Drinking water in times of crisis

voteoften on 30/10/2012 - 00:34

Australians in NYC are reportedly bemused by the Yanks stocking up on food, water and batteries in preparation for Hurricane Sandy.

I know someone who has pallets of tuna with beans in his house here in Oz. They have plans for barricading and protecting their house in the event of civil unrest and they have a drugstore of odd tablets.

But they have less than 10 litres of distilled water. Distilled water is not recommended for drinking for very long. Apparently it can strip the body of minerals. So with all the investment and plans for an emergency that they KNOW is going to happen, they have no contingency for water, even though they also KNOW that they will be housebound and it will be too dangerous to leave the house. They are not even saving up plastic bottles and jars for filling with tap water when the crisis becomes imminent, but the taps are still flowing.

For me, water is the most obvious need. Even the doomsday preppers in the US don't seem to worry about it. They stockpile food, alcohol, seeds, firearms, blankets, etc, but water just doesn't seem to be considered. If you have invested in a years worth of food, I would think that contingency plans for obtaining and decontaminating water would go hand in hand, even if it was just 100 litres of non scented bleach.

I'm just wondering if any OzBers have plans for water shortages that they would care to share.

General Discussion

Comments

  • tonyjzx on 30/10/2012 - 00:36

    i assume you have a hot water heater

    how many litres is in that?

    • voteoften on 30/10/2012 - 02:00

      I have an instantaneous HW system. No storage. But that is a good idea.

      What I am getting at is folks who are prepping months or years of food. They ignore water or at least act like it isn't an issue.

  • samfisher5986 on 30/10/2012 - 01:18
    +2

    I have a huge rainwater tank in the backyard, should be good enough after boiling :)

  • _Bruce_ on 30/10/2012 - 07:42
    +2

    Assuming the rain isn't contaminated a tank is all you need to solve the problem.

    If it is, you are probably stuffed anyway.

  • reddragon on 30/10/2012 - 08:43
    +27

    Having grown up in an area that was subject to frequent flooding, stocking up on essentials is second nature to me. Access to potable water is essential. Even flood water is not generally drinkable due to its high contamination levels and getting it to a standard where it is fit for human consumption is not necessarily easy. Even though we lived right on a river, we had four tanks, two large rain water tanks and a third for holding water pumped from the river. These were for use in times of flood and the very occasional drought. Water from all tanks required filtering, additional treatment and boiling before use. As the youngest and smallest in the family my job was to crawl in through the "man" sized inspection covers and recover the dead animals and flush out the sediments in the bottom of the tanks. This was an annual event for us and usually done just before the start of the rainy season. The fourth tank was used for transferring the water from the tanks to be cleaned. After cleaning, the fourth tank was usually left filled so that an additional rainwater tank could fill during the rains. Having supped on water from low in the tank I can attest to how sick it can make you even after all that cleaning and filtering (I drank it unboiled -silly).

    You also need a way of cooking your food unless you intend to live on canned sardines and baked beans. We had a generator that was powered by burning wood (or paper). It was rigged up in conjunction with a fuel stove so that we could economize on use of all provisions.

    Living in the city it all seems like overkill now but we would be limited to shared baths which consisted of a very shallow fill. The used bath water was reused on the garden. Unless it was still raining. The rest of the tank water was used for cooking, cleaning cooking utensils and drinking.(an keeping clean is important

    This year I traveled through the Virginias, the Carolinas, Kentucky, Tennessee, Georgia and Alabama in USA and met with a number of survivalists. My observation was consistent with the OP's. It was surprising how many of them had several years worth of dried food, multiple firearms, enough bullets for a war, medical supplies including prescription drugs. But here was the biggy, very few had water and no way of obtaining it in most cases beyond taking a bucket down to the 'crick'. I did see a few who had purification systems of some type but most had clearly not thought that one through. The other area of inconsistency was in how to cook their food. Some had small gas cookers with disposable propane canisters while some others had solid fuel cookers. In no case would their cooking facilities have lasted more than a few weeks. Not a single one had thought about hygiene beyond a limited supply of toilet paper. Even the military understands that the daily clean used by field troops (APC) should not become a routine way of maintaining personal cleanliness. Even facial hair becomes a problem if you cannot wash it regularly. It is amazing what you can comb out of a beard - I speak from personal experience.

