The quest for clean water does not stop even after SHTF. Therefore, it’s important to know how to purify water when you’re forced to source it from lakes and streams.
Different ways to purify water
Water purification differs from water filtration. The latter uses a porous substance to filter water and is less effective at removing pollutants. Meanwhile, purification is achemical process that focuses on removing all kinds of impurities, including biological contaminants, chemicals, and debris. It includes the following techniques: (h/t toAlphaSurvivalist.net)
Boiling
Boiling water is a simple but effective purification method that can eliminate biological contaminants a minute after the water has reached the boiling point. The downside is that it requires a major heat source and evaporates a portion of the water.
Water purification tablets
Using water purification tablets is one of the simplest ways to purify water. These tablets are commonly made of chlorine dioxide and iodine and are very easy to use. Just drop a tablet into a quart of water, wait for the recommended time (usually around four hours) and your water will be safe for drinking.
Water purification tablets are perfect for preppers as they have a long shelf life and are small enough to fit nicely in your bug-out bag and emergency kit. Also, they don’t leave a nasty taste unlike iodine drops (more on these later). The drawback is that they take longer to effectively purify the water and are more expensive than other purification methods.
Iodine drops
Iodine drops are easy to use too – simply add five drops for each quart of water, ten drops if the water is extremely cloudy. The solution only takes around 30 minutes to eliminate harmful substances.
Iodine tinctures work faster and are cheaper and more effective than chlorine tablets. They’re also readily available in small bottles that take little space in your bug-out bag. Unfortunately, they leave a nasty taste that can be off-putting for young children. They’re also unsafe for pregnant women and people with shellfish allergies.
Chlorine bleach
Chlorine can kill all harmful pathogens found in water. Because common household bleaches contain chlorine in different strengths, the number of drops per quart will vary depending on the chlorine concentration. Add 10 drops per quart of water if the product contains one percent chlorine or less. Add four to five drops if it contains two to three percent chlorine and four to five drops if it contains four to six percent. If the water is cloudy, let it settle and filter it using a clean cloth, paper towel or coffee filter.
Only use unscented, regular chlorine bleach products with a label indicating they’re suitable for water disinfection. Do not use scented and color-safe bleaches or those with added cleaners.
Solar disinfection
Solar disinfection (SODIS) is the simplest and most affordable method of water purification. It works by trapping heat inside a water bottle and letting UV radiation and photo-oxidative destruction inactivate harmful organisms in the water.
Fill up clear plastic bottles with water, shake to oxygenate, and expose them to direct sunlight forsix hours (if sunny) or two days (if cloudy). Lay the bottles on their side to maximize exposure time.
SODIS has been proven to work and is supported by the World Health Organization. Besides being cost-effective and easy to ease, this method causes minimal changes to the taste of the water and entails only a small risk of recontamination as the water is stored in bottles. The downside is that they take the longest out of all purification methods to work.
These five purification methods each have advantages and disadvantages that make one technique more appropriate over the others depending on the situation. Choose one that works for your current scenario to increase your chance of survival.
No fuel = No coffee.It’s as simple as that. If you inherited a terrific Butane stove, say, with an amazing BTU output but now can’t find the quirky canisters needed to fire it up…No Coffee for You! So, as I noted inPart 1, “Stoves for SHTF,”my highest recommendation for the Total-Camp-Stove-Novice is an Alcohol-burner. This post will illustrate why. (I forgot to link tomy inexpensive “Alocs”in the first part; it performed just as well as the Trangia®, and many knockoffs come with a tiny pot-stand.)
I did notein Part 1, that if you have little or no cookware and/or are moving into the “minimalist lifestyle,” consider purchasing your burner as part of a full Trangia® kit (which nests compactly for backpacking into a small mixing-bowl sized package). It’s kind of expensive, so keep reading and see the awesome alternative:…
Protesters against a pandemic management bill in Victoria were seen marching through Melbourne carrying nooses and a gallows, with some chanting threats to kill Premier Daniel Andre
… These are probably words you have been hearing repeated over and over lately as the country continues to spiral out of control. Many experts are predicting that the cost to heat your home this winter could be as much as 54% higher than last, well that’s some good news! The rising cost of fuel, electricity, food and just about anything you might want or need is going to put a hurt on most American households. Those 20 lb. propane canisters went from $19 a refill to $23 and purchasing an additional tank cost me $64 this time. Heck, just filling up the gas cans for my generator was $59 alone and this is only the beginning...
Do you remember how much optimism there was last January? Many Americans were entirely convinced that really bright days were just around the corner, but instead, things have taken a dramatic turn into the dumpster over the last 9 months.
The Afghanistan debacle was the worst foreign policy embarrassment in modern American history, the Biden administration is trying to deal with an unprecedented crisis on our southern border, and the way that our politicians are handling the pandemic is causing extremely deep divisions throughout our society. In addition, our economy is starting to break down on a very basic level. On a widespread basis, goods are not getting to the places they need to be when they need to be there, and services are often not available when people need them. As time has passed, the “malfunctioning” of our economy has spread, and now the coming mandates threaten to make things a whole lot worse.
