Hmmm. A package of four Lifestraws for $35. That’s..uhm…carry the one….$8.75 ea. Thats not a terrible deal for something that you should have in your truck, go-bag, hunting pack, and elsewhere. My local CostCo also had some Goal0 stuff, but I was more interested in the deal on the LifeStraws. If I didnt already have a dozen of these I might pick up a package of these to use as Paratus gifts.
Tag Archives: water
Lifestraw video
This is rather interesting, if true:
Again, I have no idea if this is true or not. But if it is, then it seems to suggest the LifeStraw is living up to it’s advertising.
These things come up on sale at Amazon once in a while and I always keep one in my bag when I’m out in the woods. While it’s true you can “last three days without water” you’ll really, really wish you died on that first one when you drink bad water. Being in a ‘survival situation’ is already fraught with hazards…why add ‘dying of a terminal case of the runs’ to it?
Advertised as being good for 1000 gallons of water, that would mean you could drink about 2.75 gallons a day for a year outta this thing. But, be real…most emergencies that require this sort of device are going to be of much shorter duration…a few days or a week. At which time, with a replacement cost of less than twenty bucks, toss it and get a new one.
As I said, I’ve seen these come up for sale on Amazon every so often and I think they’re a piece of gear thats worth having around in quantity. For real convenience, they make a water bottle with the filter built in…which means when youre on the run you just scoop your bottle through the creek or river, cap it up, and start drinking. I can see that as being a very handy thing.
I usually wait for a sale on Amazon but, geez, with the way things are going these days you have to juggle ‘supply chain issues’ (Read: shortages) against saving a few bucks.
Water
I hate hot weather. I mean, I really hate it. I love the dress code as women in this college town suddenly start running around in sundresses and sports bras (summer is only second to Halloween for ‘lets dress skimpily because its socially acceptable at this moment’) but that’s barely enough to make the discomfort of the heat worth it.
And, of course, when it’s hot ya gotta ‘hydrate’…or as we used to say in the less-woke days, ‘drink’.
In the heydey of 70’s and 80’s survivalism your water toter of choice was the GI canteen. Plastic ones were just starting to turn up and you most likely had a metal one that could have been carried by grandpa in WW2 or Uncle Billy in ” ‘Nam “…(Why do people shorten it to ‘Nam’? Why not ‘Viet’?..”Yeah, we served together in Viet back in ’68”) They were durable but they were loud and sometimes leaked at the seams.
As the 80’s rolled in, we got basically the exact same canteen but now made of green plastic. With an NBC cap. An improvement? Depends on who you ask. Some folks didnt like that youy couldnt heat up the plastic canteens.
Fast forward a bit more and the Middle Easy is now where the action is. ‘Hydration bladders’ are the thing…basically a giant IV bag and tubing. Convenient? Yes. Carries a lot of water? Yes. Bulky? Yes. But, no two ways about it, its a handy way to drink on the go.
For the survivalist who isn’t fetishicizing military gear, the ubiquitous Nalgene bottle, with it’s amazing aftermarket accessory support, really comes pretty close to being Numbah One choice. The accessories available make the Nalgene bottle the AR-15 of water storage – modular, adaptable, and cheap.
Another alternative that I highly recommend are the collapsible Nalgene/Platypus ‘water bottles’. These are basically hydration bladders that are used by themselves as drink containers. Their huge advantage is that a) when empty you can roll them up to take up virtually no space in your gear and b) as you drink from them you can squeeze out the air so there is no sloshing noise like you’d get from a half-filled canteen. Big improvement.
And, interestingly, splitting the difference..the guys at Nalgene make a version of the GI canteen that comes pretty close to replacing the GI model, but with the convenience of lighter weight and transparency. Nalgene also makes a bladder-like product that uses the same screw-on lids as the rigid Nalgene bottles…which means that you can use all your accessory lids with it. Handy.
My preference? For static places like in the vehicle or at a temporary base, I like the 64 oz/ 2 L. size large bottles. For day-to-day use I like the regular rigid 32 oz, bottles. However, for tromping around in the boonies, I prefer the .5L or 1.0L Platypus for its stealthy properties and space-saving potential.
