crucial and diverse aspect of preparing for the breakdown of our society. Where do you get your water now? Is it from the city? Is it from an artesian well? A shallow well? Do you have lakes or streams near your house? Are those your sense of water security? Is your swimming pool an ever-available water backup? All of these pieces mesh into a fairly large body of possibilities, and points of failure. Those points of failure are what we most need to talk about. Once you understand the issues, and the types of methods to resolve them, water gets much simpler. The bad news is that if you live in a tightly packed area, or an apartment, you may have to make a decision now that eventually abandoning your home is mandatory (but not right away). Depending on where you live, your water issues may be complete scarcity, pollution, feast or famine seasonal rain and droughts, deep freezes and even deadly bacteria and viruses in the water. There are ways you can prepare for all of these potential problems, for both the short and long term.