Just look at the chaos that was caused in Florida on Sunday…
Southwest has canceled 1,018 Sunday flights as of 2 p.m. ET, according to flight tracker FlightAware. That’s 28% of the the airline’s scheduled flights and the highest of any U.S. airline by a wide margin.
American Airlines has canceled 63 flights, or 2% of its operation, while Spirit Airlines canceled 32 flights, or 4% of its flights, according to FlightAware.
Overall, more than 1,800 flights were canceled during the weekend, and Southwest is publicly blaming the problems on “weather challenges”…
“We experienced weather challenges in our Florida airports at the beginning of the weekend, challenges that were compounded by unexpected air traffic control issues in the same region, triggering delays and prompting significant cancellations for us beginning Friday evening,” the spokesperson told FOX Business.
“We’ve continued diligent work throughout the weekend to reset our operation with a focus on getting aircraft and crews repositioned to take care of our customers,” the spokesperson added. “With fewer frequencies between cities in our current schedule, recovering during operational challenges is more difficult and prolonged. We’re working diligently to accommodate our customers as quickly as possible, and we are grateful for their patience.”
Of course, that is complete and utter nonsense.
A large number of Southwest pilots in Florida engaged in a “sickout” over the weekend to protest Southwest’s vaccine mandate, and apparently, at least some air traffic controllers joined them…
On the record, they’re denying any sort of protest — but there are reports, citing airline sources, that a massive “sickout” went down, and that ripple effects are still being felt.
Regardless of what the truth here is … it’s screwing a lot of people, and causing a lot of problems. And, IF there is merit to the sickout speculation — it could also be a bad sign of what’s to come in other industries that might try to enforce vaccines on employees.
In fact, we need bold people in every industry in America to start doing this sort of thing.
Perhaps if enough people start standing up, those that are trying to impose these mandates will start backing down.
Right now, we are already facing the most epic labor shortage in U.S. history, and economic activity is badly gummed up as a result. If millions more qualified people are thrown out of work in the months ahead due to these absurd mandates, that is going to cause unprecedented chaos all across America. A weekend of canceled flights might be bad, but it is nothing compared to the complete and utter nightmare our society will be facing if all of these mandates go through.
Even the military will be deeply affected. On Sunday, it was being reported that “hundreds of thousands” of our service members have chosen to resist the mandates…
Hundreds of thousands of U.S. service members remain unvaccinated or only partially vaccinated against the coronavirus as the Pentagon’s first compliance deadlines near, with lopsided rates across the individual services and a spike in deaths among military reservists illustrating how political division over the shots has seeped into a nonpartisan force with unambiguous orders.
So what would it do to the state of our military if hundreds of thousands of service members are kicked out in the months ahead?
That is a question that we need to be asking because it appears that this is actually what is going to happen.
Energy is so hard to come by right now that some provinces in China are rationing electricity, Europeans are paying sky-high prices for liquefied natural gas, power plants in India are on the verge of running out of coal, and the average price of a gallon of regular gasoline in the United States stood at $3.25 on Friday — up from $1.72 in April.
Most Americans may not realize it yet, but this is a really big deal.
There are more than 1.3 billion people living in India, and coal is in such short supply there that officials are warning that there could soon be widespread blackouts…
Just like Chinese authorities ordering energy firms to conserve supplies at all costs, numerous power plants across India could be forced to adopt rolling blackouts as coal supplies run low. A minister in Indian capital New Delhi warned Sunday that blackouts could rock the massive city over the next two days. But the nation’s capital city isn’t alone in suffering energy shortages: it joins two Indian states – Tamil Nadu and Odisha – which have issued warnings about the growing possibility of blackouts due to dwindling coal supplies.
Other nations are facing similar issues. In fact, Lebanon just emerged from a blackout that lasted about 24 hours…
LEBANON has finally got the lights back on some 24 hours after the country was plunged into total darkness by fuel shortages.
The Mediterranean country is battling one of the planet’s worst economic crunches since the 1850s in the wake of last year’s devastating blast that levelled a huge part of the capital Beirut.
If things are this bad already, how crazy will things get in the middle of winter when demand for energy is at the highest?
It isn’t just the U.S. economy that is crumbling. Literally, the economic infrastructure of the entire globe is falling to pieces, and experts are warning that things will continue to break down in the months ahead.
So many of the things that you have been warned about are starting to transpire right in front of our eyes, and this winter looks like it will be very dark indeed.
…TheStarlink satellites, sent into orbit by Elon Musk’s SpaceX, are designed to provide broadband internet connections in remote locations around the world. The researchers used signals from six Starlink satellites to pinpoint a location on Earth within 8 meters of accuracy.…
Additional survival tricks 