Another nice thing about the Nalgene and Platypus is that its extremely convenient to fill them about 1/3 of the way up and then freeze them. Once frozen, fill the rest of the container with water and go about your day. Very refreshing.
As an aside, the water I keep in the vehicle is store-bought bottled water. Why? Because those little plastic bottles are darn near impervious, cheap, and handy. They freeze/thaw without damage, and are handy to throw in a pocket if needed. In the summer, when i travel, I don’t screw around..I throw a 5-gallon water jug in one of the gas can racks in addition to the usual on-board water supply. I don’t mind being hungry for a day or two, but nobody likes being thirsty for a day.
Whatever you choose for your preferred water-carrying container, get a bunch of them. More than you think you’ll need. I’ve a collection of Nalgene bottles that must number almost a dozen. Theyre cheap and work perfect for their given task…why wouldn you have extras?
Water and canteens
In storage I have a couple of milk crates that hold nothing but various water containers. Some of these things go a ways back. Over thirty years of being a survivlist has given me the opportunity to try all sortsa things…some worked, some didn’t; some lasted; some didn’t.
I distinctly recall, as a young and wildly stupid lad of 14 or so, when the first hydration bladder (“CamelBak”) hit the market. I can’t recall the brand name but it was the most novel and bizarre contraption. It looked like something you’d find in an emergency room rather than in a back pack. (Trivia: hydration bladders got their start from repurposed IV bags and tubing.)
Of course, starting in the 80’s, everyone’s go-to was the ubiquitous military canteen which had just been transitioned to plastic.They were somewhat inexpensive, seemed to work, worked with the ALICE gear which was all the rage at the time, and were widely available. Drawbacks? The die-hards never quit wailing about how because it was plastic you would melt it when you mated it with your canteen cup if your canteen cup was still hot from boiling up some water. Also, they tended to smell rather strongly of plastic. Nalgene makes a version that I have tried and can endorse, although they don’t fit quite right in a military canteen cup and cover.
Moving forward, Nalgene bottles started migrating from something that was almost exclusively a backpackers piece of gear to something a bit more mainstream. They were capacious, modular, and very durable. Drawbacks? The BPA scare that caused people to turn towards stainless bottles and forced bottle makers to reformulate their plastic with, according to some people, a decrease in durability. Personally, I’m a huge fan of the Nalgene bottles. There are all sorts of aftermarket accessories and pouches available for them and I will often use them when I need a ‘hard’ water container.
Continuing along the evolutionary highway, the hydration bladders showed up and these pretty much still dominate the hydration-on-the-go market. Eventually the military caught on and started issuing them. Their biggest advantage has been the ‘hands-free’ usage of them, the ability to carry a large quantity of water, and the reduced bulk since as they empty they can be compressed. Drawbacks are that theyre sometimes tough to keep clean and, depending on circumstances and manufacture, they can suffer damage.
A nice byproduct of the evolution of the hydration bladder was the collapsible water bottle. I remember exactly when I first became aware of these. I was in Alaska visiting some glacier and the park ranger was drinking from one of these. I was immediately fascinated and asked her if I could examine the product. It was, as I recall, a Platypus of some kind. I had no idea such things existed but I knew I was seeing the future of on-the-go water carriage. These things are my go to for carrying water when out in the sticks. The biggest attraction is that as you drink, you can squeeze the air out of the ‘bottle’ so that there is no noise from water ‘sloshing’ around. This was always a headache with rigid canteens and water bottles. And, when empty, you can roll the thing up and tuck it way where it takes up no room. I keep two of them in my Bag O’ Tricks so that in a crisis I can load up on water and take it with me. In an emergency, when you’re on your feet and moving, you may not know when and where you’re next opportunity to get water may arise. It’s nice to have extra containers along, that take up no room when empty, so that when you do find that hose bib or lawn sprinkler that works you can load up. (Tangent: I have always hated those scenes in movies where someone is stranded somewhere, they drink the last drop of water, and then they look at their empty canteen in disgust and throw it away. Idiot! If you find another water supply how are you going to carry the water????)