    It had occurred to me that there is a probably a writing opportunity to churn out the "Dummy's Guide To Survival" to somebody of a suitable bent. It would need to have a lot of pictagrams and drawings in it though. While there are quite a number of books around for survivalists they seem to be mostly aimed at living on the run rather the stand and fight (?) style adopted by the folk I saw.

    Don't accept my views as anything beyond personal observation. I have no interest in surviving beyond the time it takes to sit out a reasonable inland flood, a bushfire season or a shortage of Mi Goreng. The lack of HJ's discount vouchers is causing me a lot of angst at the moment and as for the thought of repopulating the world? Somebody has to deliver those babies and keep 'em clean and happy. Been there, done that, all good but no need to rinse and repeat.

    Hope I've shed some light for you. :-)

    • _Bruce_ on 30/10/2012 - 09:52
      +3

      Very informative, thank you.

    • BuyoTheCat on 30/10/2012 - 09:59
      +1

      What would bear do?

      • bonezAU on 05/11/2012 - 14:40
        +1

        Drink his own piss…

    • voteoften on 30/10/2012 - 10:29

      Thanks reddragon. That was very informative.

      I would have thought that a lot of those rural Yanks would be able to pretty much cook using forest debris and wood.

      I went to the Perth Royal Show and they had the Navy there and there were those instant pop up boats that are used in the ocean on display. I suppose to use under either abandon ship conditions or dropping to people in the water. They had a reverse osmosis thingy on the boats which is something I've always been somewhat interested in. The defence people didn't really seem to know that much about it, or were feigning ignorance to avoid follow up questions.

      • reddragon on 30/10/2012 - 12:15

        Try this link: http://www.katadynwatermakers.co.uk/

        It is most likely the Navy lads really did not know much about the pump. In my day, when dragons roamed the earth unmolested (more or less), we were trained to use things but not understand much more than we absolutely needed to actually use the gear without killing ourselves.

        My understanding is that these water makers waste a lot of water - it is something like 6 to 1. So for each 1 litre of water produced you will waste 6 litres. That is okay while at sea or during a flood but may not be suitable for other circumstances.

        On the farm we used to throw liquid bleach into the tanks before using the water (can't recall the quantities but I do recall lots of holes in my clothes) then the water was run though a sand filter followed by a carbon filter (all gravity fed) and finally boiled before drinking or using in cooking.

        You certainly can use forest debris for cooking but that assumes that there are no zombies waiting outside to feast on your succulent corpse which will have been nicely plumped up from feasting on multiple buckets of KFC (preapocalypse of course). If you are planning on staying in one location for a while, as most of these folk clearly are, established static supplies of fuel are needed as it might not be possible to forage for forest litter or go out and cut down trees and anyway it takes too long for wood to dry out sufficiently to use as a good fuel. Finally, you would not want to draw attention to yourself so collecting debris will leave the surrounding area too tidy plus there will be lots of footprints and other signs of habitation to draw those zombies in towards you.

        One last thing: if you are in survival mode you want to minimize physical activity as the more you do the more you will want/need to consume. Ship's survival rations are quite different to the ones issued to land forces for quite a good reason. While soldiers can supplement the rations with scavenged food they need a lot more fats/carbs/sugars/proteins due to the fact that they will be constantly moving. It is surprising how much energy that you can burn up so you would not want to spend too much time cranking the handle of a pump or foraging for wood or chopping it up with an axe.