And, interestingly, there’s a rather neat hybrid system that I’ve found extremely useful. Made by Source, this kit turns your Nalgene water bottle (or other water bottle) into a tube-feed hydration system. Highly recommend. (The Source ‘tactical’ line is probably one of the more survivalist-oriented lines of these types of products.) Nalgene makes water bottles in larger sizes that still use the same diameter cap, so you can have a nice big jug of water in your pack or in the seat pocket behind you and plenty of water. The Source products also feature modular attachment points for bite valves and bladder connectors, which allow you to fill you reservoir without taking it out of the pack. Good stuff.
And finally, for ease of use, disposability, and all around convenience, a couple cases of cheap bottled water are handy. Shove a couple in your pack or in the trunk of your vehicle and leave ’em there. I’ve had them go through dozens of thaw/freeze cycles and never had one fail.
When Im out on my bike or running around tow, I usually just have a Nalgene bottle with me…I can abuse it and know it’ll be just fine. When I’m out in the woods, I have some sort of hydration system like the Platypus to keep things quiet and compact. And for just general hand-out-to-the-unprepared I have plenty of surplus military canteens floating around.
By the by, the Nalgene and Platypus product freeze quite well. In hot summers like we are having now, I usually fill them 1/4 with my preferred beverage and let them freeze solid. Then fill the remaing 3/4 with whatever I plan on drinking. Keeps things cold all day…especially if you’re dropping that hydration reservoir into an insulated pouch.
Anyway…if you’re still rocking the OD plastic canteen from 1985, more power to you. But, you may wanna examine some of the newer options out there.
Aerticle – Pepsi is going to start putting its Aquafina water in aluminum cans
I saw this article, and thought “Cool. Canned water from preparedness companies is overpriced, maybe this stuff will be cheaper for stockpiling”. Then, I thought about it a while and realized that, IMHO, the evil plastic bottle is, in my experience, a better choice for water that needs to be stashed away in cars, backpacks, etc.
I drink way too much Coca Cola and my preferred delivery vehicle for the pancreas-killing sugar-slurry is the classic 12 oz. aluminum can. And, over the years, I have had those cans explode when frozen, explode when overheated in a car, develop pinhole leaks if dropped or handled roughly, and just generally be a bit less resilient than you would expect from a metal can.
On the other hand, I cannot recall ever accidentally puncturing a plastic water bottle, having one explode from being frozen, or otherwise fail from rough handling. To my way of thinking, the plastic bottle (especially those lovely small hand grenade sized ones) are ideal for the survivalist who wants something they can throw in a bag and not worry about. Heck, remember the news footage from Katrina and Iraq where relief workers would throw plastic bottles of water from trucks into thirsty crowds? I don’t thik you could get away with that with aluminum cans.
The drawback, of course, is that the plastic bottles are transparent and I suppose that, in theory, you could get something start growing in a bottle. But, most water is treated and, assuming the bottle was clean to begin with, it shouldn’t be an issue. Where those plastic bottle really shine is in the winter. I have bottles of water in my vehicle that have gone through a dozen freeze/thaw cycles and they hold up just fine. But, it’s easy enough to test that out for yourself….grab a bottle of water and heave it into the freezer. Once frozen, take it out to thaw. Repeat process several times and I’d be surprised if you have any failures.
The gist of the article is that the aluminum cans are far more recyclable than the plastic bottles. That may be true, but for my purposes it makes no difference. Something that my be called upon to keep me safe and healthy has one guiding rubric – does it work. Little niggling things like ‘is it environmentally friendly’ are way, way, way at the bottom of the list.
So, I suppose I might pick up a six-pack of this canned water if I come across it just to test it against the plastic bottles, but I think that I am far better served with the plastic.
Article – Hurricane Harvey Hysteria: Customers Fight as Stores Sell out of Water
I can’t believe I’m linking to an Alex Jones article, but…
Here’s the part Im having a hard time with: why are you buying water? Does the tap in your house no longer work? I mean, I recognize the convenience of 20-oz bottles of water, but whats the big deal if the stores are out of it? Fill some five-gallon jerry cans from your tap and call it good. Then fill your empty bottles from that if you need to.
And if you live in hurricane country why don’t you already have a large chunk of this taken care of?
At the moment, I’ve got something like 50 gallons of treated water set back, and a couple flats of bottled water. My need to go stand in line with the panicked creatures of WalMart? Zero.
2(??) Lifestraws for $16 on Amazon
I keep one of these in my Tromping-Around-The-Woods bag, and they should always be in your BOB/GHB type gear.
For the price, these are excellent pieces of kit for whatever cache of gear you’re squirreling away somewhere. I’ve a dozen or so in storage and scattered among various packs.
ETA: Wow, those didn’t last long. Link appears to be dead…musta sold out.
Canned water
It’s kind of interesting to look back on the history prepping back to the golden-age of the Red Scare and Cuban Missile Crisis and seeing the gear that was marketed towards those wanting to survive the inevitable nukefest.
One of the things that I often see pictures of in old bomb shelters is canned water. More specifically, drinking water that was packaged in cans like beer or other canned food would be. Here’s an example of what I’m talking about. Notice that this was in the days of dinosaurs before the pull-top can was invented. So, if you wanted to slake your thirst in the post-nuke world, you needed the old-fashioned church key to open it. Although there are plenty of these relics floating around, and people come across them from time to time and post pictures of them on the internet, very infrequently do you find those same people saying if the cans were still full or not. Assuming the cans were not lined with any particular barrier coating (which seems pretty likely considering the era), and their steel construction, the cans probably succumbed to rusting pretty quickly. (This, by the way, is why those old Civil Defense water barrels were not stored full of water, but rather stored in such a condition as to allow them to be rapidly filled when the warnings were given.)
From a manufacturing standpoint, the market for this sort of thing would have been a no-brainer for a company that was already involved in the bottling/canning process. For example, here’s some canned water that was canned by the folks at Royal Crown, or as we know it today – RC Cola. If you’ve already got the canning operation set up to make pop, why not just turn the taps on and can some water at the same time? No additional capital investment and a whole new market to sell to….seems like a win to me. But, realistically, that market for canned water, even at the peak of the crisis, probably couldn’t even begin to compare to the market for the regular product.
Interestingly, canned water actually does turn up these days in disasters. The folks at Anheuser-Busch, most famous for Budweiser beer, periodically use their resources to run off batches of canned water to be distributed in disaster areas. Compared to the old cans, these things are rocketships…pull-top cans so no opener is required, lined interiors to preserve taste, and aluminum construction to reduce weight and increase durability. And, considering the manufacturing technology and resources of a company like A-B, they probably produce more of these things in an 8-hour shift than most companies could have produced in a week back in the days of Sputnik.
Interestingly, if a person was interested in getting some of this sort of thing for their own bunker you can find it online without having to hang around a disaster relief tent. There’s at least one vendor on Amazon selling the stuff. (Blue Can) And although I rather like the idea of the convenience and durability of an aluminum can, I think that, when you really think about it, any advantages offered by an aluminum can are pretty much available in other forms…most specifically the ubiquitous plastic water bottle that we get at WalMart for around $5 a case. (Versus what amounts to about a buck a can for the aluminum cased stuff.)
I can’t speak for everyone, but my own experience has been that the plastic water bottles are exceptionally durable and probably more durable than the aluminum cans. The biggest issue that springs to mind is what happens in cold weather…I’ve had cans of Coke freeze and explode like an M67, but I’ve never had one of the plastic bottles explode. The bottles also have a bit of ‘give’ to them so things that might puncture an aluminum can don’t necessarily have the same effect on the plastic bottle. In fact, pretty much the only advantage I can come up with for the can over the plastic bottle is the opaque nature of the can preventing light transmission and inhibiting any type of growths.
Two other packaging options are the ‘juice box’ style of packaging, which is also pretty tough to find, and the foil pouches that we often see marketed specifically towards preparedness. The boxes seem like a clever idea but I think theyre the least durable and therefore the least attractive option. I do very much like the foil pouches. While I don’t think they have the puncture resistance of the plastic bottles, I very much like their small serving size…their small size means that if they freeze (like in your car in the winter) you can thaw them quickly and easily by just tucking them under your arm or sitting on them. Contrast that with trying to quick-thaw a 16 oz. frozen plastic bottle of water.