        • mskeggs on 30/10/2012 - 15:19
          +3

          I've got no idea why you got sick from rain water, or why you had dead animals in your water tanks? Very strange.
          Most of rural Australia lives on untreated rain water with no ill effects, although filtering has become more common over the last 10 years. I have never heard of anybody in Australia boiling water before use (except some SE Asian friends who boil Sydney tap water!)
          If you have questionable water in an emergency situation, try SODIS:
          http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_water_disinfection

        • reddragon on 30/10/2012 - 15:39
          +2

          Birds crap on the roof, water washes bird crap into tank, Bird crap is not good to ingest even when it is diluted. Maybe with the advent of new tanks with the auto flush system this is no longer a problem. But consider how much crap and dust builds up on a roof in inland Australia where we don't have regular rain. And anywhere in inland NSW is using crap (literally) from upstream. The sewage treatment systems in places like Bourke are long way from ideal.

          Rats and birds both wound up in the tanks on a regular basis. The rats crawled up through the overflow pipe. I have no idea how birds got in there but they did. Ask anybody who has ever been inside a tank about the meatie goodies found in there. As for not having heard of anybody getting sick from rainwater in Australia, that doesn't mean it does not happen. :-) Gut problems were quite common around our way mid and late summer when we were more likely to be drinking rain water from the lower reaches of the tanks. The problems mainly affected the younger community members no doubt due to an underdeveloped immune system. Although from forty years of work experience in Asia I can assure you that there is no developing immunity to Cryptosporidium or Giardia.

        • samfisher5986 on 30/10/2012 - 15:44

          I don't think birds and rats should be able to get into the tank…

          Seems like an easy problem to fix as well.

        • cwongtech on 30/10/2012 - 18:59

          Some of them boil Sydney tap water as a habit (Hongkong, China water can't be guaranteed as clean as Sydney Water)
          Also, some may have never stopped from this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1998_Sydney_water_crisis

        • frewer on 01/11/2012 - 07:27

          I think a good ceramic filter will solve the birds crap issue …

    • wolffram on 02/11/2012 - 06:32

      Now here's a fella I would love to sit down and have a yarn to sometime…

  • Shout It Out on 30/10/2012 - 17:17

    Actually, my parents have 6 water tanks on their property and the water can not be drunk before it has been run through a filter. Yes, animals can not get in direct touch with the water as there are mesh filters in all the pipes going in and out, but as reddragon mentioned, their droppings can still end up in the water when flushed in from the roof.

    If you have enough wood stocked up to make a good fire for a few months, you can ofcourse boil it and drink it without too much of an issue. Even if you do get sick guts, your body will eventually adjust as long as there are no harsh chemicals in the water.

    I live in an area that gets flooded in a few times a year with all roads in and out cut off for a week at a time. No big deal. Every time I go to Aldi, I buy a carton of bottled water and now have boxes stacked nearly 2 meters high, lined up all along 2 walls of my double garage.

    There are also dissoluble tablets that can be used to clean small amounts of water ie: 5 liters at a time.

    Oh and rain tanks do have a big downside. At the moment they seem to be useless for my parents. There hasn't been any good rain for 3 months and they're about to order town water to fill their tanks.

  • endotherm on 31/10/2012 - 18:53

    In a survivalist situation, you absolutely need to make provision for water, after all, you are basically becoming self-sufficient from everything forever! But in the real world, most people will rightfully prepare just to survive a disruption until restoration of services. I live in a built-up Melbourne suburb, but I have a prepared "bug-out" kit and supplies to sustain me for at least a week. I have bleach, bleach tablets, and when I get around to it, military water decontamination tablets just in case. Floods, bushfires, even disasters like earthquakes or terrorist attacks could occur without notice, and it's comforting to know I can dig in or bug out at a moments notice if necessary. In suburbia, it's pretty unlikely that rescue or life giving services were not provided within a week. Plan for much longer in remote areas. Take for example the Victorian bushfires; bottled water, blankets, tents and aid was provided for refugees within days. In the situation indicated by the OP, I would think a reasonable person would expect aid to arrive in the biggest city in the world within hours, especially with millions of people affected. Water would be one of the first things supplied, either bottled or trucked in in tankers, should the water infrastructure be compromised. Perhaps New Yorkers' dog-eat-dog mentality differs from the Aussie help-your-mate mentality in deciding whether they need to fend for themselves or rely on the help of others. I don't blame them for being cautions in the wake of the New Orleans stuff up though. Personally I don't think I'd be overly concerned if I were in that situation, I'd have an expectation that supplies would be available rapidly after the event, and I think I could do without a shower for a few days and live off cans of soft drink etc. if the worst came to pass. Remember you can live without food for a month but you can't go without water for more than a couple of days.