It’s also worth pointing out that if you’re the DIY type of guy you can actually ‘can’ water same as you’d can fruits or other foods using your pressure cooker. The water is completely sterilized, the containers are sterilized, and pretty much the only weak point is the glass container.
Storing water with gear
Originally published at Notes From The Bunker. You can comment here or there.
,Rawles had a link about caching and added a caveat that storing water amongst gear is to invite disaster if the water container leaks, since much gear is not greatly enhanced by being soaked. He urged that water be stored separately from such gear.
This is true, but sometimes you really don’t want to increase the footprint of your storage any more than you have to, and adding separate containers for water might do just that.
When I leave packs laying around with water in them in environs where they might freeze, I always start off using bottled water. I’ve experimented a lot with plastic bottles of water and have found that they’ll handle freeze/thaw cycles with virtually no failures. (In fact, I’ve froze/thawed hundreds of bottles of water and have yet to have one fail because of the freeze/thaw cycle. The ones that did fail were because, while frozen, the bottle was dropped and that damaged the plastic. A drop that would damage a frozen bottle, however, will usually not damge a thawed bottle since the thawed bottle flexes with the impact.) I’m very comfortable with the survivability of regular plastic water bottles. However, I am also a suspenders and a belt kind of guy. If I have a pack stored somewhere, then it’s probably important that the gear in that pack be in great shape since that pack is sitting there for the day when theres an emergency and my safety and well-being depends on the gear inside it. Most folks would figure the answer is to put the bottle of water into some other container to act as a secondary container in case the first one fails. Makes sense. Many folks use something like a Ziploc bag…a mistake, in my opinion. Ziploc bags are great, and I use lots of them for other stuff, but they just are not really waterproof. If you dont believe me, put some frozen chicken in one, and sit it in the bottom of your fridge to thaw. Come back in about three days and see what mess is sitting under the bag.
I take each bottle of water and vacuum seal it in a bag. The vacuum seal bags are quite waterproof, and they let me know at a glance if there’s any failure in bag integrity. (Since even a pinhole will cause the vacuum to fail.) If you really, really wanna go nuts you can vacuum seal it twice. I usually just take one 20 oz. bottle of water, vacuum seal it, and move onto the next. One bottle per bag. As long as the sealed bottle of water is kept protected from sharp objects and such, it lasts forever. (The bottled water in my pack is in its own zippered compartments…so there’s nothing to puncture or abrade anything.)
Don’t have a vacuum sealer? Get one.
Contraversely, (yes, I’m making my own words) if all the other gear is waterproofed then it doesn’t matter if the water container leaks. So , if you vacuum sealed all your other stuff and didnt add an extra layer of protection to the water bottles, you’d probably be okay there as well. Of course, the best way to do it would be to do both: waterproof the gear and isolate the water bottles.
If your situation can reasonably accommodate storing water separate from gear, then by all means do just that. But, in those circumstances where the water bottles have to be mixed in with the gear for space/pack constraints, this method has worked great for me so far.
Putting the ‘poo’ in ‘apoocalypse’
Originally published at Notes From The Bunker. You can comment here or there.
It occurred to me that while I have plenty of posts about food and being able to shove more cake down your piehole, I dont have any posts about the other end of the gastrointestinal tract.
In many situations, when the power goes out the water pressure sometimes follows. Even if you’re in an area that is served by gravity, rather than pumps, all it takes is some physical disruption to the delivery system (damaged pipes, etc.) and turning on the taps gets you nothing but a gurgle and a feeling of impending doom.
Now, drinking water isn’t that big a deal compared to water for sanitation. We all store water, and a method to purify it, right? Worst comes to worst, we take our Katadyn and a five-gallon jug, have someone stand watch, and we pump some water from the nearby river or lake. Unfortunately, sanitation takes a bit more water than that.
The average flush toilet in this country uses something like 1.6 to 4 gallons of water depending on your toilet. If you’re good with a bucket you can ‘flush’ your toilet with a well-heaved bucket of water into the bowl. But let’s be real here….we’re guys – give us a shovel, a roll of toilet paper, and a modicum of privacy and we’ll be fine. We are, after all, the gender that has raised bodily function jokes into a social greeting and form of entertainment. Chicks, on the other hand, can get a little fussy about this sort of thing. Don’t think so? Try to remember back to your dating days…what was the one thing that chicks weren’t willing to put up with in your bachelor pad? Filthy bathroom. Your kitchen could look like a food-decay laboratory, and she might think the 48″ metal lathe in the living room was ‘manly’, and she might even tolerate the sheets that crunched when you lay down on them, but if the toilet in your bathroom looked like a Third World squathole you may as well forget about any sort of action.