    • voteoften on 31/10/2012 - 20:50

      The person with the pallets of high protein stuff (ie almost all tuna and beans and no veggies and no rice/pasta) is prepping for a collapse of civil order. In that instance, if you buy into it, people would be roaming the streets, etc. It's not that I buy into it. It is just that the complete lack of planning for water and the sole focus on food is laughable.

      I said that he should at least lay in a few cases of cassoulet and foie gras.

      • Almost Banned on 01/11/2012 - 12:47

        I wouldn't want to be trapped in a small area in a survival situation with anyone who was eating mostly high protein foodstuffs (esp the beans) - you would need to add industrial ventilation to your survival list.
        Water storage is absolutely crucial. You can last much longer without food than water.
        Of course - maybe instead of water you can store Krug champagne to go with the foie gras http://www.ozbargain.com.au/node/83447?page=1
        I didn't know about distilled water stripping out nutrients but, if anyone is interested, the Mormon Church is into food storage and emergency preparedness. They have this website https://www.lds.org/topics/food-storage?lang=eng
        which might help some people.

    • WT on 02/11/2012 - 10:36

      Hurricane katrina

      do you really think our government is prepared?

      • voteoften on 02/11/2012 - 19:12

        They absolutely are not. At least the WA government is not.

      • camelgrass on 03/11/2012 - 22:57

        Brisbane was well prepared for the floods last year — notwithstanding who you may choose to blame for the *higher than necessary flood levels because water was not released earlier from Wivenhoe Dam.

        *Possibly the case, it hasn't been proven.

        The army, council, police, volunteers, etc were in position basically ASAP.

  • mikeyb555 on 01/11/2012 - 17:11

    I have a pool and a rain water tank. Would drink the pool water first (will become more of an effort later on due to alge), throw a tarp over it to minimize evaporation and alge etc. Rain water next, hot water tank after that. Im also less than 500 metres from what would be a lifetime supply of water (massive water reservoir) In a survival situation this would obviously be a prized resource so could be an issue. To be honest if the disaster lasted more than the 12 months my pool could last me, i think there would be a bigger problem.

    • samfisher5986 on 01/11/2012 - 17:29

      You would drink pool water?? :/

    • voteoften on 02/11/2012 - 00:10
      +2

      Salt water pool?

      I am thinking that the tarp might contribute to algae. Keeping it warm.

      • mikeyb555 on 06/11/2012 - 13:56

        yeah it is a salt water pool, i believe (chemistry knowledge is limited) that there are still chlorine levels in the pool. I looked it up and pool water is drinkable at least initially. Im not sure about the algae, but a pool cover normally reduces maintenance rather than increasing it, so i think the positive effects would be higher.

  • Cheeper on 01/11/2012 - 17:41
    +1

    I can never understand why people in aust buy and drink bottled water… The tap water here.. in most places i've been is great. We are so lucky to have it but some prefer to drink out of a plastic bottle?
    In some countries OS you can understand it but not here.

    • machej on 01/11/2012 - 17:44

      Yea, and also plastic bottles might have BPA in them which could be quite bad.

  • wolffram on 02/11/2012 - 06:42
    +1

    There is no easy way to solve the water issue whichever way you look at it. I think that's why most survivalists try not to think about it too much. As someone pointed out, 3 days without it and you're cactus.

    • mskeggs on 05/11/2012 - 10:53

      What do you mean? Fill up some empty soft drink bottles with tap water and you have a store to get through most service interruptions for less than 5 cents. If you have a storage hot water tank, drink it too.
      A 500L water tank to capture plenty of rain water to drink is a couple of hundred dollars max.
      A bore (well) with a pump can be drilled in most places where people live in Oz for under $1000.
      Not sure where the difficulty is?

      • camelgrass on 05/11/2012 - 20:58

        For short term interruptions to service there is certainly no difficulty in surviving. I believe the comment was made in the context of "survivalists" who kit out with the mindset of surviving lengthy periods of time without access to the normal, everyday, taken for granted utilities like electricity, clean running water, etc.

        In these situations there is still no easy, surefire way to solve the water issue as "wolffram" alluded to.

        No electricity: you then need a backup generator to access water from the bore. As an example—a flood, will destroy your pump, generator, and also contaminate your tank water, bore water and fuel supplies.

        In a longer term survivalist situation you need access to replacement filters, parts and chemicals (disinfectants) if you dare drink any of the water you may or may not have access to at the time.

      • camelgrass on 06/11/2012 - 00:55

        A bore (well) with a pump can be drilled in most places where people live in Oz for under $1000.

        I think your dreaming. Add to that a couple hundred bucks for an electrician and someone to install the pump (and piping to holding tank if needed). The pump also needs a steady base to installed on, ie a concrete base will have to be poured.

        You'd be hard pressed to find someone to do all that for under a grand including drilling.

        • voteoften on 06/11/2012 - 01:59

          A bore is something that could, IMO, be compomised easily by lack of power or some technical difficulty. I also doubt the $1000 figure.

          I think that the best way, if your were thinking supplies would be required in the long term, would be to store clean bottles, preferably plastic, in plastic bags. Fill them as soon as some indication that something could go wrong becomes apparent. Have purchased stored water as well. Use whatever water you could forage first, then your self filled supply. The store bought bottles would be the last to be used as they would probably keep the longest.

          One thing that puzzles me about this person I know who is stockpiling pallets of protein, is that he is also telling everyone his plans and what he has stored. If order collapses, and those folks need supplies, what's he going to do, say no and shoot them?

          So much time and energy, yet so many holes and things overlooked. Lunacy.

        • camelgrass on 06/11/2012 - 15:00

          I agree on your comment; lunacy.

          Most of these people stockpiling food, guns, munitions, etc are nutbags anyway. There's no use arguing with them or even trying to to talk any semblance of logic.

          They're convinced the Indonesians are going to invade one day.

  • maldrat on 02/11/2012 - 07:56

    We should be able to survive for a few weeks on protein powder, fish oil and dextrose.

    Where can I buy like 500 litres of water? Preferably in a container of sorts.

    • Shout It Out on 02/11/2012 - 21:38

      Buy a hot water tank ;o)

    • mskeggs on 05/11/2012 - 10:55
      +1

      An IBC cube tank is about $100 and holds 1000L. I will cost about 4c to fill with tap water, free with rain. Collect empty soft drink bottles to refill for free.

      • outlander on 05/11/2012 - 16:55

        think you forgot two 0's on that price. Tap water is cheap but it aint that cheap.

        • endotherm on 05/11/2012 - 17:39

          $1.77 per kilolitre for me. Not $4 but certainly not 4c either.

        • outlander on 07/11/2012 - 17:26

          don't forget sewer charge. You pay for the water to come in, and again to go out.

  • camelgrass on 03/11/2012 - 20:04

    By the way, NYC is not the largest city in the world as someone seemed to suggest in a previous comment.

    As another commentor said, a lot of rural Australia survives on untreated tank water for the most part.

    My mother grew up in the 40s, 50s, and 60s with 3 other siblings on a remote rural farm and all they ever drank was untreated tank water (no boiling the water either). They were lucky, the tank was filled from a bore producing nice, soft water, so no need to use rain water run-off from the roof. No dead anmals were ever reported in the tank, and if there were they certainly didn't know about it, and they still survived along with good health.