More than aesthetics and squeamishness, the improper handling/disposal of…uhm….’waste’…is a major health risk. When there’s a huge disaster just about anywhere in the world what follows about a week later? Cholera, typhoid, dysentery and a host of other serious diseases related to ‘improper hygiene and sanitation’. The classic example is Typhoid Mary who, through her career as a cook, managed to kill and sicken quite a few people before she was forcibly isolated for the public good.
Solution? Well, you know that old saying about not crapping where you sleep? That and some serious attention paid to handwashing and cleanliness will go a long way. But, more importantly, when the water-flush porcelain commode becomes an artifact of a happier, less apocalyptic time, a Plan B is going to be needed.
Fortunately, there are some options. (Although none are as familiar as what we’re used to.)
There are all sorts of ‘portable toilet’ systems out there. All are pretty much the same thing – some type of toilet-seat situated over a removable plastic bag. That’s pretty much the basic design. After that, it’s bells and whistles. Some systems use a powder or other medium to reduce odors and turn liquids to solids, some use heavy deodorizers, and some are about as simple as you can get. (Like the guys overseas who improvise toilet seats out of their tri-fold shovels.)
The old Civil Defense sanitation kits are probably the forerunners to what we see today in terms of products like this
Regardless, in addition to a toilet seat and some sort of catchment, there appears to be some other things that will go along with them to make things a lot easier and safer. The old CD sanitation kits packed:
Sanitation Kit Contents List
|
Kit Item
|
SKIII
|
SKIV
|
| Commode Seat, Plastic |
1
|
1
|
| Can Opener (manual) |
1
|
1
|
| Sanitary Napkins |
36
|
60
|
| Hand Cleaner (can) |
1
|
1
|
| Polyethelene Gloves (pair) |
1
|
1
|
| Water Dispensing Spout |
1
|
1
|
| Tie Wire (bag closing) |
1
|
1
|
| Cups and Lids (plastic) |
35
|
70
|
| Commode Chemical (pack) |
6
|
12
|
| Poly Bag Liners (commode) |
1
|
1
|
| Instruction Sheet |
1
|
1
|
| Toilet Tissue |
5
|
10
|
If I had to guess, and I do, I’d say the cups and lids were for the gents to use in a quiet corner of the shelter. No point in filling that commode any faster than necessary, right?
So lets say you’ve purchased some sort of portable toilet system. What should be packed away with it? Well, right off the top, you’re probably not going to ever find that you can have too many plastic receptacle bags. Really. Go long on these. Next item up is the future currency in just about any disaster – toilet paper. Again, having too much is pretty impossible. How much to have? Just keep buying it and stocking it away. Make sure you protect it from wet (obviously) and from critters that like using it as nesting material. After that, I’d think you’d want a large amount of hand sanitizer/cleaner/soap, a few gallons of bleach and a spray bottle, maybe some Lysol spray, gloves for handling clean up, some method of sealing the bags, and a few other sundries..(like a shovel for burying the bags). Given the critical nature of a piece of equipment like a small portable toilet it may be a good idea to have more than one. Given the relatively low price of some of these packages, it might be a bit more comforting for each person to have their own.
Unfortunately, in large natural disasters like Katrina, Haiti, Japan, etc. it seems that cholera and associated diseases spring up immediately afterwards. While you can’t do much about other folks’ behaviors, you can certainly minimize risks to yourself – wash your hands thoroughly and frequently, especially after bathroom breaks. Disinfect the hell out of anything that is used communaly by anyone for anything..toilet seats, door knobs, radio handsets, bicycle handlebars, etc, etc. And have a plan and supplies in place so that when the water supply or sewage elimination options dwindle to nothing you can still manage with a degree of safety and cleanliness.
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The blegging continues for another couple days.