    But they also drank tank water from their grandfathers house nearby; his tank was filled with rain water run-off from the roof. The water was also not treated or boiled, and no ill health effects were ever felt.

    • endotherm on 03/11/2012 - 20:53

      Depends on what method you use to determine "largest" (population, area, density etc.) but NYC is supposedly the largest city in the world ranked by land area at 8.7 km² http://www.citymayors.com/statistics/largest-cities-area-125… containing 17.8 million people. I agree it isn't quite the densest or most populous, but it's up there.

      • camelgrass on 03/11/2012 - 22:28

        Okay, fair enough, if that's what you meant. But typically population determines the "size" of a city.

        The "size" of a city can refer its land area, but it is more typically the population.
        http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World%27s_largest_cities

        Anyway, yeah, NYC is up there. But nothing really compared to Tokyo and some of the developing Chinese conglomerations in more recent times.

    • Shout It Out on 03/11/2012 - 20:54

      Hmmmmm but rain water is becoming more and more (chemically) polluted as time goes by.

      • camelgrass on 03/11/2012 - 22:38
        +2

        That's true. Probably why in more recent times more and more people with tank water typically have a carbon filter. Today, treating water is cheaper, easier and the equipment more readily available than years ago in my mother's time on a remote property. They basically lived in poverty, so wouldn't have been able to afford to treat their water anyhow.

        • Shout It Out on 03/11/2012 - 22:48
          +1

          Well, as I mentioned in a previous reply, as long as there's no high concentrations of chemicals in the water, our bodies will adjust to water of less pure quality. Anything biological can be fought off by our immune system and our bodies will become more resistant over time. With chemicals it doesn't work that way.
          I have always been impressed with how our bodies work against biological intruders. Hence why I became a biochemist.

        • camelgrass on 04/11/2012 - 17:43

          What about Cryptosporidium and Giardia? Can the body adjust to these bacteria just as well?

          From what I know reverse osmosis is one of the few ways to eradicate this type of bacteria. I am no expert. I am sure there are other ways as well. I am open to learning.

        • Shout It Out on 04/11/2012 - 21:08
          +1

          Ah but cryptosporidium and giardia are parasites and even though these are found in Australia, tests have shown that they did not occur in any of the tanks that have been tested by several different agencies/organizations. However, this doesn't mean that they don't occur in tanks at all, just that it's not common.

          With biological, I was mainly referring to bacteria. Not parasites. Thus I stand corrected. Parasites are obviously not something we will become resistant to ;o)

          So perhaps your mother was living off one of the many tanks that "got away".

          Anyway, I guess the moral of a lot of these comments is, to use a filter if you really want to make sure you are drinking clear water :o)

  • camelgrass on 04/11/2012 - 17:49

    To all those "survivalists" out there: how many people died on the east coast of the USA in one of the largest cities on earth from lack of water or water-borne diseases during a once in a double-generation event?

    Australians in NYC are "reportedly" bemused by the Yanks…

    Whatever that means.

    Australians are not the only ones in the world that "help their neighbours" in time of need. I read an article yesterday where some residents in Long Island, NY, had ignored evacuation orders and subsequently had their homes flooded. They had to cross the street (now resembling knee-high rapids) to the safety of residents who lived in multi-storey apartment dwellings opposite.

  • Radar on 04/11/2012 - 19:56
    +1

    I like to spend a bit of time in the bush on my motorbike and have never had any health problems pumping water from creeks/rivers using a filter pump like this
    The filters last ages and can be cleaned in the field, and the pump has been going strong for well over 10 years.

    • voteoften on 04/11/2012 - 20:30
      +1

      Camelgrass - this product mentioned by Radar claims:

      "Microfilter Protection: Eliminates over 99.9999% of all waterborne bacteria and 99.9% of common protozoan parasites, such as giardia and cryptosporidium"

    • camelgrass on 04/11/2012 - 21:09

      Thanks for the info. That's impressive, going strong for 10 years.

      Depends on how often you use it I guess. The carbon core would have to be eventually replaced. I would have thought that using bleach or chlorine to disinfect the apparatus would be necessary when not in use for a prolonged period of time.

      Under "specs" suggests I may be correct:

      Cartridge life: 750 liters
      Field maintainable: No

      Would be a great addition to the "survivalists" collection. 750 litres of water would go a long way.

      • Radar on 04/11/2012 - 21:33
        +1

        Some years get's used more than others, but it's been on quite a few 2 week long trips where it's pumped water for a group ~10-15L per day. The whole bottom section is the consumable filter that needs replacing now and then - I'm on my 4th I think. The cartridge can and should be cleaned regularly - especially when filtering "dirtier" looking water as it clogs faster.

  • altomic on 04/11/2012 - 20:03
    +5

    drink beer.

    • camelgrass on 04/11/2012 - 20:46
      +1

      I agree. Probably what I would do, as most NYC residents seem to be doing.

      Although alcohol is supposed to dehydrate rather than hydrate, I bet 100 bucks I could survive more than 3 days on beer alone… haha.

      • voteoften on 04/11/2012 - 22:12

        I drink very little water.

  • 612Surv on 05/11/2012 - 14:36

    survivalstorehouse.com in Australia has lifestraw water purification devices cheap, there is also a discount coupon here somewhere

    • camelgrass on 05/11/2012 - 21:15
      +2

      To let people know, you are also a rep for them. Your comment could be considered spam—not everybody clicks on your username. Best to let people know up front in the future.

      • voteoften on 05/11/2012 - 22:59
        +1

        The name was a bit of a tip off.

        Those lifestraws sound pretty cool. If the family one actually cleans water effectively, it is fantastic. 612Surv, I saw something about saline water. Do these actually make ocean water potable?

  • Hintswen on 06/11/2012 - 00:44

    I was going to use a water chip but vault 13 doesn't have a working one anymore.

  • David Hasslehoff on 06/11/2012 - 07:54

    NY disaster survival strategy & ozbargain, I dont see the connection?

  • voteoften on 06/11/2012 - 10:35

    Access to water in times of upheaval is the topic. NY was an observation of attitudes of various people. It is a valid topic in the discussion forum as it is a discussion on the need for water and the various ways to obtain it, including products.

  • cruise control on 06/11/2012 - 13:29
    +1

    thank you OP for posting this. I have to say I learnt quite a bit from all the tips here. Sometimes you never know when disaster strikes, and it's always useful to be prepared

  • [Deactivated] on 06/11/2012 - 17:15

    Chemicals in rainwater?

    Yep there are, but we are talking survival here. Long term chemical impact vs short term survival. If it gets to the point for chemical poisoning, you would have run out of protein, cornflakes etc

    Just my 5 pints worth…..

    Lets keep things in perspective here

    • camelgrass on 06/11/2012 - 21:35
      +1

      You are absolutely correct, sir, when referring to short-term survival.

      Though the conversation has diversified at many points into talk about people living off rainwater full-time (parts of rural and regional Australia) and longer-term survivalist situations, which was also alluded to in original post.

      • [Deactivated] on 06/11/2012 - 22:08

        Yes I did read the post. Realty again is if you need to survive for 1 year, again the chemicals would be the least your your problems.

        Marauding bands of hungry thirsty souls might be worse, because if you needed a years worth the whole country would be in such a mess it's unlikely there would be any semblance of civil order.

        Having gone through 5 days in the San Francisco earthquake with no water or supplies being available except what was at home already, the reality is that it could be got, but you had the line up, and hassle for it .

        If you are in a rural area already, you probably have water tanks and supplies already as corner stores arent at the end of each paddock….

  • bargaino on 07/11/2012 - 14:24

    We have about 50l of water in small tanks, as used for camping. And enough iodine to treat more.
    I also try to keep a few weeks worth of dry food in the house - tinned food, flour.
    Batteries, lights, radio, cooking fuel …

    If the next flu pandemic hits, I don't want to be going to a shop crowded with panic-buyers.

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